Sneak Peek: Our Cottage Kitchen

(the box window in our Woodland Cottage kitchen, May 2012)

For a little perspective, here's a before shot of the kitchen from 2006 when I first purchased the house...it was clean and nice, but VERY vanilla...

Well, we are *finally* finished with all the repainting and reflooring on our Woodland Cottage (!!) and most everything has been moved in, so I have turned my sights to decorating! And wow, have I been having fun! As some of you remember, we used to have space in an antique/collectibles shop, but we closed it down in July of 2010 so that I could concentrate on my art licensing business. Well, we still had boxes of awesome, cute, vintage flea market and garage sale finds left and they have been waiting patiently in our storage building to be put to good use. It has been like Christmas around here opening up the boxes to see what treasures await!

The following photos highlight the items in and around the box window in our kitchen. A box window is wonderful, but it really doesn't serve much of a practical purpose; however, it is awesome for displaying collectibles, so that's exactly what I've done with the space.

Most everything you'll see in the following photos was a frugal find at a flea market or garage sale, or else something that we made...or a combination.

My Dad made the cute shelf with reclaimed fence wood and a red and white ticking backing and I filled it with vintage goodies. In this photo you can see the green we used for the kitchen walls - it's made by Behr from Home Depot and it's called Rejuvenate...

My Mom stitched the little embroidered strawberry way back in the 70's...the sweet little chicken is a lone salt shaker without her pepper partner...

I love colorful enamelware and pick it up when I can find it for a steal - love the colors in the bowl. And you can see that I have used my no-sew cherry valance here at the Woodland Cottage - I just loved it too much to leave it out at the mobile home...

Antique apple cookie jar from a friend...

...and one of my favorite resale store finds, this cute USA Pottery cookie jar shaped like a coffee pot...

Colorful enamel pots fit just right in this narrow spot...

Love this chippy ceramic chicken and rooster set that I got at a junk store - and the corn-shaped jar was my Grandma's. Plus, a fabulous green enamelware coffee pot and my first ever cookbook from 1983...

I love vintage crewel embroidery pieces and have been collecting them for years - this one was done by a friend years ago...love the sweet sentiment.   BTW, the black and white polka dot clock was just a plain black $3.00 clock from Wal-Mart that I added white dots to with a paint pen...

Here's the whole box window...

...and here you can see a bit of the back wall of the kitchen, but I am not quite done hanging and arranging items just yet...

    

...and here's a close up of the wonderful tall crewel piece that I got at a garage sale for $2.00...

When I get everything just so on the remaining walls I'll take a few more photos to show you. I am really happy with the way the kitchen is all coming together so far. We still have some very cute knobs to put on the cabinet doors and drawers, plus a few other touches here and there. For "Phase II" of the kitchen redecorating, I would love to have vintage-styled white tile with black tile trim to replace the tired dated "butcher block" laminate...here's an inspiration photo from Pinterest to show you what I have in mind...

(Originally from House Beautiful)

That just screams cottage to me, and it will go a long way to help transform my 1982 track house into a true cottage gem...

Speaking of Pinterest, I invite you to follow along with my boards where I pin all manner of inspiration,  like the "My Colorful Cottage Style" board filled with cute colorful cottage goodness! I am getting SO many of my decorating ideas from Pinterest - it's a wonderful resource and so much fun!

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A few days ago on Facebook I said that I was decorating our cottage using at least two or three larger items from the following photo of our last space at the antique shop...

Well, I found a way to use that wonderful old black bar/cabinet right in our cottage...

It is now acting as a divider between the dining room and the living room! I love this silly old piece and was so happy that I could make it work. I was afraid it might close off the open space too much, but because it is so open itself, it doesn't block the view or feel closed off. Plus it provides some great extra storage and it will be a wonderful setting for seasonal displays throughout the year...

Well, that gives you a pretty good idea of what I've been up to all these past weeks. There are lots more projects to do (some furniture painting and decor crafting) but we are off to a very good start. It is really staring to look cute and feel cozy around here and we are loving it!

Can't wait to take more photos and share more of our progress throughout the house!  I'll be adding the photos to Pinterest too, so you can repin if you'd like...or feel free to pin them right from here...

Be blessed this week friends - I have really missed you, but I think we have turned a corner with our progress and things should be getting back to normal around here very soon. I'm looking forward to visiting more with all of you...take care and God Bless!