Caught in Grace: May 2012

So I am very much a light and bright kind of girl when it comes to decorating my home. Over the last two years or so, I’ve have slowly gone through my house and painted walls and furniture to reflect my tastes. But there is one area in my house that isn’t at all my style and I have felt stuck and unable to do anything about it. That would be my kitchen.

It is filled with lots of dark wood cabinets and dark countertops. My dream kitchen is white and airy, with open shelves. I have thought a lot about painting the cabinets, but for several reasons, I’ve decided (for now) not to paint.

My Reasons:

1. It would be an insane amount of work and mess to sand and paint all the drawers and cabinets (37 in all!). And I’m not sure I could sanely handle weeks of kitchen disaster with three small kids under tow right now.

2. Eventually we will move with Tim’s job. It could be six months from now; it could be three years from now. We don’t know, but I can’t hardly fathom doing all the hard work to make it my dream kitchen and then moving away. It would seem pointless.

3. Our house is only six years old and there is absolutely nothing wrong with the cabinets. In fact, for resale value, it’s probably best that we leave them the way they are.

So, for all those reasons, I have left them alone. But my heart yearns for light and airy with fun pops of color.

So I found a way to have a little bit of a compromise.

Here is the before picture of the brown cabinets, gray counter tops, and tan floors. Blah. It’s not me. There are more cabinets to the left side of the room, which contributes to overloading of dark blandness all across the room.

Yes, I know that it’s nice and all, but like I said, it’s just not me and it leaves me uninspired. So in an effort to appease myself and my desire for less brown and more color, one afternoon, I had the bright idea to just take off some of the cabinet doors.

Ta-da!

I instantly liked the change. This was a no-cost, little effort, quick fix that allows me to bring in more lights and brights to my kitchen, while also making it possible to quickly and easily change it back at some point if/when we end up moving. A friend suggested I wallpaper the backs of the cabinets with fun patterned scrapbook paper to make even more of a statement. I think that’s a great idea and hope to do that soon.

So that’s my quick kitchen update.

Until I have my own white kitchen, here are some white kitchens I’m drooling over:

via here

here

via here

I love those aqua cabinets! I could totally do that!

And just because I’m curious on your opinion, would you paint or not paint your kitchen cabinets if you were me. Have any of ya’ll ever painted your kitchen cabinets? If so, how terrible was it?

After buying our new couch back in January and then selling our old sofa and loveseat, our living room was looking a little bit sparse. And although our new couch offered plenty of room for our own family to cozy up on and the kids thoroughly enjoyed all the open space to run and play, we were quite limited on extra seating for any guests. So I knew I wanted to add in a few comfy chairs to complete the room.

I have learned my lesson in the past from trying to replace something too quickly and then ending up with something that’s not really what I want because I was too impatient. So this time, I set my mind not to settle and to wait patiently until the right chairs came along. For a while, I dreamed of white tufted chairs, but once common sense kicked in, I knew that white chairs would not mix well with kids. I didn’t want to be fanatically yelling at them all day not to touch the chairs. So, eventually, I let that dream die and although I didn’t know exactly what I wanted instead, I felt like I would know when I saw them. The problem was that I really had no time to shop for chairs. And I know this might sound weird a little bit, but I had felt the Lord leading me to trust Him more in providing us with the things we need and even want for our home (rather than stressing and exhausting myself trying to make things happen). So in an effort to follow His leading, I told Him that I would trust him to provide the right chairs for us in His timing. This is kind of new to me (to trust God with decorating my home), but He’s God and He knows what I like, what we need, He’s intimately involved in the details of my life, and He loves to bless us as His children. I also figured He would be an excellent decorator and I was excited to see how and what He would provide for us.

So after a few months of patiently waiting (and maybe sometimes reminding God that I was patiently waiting), one day I was perusing through my daily email from Joss and Main and I saw some chairs that I thought were cute and might possibly work in our living room. If you’re not familiar with Joss and Main, it is “a premier members-only site that offers private, limited-time sale events on the world's best brands for your home and life. Each day, members receive an email invitation to exclusive sale events on the best merchandise at prices up to 70% off retail.” (from J&M website) The only hiccup was that these chairs were non-returnable. And since there was no way for me to check them out in real life, sit in them, or make sure the color and pattern would work in my living room, it would require a pretty big leap of faith on my part to order them. I mean, it’s not like we have money to burn around here. And I definitely didn’t want to be stuck with something I hated.

So I went on about my day chasing kids, cleaning up messes, and squelching squabbles and I kind of forgot about the chairs. Then that evening, as I was cleaning up dinner, those chairs very clearly and randomly popped back up in my mind. I showed them to Tim. He liked them and he especially liked the price, but he was leaving the final decision up to me. (Cause he’s super smart like that.) And so I stared at the empty chairless spots in our living room and then I stared at the photo online. Back and forth I stared. I tried to mentally imagine the chairs in the room. I walked around the room. I sat and stared some more. I totally stressed myself out over the decision. I asked Tim about a million times if we should go for it. And I prayed. And in the end, (with a little encouragement from Tim) and on a little hunch that these were the chairs God was dropping into my lap, I decided to leap. And then I held my breath for several weeks while I waited for them to be delivered.

And once they arrived, I ended up loving them even more than I originally thought that I would. (Cause God’s pretty awesome like that.)

Wanna see them?

I hope so, because I’m about to bombard you with pictures of my living room. (These are all iphone pics, so the quality is not amazing, but it gets the job done.)

Here are my new Shadow Tufted Swoop Arm Chairs.

I may have had to let go of the dream of all white chairs, but the tufts were a must have for me. I love tufted furniture right now. And I love that the chairs go with the couch, but aren’t super matchy. The pattern is light and fun and playful (without being over the top) and that adds some interest and personality to the room. I don’t like super serious furniture (hence the spool being used as a side table between them) and I actually think these chairs probably fit better with our style than all white chairs would have anyway. And clearly, the gray pattern will hide things a lot better than the white would have.