How I love kitchen gadgets

Just looking around our house this morning I realised how much the HTC and I both love kitchenware. I guess our Christmas presents to each other reflect it best - I bought him a cast iron casserole dish and he bought me a food processor. The funny thing is, neither of us could have been happier!

My beautiful processor

The HTC also got a coffee pot for Christmas which has been wonderful, I forgot how much I love the smell of freshly brewed coffee filtering through the house, so much so we have a pot on now and I can't wait for it to be ready.

Mmmm coffee

We have also picked up a couple of things in the sales, the HTC got a salt pig and bought me a cute pale blue ceramic measuring jug which is just gorgeous, and I got myself a set of digital scales which were a bargain!

My scales. Still need to try them out though.

Now we just have to find a place to put it all!

My Kitchen

While baking away on Sunday morning I got thinking about my kitchen, an area of our house that I have a true love/hate relationship with. I am hoping by spending more time in there making nice things for my family, the relationship will soon improve! But for the moment, here is the good, the bad and the ugly about the place I hope to be spending a lot more time in from now on.

The Good

• Lots of bench space and storage - drawers and cupboards
  
• Nice big pantry
  
• It's easily closed off from other areas of the house
  
• Much as I usually don't like them, we have a bit of a display cabinet which actually is quite handy for the special things - and helps to remind us to use them
  
• The window looks out onto the back garden
  
• The floorboards are really easy to clean
  
• We didn't have to renovate it when we moved in - to have a perfectly well functioning kitchen straight away was great!


• It's at the centre of our house and right next to our lounge/dining room - very handy for entertaining

The Bad

• Only electric hotplates and oven - drives us both mad! We looked at getting gas when we moved in but there are not even gas lines in our street so would cost a bucketload :(
  
• The storage space we have, while there is a lot of it there are a few areas that we don't really know what to do with as they are odd shapes


• It's at the centre of our house and right next to out lounge/dining room - which makes me really frustrated at times when we struggle to keep it as tidy as I would like


• The sink is small which is a pain considering we are trying to save water by only doing one load of dishes a day, I often have to lay other things to dry out on a tea towel (Nobody dries dishes in our house - that's the air's job!!)


• Since having The Monkey I do feel like I have done almost nothing but dishes and clean bottles - I get sick of being stuck in there doing menial jobs all the time


• It's weird but after a really busy and long day I quite resent my kitchen because I know I have to go in there and prepare tea when it is the absolute last thing I feel like doing!

The Ugly

• Yes - take a look at the photos!! I hate the decor so much urgh. But the annoying thing is we can't justify spending money to renovate it at the moment because other than that it is a perfectly good kitchen!


• My oven is great and works well, but somehow the seal between the two plates of glass in the door has separated a fraction, and now there are a few unsightly drips etc between the panes of glass that I can't get to to clean! So it always looks grubby :(

Anyway, I am taking the good, the bad and the ugly and embracing them, because I am sure that the more time I spend in there doing fun things, the more I will see it as a great place to be.