Color in the Kitchen

What color should a kitchen be? O more precisely, what color should MY kitchen be? That's a great question in my opinion. My theory is that a kitchen should be a (not exactly blank) slate for a great art collection, a room that fits the owner's personality and culinary needs. It should be great function with great form and then... there should be ART and COLOR!

This kitchen looks like a blank slate to me, so many ways to dress it up and give it some personality.  If only they hadn't taken the photo before the work was done.  Even some black and white photography would have been an improvement... now it comes across as sterile and the marble reads as cold.   

This is a bold move to use this much olive green in a kitchen.  One really has to be committed to a color choice like this to make it work in a room where one spends so much time.  I wouldn't do this color, but that's ok, that's not my house.  I just wish they'd taken some risks with the accessories and instead of spreading the green like moss growing on the north side of the... kitchen - they could have done something wonderful with red, fuchsia or plum!  It's a trend now to do the island in a contrasting color and this kitchen would have been a great place to give that a try! 

This is an interesting choice with lots of black outlining.  I have the urge to look a little closer than this photo allows, and I'm curious about the gate in the foreground but the beauty of this kitchen is the commitment they've made to making an original statement.  I think it's charming.

This chocolate brown and white kitchen features a show stopping stencil on the cabinet doors.  I think this is an idea that could hold some possibility, however, I've done enough stenciling to know that it's tedious to the extreme.  My tastes don't run country and I've got far too many cabinet doors to ever give this any real consideration so it's just as well.  But I think it's a successful choice here.

This buttery little confection of a kitchen is the picture of warmth and sweetness.  I do wonder, however, why they made the kitchen island top so small.  If they would have added 18 inches along the side facing us, it would have been a fantastic change!  (depending on things one can not see beyond the scope of the photo.)  Being able to have a few guests on stools while one cooks is a wonderful perk in my opinion. 

I think I kept this photo because of the floor.  I also like the color scheme of black/white plus one!  The pale mossy green in this one is a soothing choice but again my eye wishes for some real saturated color in that room somewhere.  I'd put a few flowering violets or an orchid and a beautiful textile on that table to soften the look of the cold hard looking appearance.  There are many good reasons to use white marble in the kitchen, but something must also be done to soften the cold hard look of it.

The careful use of turquoise in the floor and backsplash saved this room from the hum drum and I think it's successful.

No matter what the basic colors are of a kitchen, one should be able to dress it up with beautiful color like this table scape.  A lovely piece of fabric, some fresh flowers and perhaps some fruit and candles and the table and kitchen are dressed and ready for great food and friends.   

Open Shelves

I'm giving some thought to my kitchen and trying to think of ways of giving it some personality (in addition to my artwork!) One interesting way to do that is open shelves. Here are some of my favorite examples of kitchens which put the contents on display.

I'm a fan of Ina Garten

I am a fan of food network, and while some of the hosts get on my last nerve, there are some that only get better the more I see them. Ina Garten is one of my favorites. And I love her kitchen. My brother is a fantastic kitchen designer, he has designed two kitchens for me now. Sadly, I don't live in either of those houses, but that's ok, our current house may be a work in progress, but we keep at it. This week my attention turns to our kitchen. We'll be removing our current floor and installing a new one, also... a coat of paint is in order... on Everything! And of course lots of details. So I'll keep you posted. And for inspiration here are some photos of Ina's kitchen. The first kitchen photo is her home kitchen, she also has "the barn" and there is one in New York that's very similar although if there is such a thing as "over the top" that would be it!


I like the open shelves! Perhaps when I paint my kitchen cabinets I'll just leave some of the doors off. I also love the details, like the candle sticks and the stools, they have nice lines. The rest of the room seems to be off the hook and the colors and style appeal to me but the scale does not. Too big! The pantry... I lurve the pantry! Everything is so NEAT! I really love order in my house. I told my hubby this evening that the way I packed my stuff into my current kitchen was crazy, I'm going to take it all out and start over! Well... not completely, but there are some changes that need to be made - and soon! It will come, we've only been in this house a year, it all just takes time.

