Monday, September 08, 2008

Show Me: Your Kitchen

Robert at Thoughts of a Father is trying his hand at a photo meme. He has named it Show Me and each day he will ask us to "show him" a specific place or thing. Today is Day2 and the theme is "your kitchen".

EEEEEEEEEK. My kitchen is not so much my favorite room in the house. At my best in the days when I could walk better and could stand for more than 20 seconds, I wasn't a particularly good housekeeper. Now I just suck at it. And I'm a clutterer. My kitchen is no exception. This is not aided by the fact that the people who lived here before were apparently giants. I am quite short. Besides being ugly, the kitchen cabinets are pretty much out of my reach, so I've got one of those rubber maid rolling cart things and then lots of stuff just sits on the counters... the dirty messy counters, And right now there's a huge box with my new pots and pans in it, still unpacked. But someone dared me to post "as is," and I got an email from some spiritual guru or other saying to own my faults, so.... here's the hideously messy kitchen.


Ok... a tour... Above... hideous white cabinets that are too high for me to use. If I had a little money, they would be painted another color. If I had a lot of mone, they'd be gone... The yellow thing hanging in the center of the picture is a ribbon that lets me reach the string for the ceiling fan and light. The picture over on the left is a mandala I made the night my father died. I kind of knew he had died but was waiting for confirmation. The crock pot was a gift from a friend of mine who was trying to improve my cooking habits. Didn't work. You can see even from this distance that the stove needs some cleaning. Sigh. I love that wolf picture. I'll go see if I can get a close-up. I got that when I was still living in NYC and still going out of the house. Went to a Native American crafts show. The clock belonged to my parents. It's an hour an 5 minutes slow but soon it will only be 5 minutes off again. If you look carefully, you can see Angel climbing onto the box with the new pots and pans. She is heading up to the counter where she will attempt to wreak havoc in one form or another, either by pushing things off or finding some little thing that she can carry around and convert from it's given purpose into a cat toy.


To the left of the stove is a door that leads to the laundry room/storage area. When I first moved in, my friend Kim and her daughter came and spent a day with me. Among the fun things we did was to decorate this door. They did most of the work. I cut out some of the hearts, I think. When I look at it, I always think of them and that lovely day.



My refrigerator door. You can see that even that isn't neat. And this isn't a very good picture, either. Shame is not good for creativity. Pictures on the door are my nephew who is a chef, my niece Diana with the dogs and the bluebells, my niece Cindy and her two kids and a picture I took of my great niece when I lived in AZ. She's seven - well almost 8 - now and apparently has started talking to boys on the telephone. Oh, dear.


My favorite part of my kitchen, though, is the view out the back door. It's been painfully quiet and critter free out there since the big tree cutting, but I'm hoping that the birds will come back in the Spring or that winter will offer some good views over the top of the snow mountain that forms when the snow slides off my metal roof.


I guess I'm going to skip The Alphabet Backwards today and go hide in a corner for the rest of the afternoon.

14 comments:

Akelamalu said...

I enjoyed the tour of your kitchen :)

Anndi said...

I need to know how you decorated that door... I just need to!

And the view! Just lovely... reminds me of the view from my sweetheart's kitchen window.

I have major clutter too. I'm still trying to figure out how i want to arrange the kitchen now that Mom is gone and Dad is at the Veterans Hospital. There's not enough storage space, it's almond colored melamine (gag me)and I hate the window treatments.

You know what? That was actually therapeutic!

Thanks!

Robert said...

So are you going to start each of the 7 days letting everyone know how cranky I make you??? :) That's funny. True, but funny!

This is a wonderful tour. I love the detail you give here. It makes ordinary object significant. Espeically the picture you made. Thanks for sharing all this.

Carletta said...

Now that wasn't so bad!!
I too love the door - I'm thinking the paper was attached straight to the glass - was it?
I'm thinking too when the light shines through you must have some kind of beautiful color on the opposite wall from the door.
The view out the back is peaceful -outside views are always my favorite anyway.
Now I have to go look up mandala - it looks beautiful - I don't know the technique I don't guess.
Girl you did good!

Raven said...

Robert - my apologies. I'm having a rough day today. I often just cut and paste copy from previous repeat type posts. I forgot to read what I said. I'll fix it. Big oops. Not intended to repeat it every day.

Rebecca (Ramblings by Reba) said...

I like the decorations on the door... I don't like our kitchen so much either. :(

Jenny said...

I love the decoration on the door, how clever! And your view is fantastic!

lynn said...

I love the decorations on the door. What a nice reminder of your friends and the day you spent together. What a great view out the back door.

Raven said...

Hi everyone, thanks for visiting and for being so polite about my messy kitchen.

For those who asked about the door, you should ask my friend Kim for the actual story of how to do it. Her's what I remember. I had a bunch of different colored tissue paper and we cut that into shapes. I forget what they wet it with to get it to adhere to the glass. Whatever it is, I know it's biodegradable and washes off if I decide I want the windows back or some other pattern. Kim's blog is Ramblings of a 40something Empty Nester. I'm sure she'd be glad to tell you how to do it if you ask her.

Gattina said...

I like the wooden pannels in your kitchen ! and of course the marvelous view you have from your back door !

Robert said...

I was playing. I'm not upset or offended. I mentioned something similar (in fun) on the front door post. :)

Adi said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Adi said...

Hi Nicole, you can hide, that's OK. Please just don't get really into the hiding mood like that person in your poem. ;-)
I do like your kitchen, it is neat, I'm wondering where my feeding dish might stay if I came to visit.
The backyard is nice too! I could play there.

We even forgive you if you miss Ruby (Red) Tuesday, that's OK too.
I know it takes a lot to comment back to all the nice people. Jim is letting me help him do that today.
That's because he's got me on his blog (this one that I can write on). Please come see what he did, he made me sit on a berm beside some red flowered bushes so he could take my picture for today's Ruby Red post.
Until then we were having a really good walk.
Really, I don't mind, I think I'm photogenic. Do a blog search on his blog for "Adi" or "Adi Can" or check his labels. Not all of these are labeled, some are really old posts.
Hope your feeling like coming out a little later, Adi.
..

San said...

Raven, I'm let down. After that huge list of disclaimers, I was expecting a nightmare of a kitchen, something out of Sweeney Todd. And then what I see is just a typical kitchen with a happy clutter. That heart door to the laundry room is awesome! And your fridge door is personal. That's the way fridge doors are supposed to look.

I do envy your back yard. Here in the desert, grass and tall trees are in short supply.