Mudroom Maintenance

When we moved in I was eager to get all the kitchen stuff put away. We all have the misc. items that are used for entertaining but not used every day.  You hate to take up valuable space in the kitchen for those less frequently used items. 

I am lucky enough to have a nice big cabinet in our mudroom to use for that kind of storage.
Until now I had not really had time to wipe it all down and tear out the old shelf liner and do a major reorganization.  After enlisting the hubby to give me the okay on what kitchen items I could donate I had paired the items down to a manageable number.  I designated some bins for tablecloths, party supplies, candles and votive holders and Christmas dishes and serving pieces.

Now for the icing on the cake... or so I thought.  I ripped out the old liner and decided to replace it with some self adhesive shelf liner.  I figured this was a better option because I had heavy serving trays and I did not want the liner shifting.  Well it may have been helpful to read the directions about cutting the paper into small sections to make it easier.  I thought I wanted less seams so I decided to try to do large sections at once.  After lots of frustration and lots of bumps and buckles in my liner I decided I would have to resign myself to the imperfection and just go with it.  Lesson learned for next time!

The Before:

New very sticky liner!

Kitchen shelves

Sorry about that last post!  Would you believe me if I said my puppy did it?  He actually did jump on the keyboard and hit publish.  How do they know just what button to push??? Anyway...

After reading some other blogs I got inspired to paint gray behind my open kitchen cabinets.
I hate to say I can't remember which blog  but I think it was "Honey we're home".  She has some great ideas!

I really wanted to paint a darker gray but because of our poor kitchen lighting I decided to go a few shades lighter.  I also have some blue dishes with a brown edge and felt that they would be too dark against the gray.  As I looked at the shelves my husband said " oh no I know what this means!"
I have to say he did see the wheels turning.  Yes I wanted to replace all my dishes with bright white ones and white accents on the shelves like the blog had shown.  But reality did set in and I decided to watch the budget and work with what I had.

My compromise was going to Ikea and getting some cute fake plants in great white pots to put on the top shelf.  That gives me just enough happy and pop of white to wait to replace the dishes.  So now I have a bit of a rustic cottage look combined with some white accents.

I do love the way it turned out!  It is a subtle difference but gives it a fresh new look.