If you can't stand the heat....

In my life, the kitchens in my houses have never been just places to cook.
It's the room where a family comes together.
At my dads house, most of my major life events have taken place in the kitchen. I found out I was going to college in that room. I was standing in there when I got the phone call that my grandpa had died. I introduced my guy to my entire family there. It's where we have all our serious conversations, and where we stay up until four in the morning drinking wine and laughing. When family comes into town, we go immediately to the kitchen for hours to catch up!
And I think I've spent more time in my mom's kitchen than the rest of her house! It is far and away the best area of her home [I think], and even though she hadn't lived there that long by the time Paul and I moved, we had some amazing times in that room! Not to mention, my mom is a phenomenal cook. She could challenge Julia or Betty to a cook off and win. [I wish I had gotten that gene!]
To me theres just something so comforting about kitchens for this reason, and now I don't even usually associate kitchens with food. Is that weird?

When Paul and I first moved to our new house, the kitchen was the first room that was completely unpacked, ready to go and felt lived in. I seriously didn't even care about setting up our living room [probably why it wasn't set up until we had lived here a month and a half.. whoops], i just was focused on the kitchen! Especially because we were given so many amazing kitchen appliances for Christmas that I was getting to unpack for the first time! [Thanks mom, dad, Joe, Braden, Nancy, Mike and Jeannie for all of those amazing gifts!]

Every morning when we wake up at 5am [yikes!], while Paul hops in the shower I run into the kitchen, turn on the coffee pot, and usually assess the damage from the night before.... if i haven't climbed back into bed again! When I actually wake up for the day [usually around 630], I put the dogs outside and get to work! I would love to be the kind of person who can't sleep with a dirty house but I just don't have the motivation when it's bed time [nothing can come between me and my bed when I'm tired]. So my first job of the day is always cleaning the kitchen. I don't know how, but Paul and I go through SO many dishes! I mean, it's a little ridiculous. I can't cook to save my life so the majority of my dishes are coffee cups, but Paul somehow manages to fly through at least five dishes a day. Throughout the day as I attempt to make lunch and snacks [usually a PB&J or a smoothie.. or an avocado.. or carrots...Paul always tells me I eat like a rabbit] I end up cleaning the kitchen A LOT. And when I'm not cleaning the kitchen, or running around chasing my dogs, or sitting outside, you can bet I'll be sitting at our kitchen table!

I could literally talk about our kitchen in everyone of my blog posts, but to spare you guys my rambling I'll just get to the pictures [thats the fun part anyway!]

So here it is, a little view of my favorite room in our house.