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Come behind the scenes at Crazy Wonderful for a #KitchenTour and see Shelley's kitchen in Houston, Texas.
All of the action in our home occurs between our kitchen and living/family room, so I love that the kitchen opens right up to it. The large island is the perfect middle ground for every type of activity.
Tell us about your kitchen?
Our kitchen is a great size for our family. The cabinetry runs in an "L" shape with a large center island. Off to the far end we have a breakfast room that is perfect for morning coffee or casual meals. Our preference is to either eat at the kitchen island or in the breakfast room. The poor dining room rarely gets much use.
What have you done to make your kitchen cosy, functional, beautiful or inspiring?
For me a kitchen has to be functional. As much as I would love to add some pretty styling to our kitchen island, I keep it completely clear. I do that so I don't have to move decorative items around when we use the island for meals or crafting. We have also recently installed outlets with USB ports so we can designate a corner for our kitchen for charging all of our devices.
How do you keep organized while cooking?
Having an organized pantry and fridge make it simple to quickly grab what I need. We also have our spices organized alphabetically so they're easy to find. Oh, and I made these awesome customized utensil drawer organizers so whatever cooking utensil I need is always exactly where it should be. Those were a game changer.
Any tips & tricks for organising your pantry, fridge and ingredients?
If my pantry isn't organized I'm like a deer in headlights come dinner time. Years ago I added wire baskets to our pantry to help corral like items. For example, all of our dried pasta and rice are in one bin, baking ingredients in another, and snack items in another. It makes it so much easier for things to stay grouped together this way, and I can easily pull them out so items don't get lost and forgotten about in the back.
Do you do a lot of cooking and what are your favourite dishes to make?
Oh man, I hate cooking. Finding a meal that the entire family will eat is such a chore. I wish it was something I enjoyed doing, but I just don't! We have a handful of go-to meals like four cheese ravioli with sun-dried tomato alfredo sauce, homemade pizza, homemade chicken tenders with roasted baby potatoes, and **************
Where do you turn for new recipe ideas?
I often find myself going to Pinterest for new recipe ideas. I love being able to click over to the blog where it came from and seeing photos of the cooking process. That always seems to help me when I try a new recipe out for the first time.
Do you plan out your recipes for the week or do you like to be spontaneous?
We'll call it spontaneous instead of planned out, but it's really just because I've given up on planning, ha! I used to plan for the week and it really did make things run much more smoothly because I already had all the ingredients when I needed them. No last minute trips to the store. However, our evenings are usually hectic with a lot of activities and I found that my planned-for-meals would go out the window when we run out of time. More often than not, the fresh ingredients would go bad by the time I could get to the meal. Now it takes more trips to the store, but we waste a lot less.
If you had three wishes, what would you do to make this your dream kitchen?
1) A full-time chef, lol! 2) Our trash can is all the way in the laundry room, so I would love to have a pull-out trash can by the sink. 3) Lately I have been thinking it would be so nice to swap out the subway tile on the back splash for an imperfect handmade tile with a lot more interest.
Whose kitchen would you love to explore? Send us a message!
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