PS, I've never really liked dressing at the holidays but Ina Garten won me over! I made an Ina Garten recipe (added a few things of course) for a Thanksgiving dinner party at my house. I made two at the same time and took the second one to a carry in meal at church and it did a lovely disappearing act! (Thankfully they let me take home my baking dish!) My parents decided that the dressing was the best they'd ever had (so I gave them the augmented recipe) and they served it to guests last week and again when we were at their house this evening. I had forgotten how good it was until I tasted it again this evening. It's her recipe, plus dried apricots, pecans and when it comes out of the oven I throw on a handful of green spring onions. The heat cooks the onion a bit between oven and table and the color and texture that it adds just takes the whole thing right over the edge. (And I actually didn't put any onion in the dressing because there would be plenty on top and in the gravy.) It was Yum! And suddenly our family has a new tradition, thank you Barefoot Contessa!

Snowstorm 2009 at Studio B

I just LOVE watching it snow! Nothing quite like it!

“When Christmas bells are swinging above the fields of snow, we hear sweet voices ringing from lands of long ago, and etched on vacant places are half-forgotten faces of friends we used to cherish, and loves we used to know.” Ella Wheeler Wilcox

View from Studio B after the '09 Snowstorm

Snow at Studio B with Border Collies

You can always tell when I hold the camera with my left hand because of my tremor, but the rest of the time I didn't do too bad for a freezing cold work observer.

Snow and more Snow!

This morning we opened the doors to a snowy wonderland and let the girls out, and they plunged head first into surprisingly deep snow.  Here they are just before they get really confused border collie looks on their faces.  They did finally forge a pathway out into wonderland, wish I had video of that!

Then Misde discovered that the squirrels were out, so she went out to check on them, (She's the speck in the distance btwn hemlock and porch post) Hope watched from the lower porch.  Hubby got to uncover the firewood for the wood stove as well, there is no better heat this time of year!

There was a rather large drift on the upper deck, it was a little confusing for Hope...

But then hubby set about removing the snow so that we could all go out and have a look around...

 

Maybe even a trip down the snowy stairs to see what can be seen... except for a border collie the snow was rather daunting at that depth.

In different places we got different measurements... this was one of the deeper spots.

The street side of the house was a sea of beautiful whiteness!  I can say that because I didn't have to shovel any of that!

It took a while, but hubby found the sidewalk and the steps going up to the street!

He moved lots of snow to get to the van!  (The tile for my new kitchen floor is in that van, waiting to be transformed into a real visual treat for our home - just add hard labor and a bottle of advil and it will be beautiful!!)  It can just stay out there in the van a little longer!!

He's showing me that all that can be seen of my Honda Civic is the tip of the CB antenna and the mirror!  We didn't even uncover them, it's not done snowing!  (At least I hope not)  I don't remember a snow like this in Virginia, certainly not since we returned in 2000.

And while he was shoveling all that snow, I was digging out my textile studio near the wood stove.  (Ask me which one of us had the better deal?!)  All the fabric is sorted, folded and stowed away where it goes!!  It's beautifully organized, it is SO FUN when order reigns supreme in my studio.  I've even done inventory (NO PURPLE - O NO!) to see what colors I need to dye up next.  I've even got the dye mixed on the kitchen counter and the fabric is soaking.  Maybe tomorrow I'll don the gloves and get dying.  Everything is canceled, even church - and they say they don't close in "inclement" weather.  I guess this was a little beyond "inclement."

I cleaned up the last of the glaze and packed up my glass studio for the season.  That's the last of that art media for the year and it seems unlikely that I'll even get back into it before spring comes.  It's time for winter weather arts - fabric, quilts and home renovation projects! 

We hooked a projector up to the laptop and hung a queen size sheet over the fireplace and watched a couple movies today.  Everything is now QUEEN size!  LOL!  I have a two week Netflix free trial and so I'm giving it a go again and enjoying it so far.  A perfect activity for a snow day!  A loaf of bread to make the house smell wonderful and a fire in the wood stove.  Tell me... does it get much better than this?  Actually - yes because there are yards and yards of fresh fabrics and fresh dyes just waiting for me.  So clearly it really does get better than this!

Happy creating, stay in out of the cold and say a prayer for those who don't have it as good as we do in our snug homes with internet connections.

Grace,
-Carmen Rose