My Kitchen a. k. a. Atelier, Centre of Education, Surgery, Refuge

I can spend whole days in my kitchen and not even notice I have been confined to one room for hours on end. It is by no means of vast proportions, measuring roughly 3.5m x 4.5m, but to me it is the perfect room. It is where I am now, actually. 

By perfect I don't mean the decor, as such, or the layout, moreso the feel and functions. It multi-tasks, in somuch as a room can. It is quite obviously a kitchen, having all the usual fittings - cupboards, sink,  kettle, dishwasher, hob, oven, fridge, microwave - as well as an extendable table and six chairs. At the same time it is so much more than a kitchen. 

For a start it serves as commnication central in our house. Of the two windows, one looks out the side of the house allowing me a view over the comings and goings of the neighbours, should I chose to look, and it overlooks the garden gate too. The second window looks out on the garden. Anyone approaching the front door has to walk past it. Needless to say our doorbell doesn't get much use since we have usually seen our visitors coming and have opened the door already. I generally do my blogging and anything else computer-related from the kitchen too because the light is better here than at my small and incredibly untidy desk in the no man's land between the livingroom and playroom.

Cheesemaking with my four year old

Cooking with figs from the garden

My cookery book collection is housed in one corner on a five-shelf-high bookshelf. On the short stretch of wall between the shelf and the window to the garden we have our set up our learing area. It features a map of Europe, a multilingual alphabet poster and our garden birds identification cards. As the boys have got to pre-school and school age so many questions have come up about nature, spelling, geography or food that this corner with the means for them (and us as parents) to answer their questions grew organically over the past couple of years, beginning with the bird cards. Jars of pens, pencils and safety scissors adorn the window sill along with an atlas, craft books and pre-school activity books. 

Part of our learning corner

 Any regular readers may have noticed the grey flooring that appears in the background of many of my photos. No, we don't have this throughout the house. It is only in the kitchen. When we bought the house I was delighted that we had a decent-sized shed, a garage and a guest room. I imagined I would have plenty of space to complete all my upcycling projects. And I do. Space is not the issue. Trying to fit these projects into life with three small boys is the issue. The kitchen is the only place where they can get done, unless I employ a nanny (not an option). So the kitchen has developed a parallel life as an atelier.  

The cradle renovation was carried out entirely in the kitchen

I am not the only one who gets creative in the kitchen. My children have a great love of experimenting, especially if it involves water, paint, food colouring or homemade volcanos. Again, the kitchen sacrifices its original function and becomes a science lab for an afternoon now and again.   

Experiementing with dyeing eggs

 Not least among the many and varied roles of this most wonderful of rooms is it that it serves as my refuge. Here I have my coffee maker, my pantry and my well-stocked wine rack. I have my books and my radio. I can write, bake or watch the children play in the garden. I can sit with a cuppa, my feet resting on a Tripp-Trapp, and feed Number Three. I can browse my craft books and cookbooks and favourite blogs. I can rest, cook or dream. 

Food photos from my cookery blog, My Kitchen Notebook

Creating an Outdoor Kitchen

For years I have longed for an outdoor kitchen. I would see them featured sometimes in the French interiors magazines I'd buy when I'd pop over the border on a Saturday morning for the grocery shopping and a coffee. When we finally bought a house, I had grand plans. But with a toddler, a newborn, a mortgage and a brand new indoor kitchen, setting up an outdoor kitchen was not high on our list of priorities.

As the summer has approached in each of the five years we have lived here, I have told myself that I'll make an effort and pull something together. A makeshift kitchen will do just as well as a real kitchen. It is outdoors after all. It doesn't have to be perfect, just weather well. But first the sandpit and the baby swing took up the space I had allocated. Then came the summer when I had a major international project on my hands and conference calls at 7pm took up most of my balmy evenings. Last year, highly pregnant and with two small boys to entertain, there was just no time to plan, browse magazine or scan Pinterest let alone build a kitchen. 

But maybe that was all for the best. Inspiring and all as Pinterest can be, sometimes it is better not to look. I don't know about you but when I get an idea for a project into my head, I like to get straight to work on it. If I stop to browse Pinterest, I can get downhearted, seeing all those fabulous photos that I can never aspire to with my budget, talent and other resources. Alternatively I end up in my local DIY centre buying all sorts of wonderful things when really I should be at home investigating what I already have. 

So, in early May as I pottered round the garden on The Bavarian's birthday, tying to make things look pretty for that evening's barbecue with friends, I siezed the day and brought the indoors out. The shabby wooden cabinet that usually houses the mismatched cushions for the patio furniture became my worktop. Some of my potted herbs from the doorstep got a new home there and the tomatoes and peppers for the salad found themselves released into the fresh air. My wine bottle candle holder from a trip to Holland back in the late '90s found itself back in use on a bottle recovered from the glass recycling container. 

To the left  of the cabinet our garden sink, splatted with paint and going green with limescale got a good going over with the bathroom cleaning products and came up lovely. A bucket got lined with a bin bag and tucked neatly in beside the U-bend of the sink.

A few teatowels were seconded from the kitchen and the tile coasters I picked up from Tchibo years ago got taken out of their box at last. A quick root through my candle basket (does anyone else have one of these? A basket full of tea lights, tapered candles, matches of vaious lengths? No? Just me?) revealed a pack of red IKEA tea lights. Thrown into a few jam jars, they made a pretty and laid-back addition to our barbecue evening.

Since then our outdoor kitchen has expanded. A rummage in the cellar turned up a one ring electric hob, a dated but functional kettle and a tall wine rack that doubles as a handy shelving unit. Some of the uglier mugs have migrated from the kitchen press to the garden cabinet along with a pack of paper napkins and some teaspoons. The coasters, tea towels and tea lights have made the cabinet their peremanent home.  It is like camping at home.

 

Now that we have it set up, I wonder how we managed without it. 

5 Things In The Kitchen That Don't Belong There

A few months ago I wrote a list of alternative blog post titles for frazzled parents. Number 11 on that list was 'Five things in the kitchen that don't belong there'. Since I have just finished a marathon, post-breakfast, school-closed-today, Grandad- visiting-so-kids-extra-hyper kitchen clean up, I feel I am in a good position to finally write that post.

Anyone who has even been in my kitchen will confirm that at any given time there are several things in the kitchen that would not usually belong there. I must admit that the children are not always to blame for the state of the place. 

Currently, post clean-up, this is what is still hanging around the kitchen.
1. A big shoe box of fabric scraps (craft post coming soon-ish)
2. A brand new girls' sweatshirt. As the blog title suggests, I only have sons. This sweatshirt has been on the windowsill for weeeks, waiting to be wrapped and posted to a little girl for her first birthday. She is now nearing 14 months old. (Georgina, if you are reading this, we are soooo sorry!)
3. A huge DIY book that I gave The Bavarian for is birthday. 
4. Two tins of paint that haven't been put away since I finished my last DIY project, repairing and painting a coat hook that I have yet to find the perfect place for. 
5. A spinning top that Number Two was given for good behaviour in music class last week. 

Luckily I am in a positive frame of mind and see this as proof that the one room in our house where most of life is played out is the kitchen. I'll take the chaos there any day rather than keep it spic and span with a place for everything and everything in its place.