Glimpse: My dining room

Glimpse …a little way of showing you more about my life and home! If a man’s house is his castle… my dining room and kitchen must be my throne room. I love baking, cooking, and eating. So we spend a lot of time here.

When my husband bought our house in 2003, the dining / kitchen area in our circa 1961 home looked like this:

Yikes, right? Seafoam green and wallpaper are not my thing. So after our first anniversary in 2006, we did a major renovation. Walls came down. Floors came up. Everything was improved (except the far kitchen cabinets). For awhile our dining area looked like this:

Once the chair rail, framing, new chandelier, and new paint (Pointsetta by Benjamin Moore) went up, the room started to look more like “home.”

Then, on my 30th birthday, my husband took me out to dinner at a local restaurant (The Travelers, where they line the walls with used books and any diner can take home up to 3 used books each time they visit!). While we were gone, my husband secretly had the peninsula and granite counter installed, the last piece of the puzzle.

And… he had invited my family and friends for a surprise birthday party! Since we were leaving the next day for a wedding, I had assumed my birthday would be celebrated the following weekend (plus I’d been trying to ferret out clues from my husband and sister, but they are like steel traps with the secrets!).

We arrived home in the September dusk, and I opened the door. Something was moving inside the house! It was my worst nightmare come true – to arrive home and find a burglar! I screamed at the TOP of my lungs for literally … a long time.

Then someone flicked the lights on and there stood about forty of my closest friends and family attempting to say “SURPRISE” over my screaming! Absolutely hilarious!

But the best part was walking into our finished kitchen, and seeing our huge undertaking completed! Right down to the Brazilian Cherry hardwood floors! Add some pictures and furniture and now our dining area looks like this:

We’ve enjoyed our kitchen/dining area for the past five years now, and I love the deep reds, the counter space (barely visible to the left) for preparing pies (and as a great backdrop for photos of my crafts!). We still have plans for improving the “coffee nook” (it’s done now, but out of the picture to the left), but we are pretty content in this space!

What color is your kitchen/dining area? Would you change anything about this space in your house if you could?