Shopping Temptation and Kitchen Photos

The other day, I read a list of strategies to use when you're tempted to spend money. Here's one that stuck out to me:

"Meticulously scrub anything you are tempted to replace. Sick of your car? Your couch? Your gross, banged up, scratched and embarrassing kitchen table? (True story.) Clean every nook, use the right cleansers, and get it ready as if you were going to sell it. By caring for our things, we gain patience and a new perspective on our possessions." (posted by Dawn at A Little Great)

I put it into practice today. Cameron pulled a plastic container of leftover green beans (which Braden did not enjoy for lunch today) off the counter, and green bean juice went everywhere. So... I had to clean the floor. While I was cleaning the floor, I noticed how many dust bunnies were clinging to the base of the cabinets, so I cleaned that too. While I was cleaning the base of the cabinets, I thought I should go ahead and clean the cabinet doors as well, and so on... At least the lower part of half of my kitchen is clean now. I don't think the idea really worked, though. At least not yet. I still want to re-do the kitchen.

Just for fun, here's some before-and-after kitchen eye-candy:
Figured I should keep with the theme of "borrowing" things from other people's blogs and post these from Kara Paslay.



This kitchen is really inspiring to me because I think the "before" looks slightly similar to our kitchen. I'm really loving the butcher block countertops. I wonder if they stay looking nice. I think butcher block countertops would look really good in our kitchen if we painted our cabinets white. They would bring back some of the warmth and tie into the flooring in the living room nicely. Here's a picture of our kitchen.

This photo was taken SEVEN years ago, right after we painted the trim "Linen White" and the walls "Canyon Redrock". It was a nice change from the builder's choice of taupe trim and stark white walls:


Anyway... For now, I'll continue scrubbing my current kitchen and adding pictures of dream kitchens to my inspiration file. I realize I've been posting a lot of links to other blogs lately, and pictures of the boys have been few and far between. Home decor has been on my mind a lot! Oh, well... I'll do a Halloween pictures post of the boys next time.