The Tour Continued...

Here is where I spend most of my time during the day. This is also the room that sold me on this house. I love my kitchen! The large cabinets and all the counter space sold me! It seems that one can never have too much cabinet or counter space.

From this angle I am standing on a couch in our family room.

Some sweet ladies from church helped me decorate above my cabinets. They actually purchased all the fake food that is showcased in the baskets and bowls. When we have large gatherings, I use a lot of the dishes and baskets that are above the cabinets. One year, for Christmas, Jared bought me a speaker system. We have surround sound in the kitchen. He drilled holes that run through the cabinet and to my computer. It's great. Sometimes the kids and I have dance parties in the kitchen. :) Speaking of Christmas, those are Christmas cards and photos hanging on the wall and cabinet on the edge of the photo. They aren't there year round. In fact, they're gone now, so if you come over it's almost a blank wall. :)

There are two ways into my kitchen. This is the main "door" I guess you could say. It opens up to the family room.

If you know us well, you know that we've moved several times. I am tired of moving, but I wouldn't be surprised if this is not the last house we live in while in Denver. Because my husband likes to track the real estate market and find "deals" on homes and things, I've made ultimatums if we are ever to move again. I first started this while we were still at the seminary. There aren't many requirements, but one of them is a gas stove. I've learned to love cooking with gas and when we lived in an apartment for a few months, I burned everything on that electric stove. So now, I require a home with a gas stove. Our current home did not have gas, so my lovely husband installed a gas line before we moved in. He's a rockstar. Then he spoiled me with this awesome stove. It's got 5 burners and is a double oven. It's also a convection oven. The main oven is pretty large. I can get three racks of cookies in there at one time. It's perfect. The bottom oven has been great for those turkey days and as a warming drawer. I love it!

My other requirement is a decent dishwasher. Before moving to Colorado I did tons of research on dishwashers and we found a used Asko dishwasher on Craigslist. It was their bottom of the line dishwasher and I have to say it was the best dishwasher I ever had. Seriously. When we moved into this house the dishwasher was already here. I was little leary of it, but I've now learned to embrace it. This a two drawer dishwasher, so it's like two separate dishwashers. They run independently. It does a decent job cleaning, but it's still not like my Asko. Each dishwasher holds quite a lot of dishes, more than half of a full size dishwasher. What I love about this Fisher and Paykel dishwasher is that I never have dishes sitting in the sink or on the counter waiting to be washed. Since I can run one dishwasher at time I always have one that's running or clean and one that is empty or dirty. The only exception to this is when we have company. That's when I wish I had another dishwasher. I actually wouldn't mind another dishwasher. I know we'd use it.

Here I'm standing in the corner of my kitchen by my knives and things. You can see the two entrances to the kitchen, that go into the front room and the other goes to a number of places, family room, stairs, etc.

This is my little work station, where I am sitting right now writing this post. See that "Keep Calm and Snap On," it plays a huge part in covering up wires and a phone jack. :)