Hi! Welcome to my new blog! I'm going to be writing about food, cooking, family and home - and if you read my other blog, you'll know that those are my four main passions. If this is your first time reading me, I'm going to awkwardly introduce myself: I'm the happily married mother of three kids - The Girl (who is 8), The Boy (who is 5) and The Baby (who is an ornery two).
We bought our house for many reasons, most of which consisted of me having just had my second child and my ovaries threatening to explode if we didn't own a house. It's a sprawling, slightly post-Victorian house that even under dozens of layers of really ill-conceived wallpaper and bad 1970s renovations had tons of potential – tall windows and high ceilings, antique hardwood floors, and a beautiful big lot. What it markedly did not have was a good kitchen. It's small, it's cramped and claustrophobic, and there isn't enough cupboard space in the poorly-made cupboards – but the rest of the house was such a steal that we bought the house anyway. We told ourselves that we would renovate the kitchen right away.
We are SUCH liars.
Five year later, we've made a lot of progress with the rest of our renovations – the decades of loathsome wallpaper are gone, for one – but the kitchen is still exactly the same. I can picture my ideal kitchen in my head – a pristine, magazine-perfect kitchen, some sterile white room. I don't know where the wall of children's drawings would go, our dozens of battered cookbooks, my collection of unbelievably kitschy kitchen art and teapots – they wouldn't fit, likely, into my imagined perfect kitchen, my perfect life. And of course, the perfect me in my imagined kitchen wouldn't look much like the real me, either – slimmer, more stylish, put together, this pristine person for a pristine room. Not much of my real life would make it in my dream kitchen.
So maybe it's just as well that we're making do with our outdated kitchen right now, because I LIKE my real life. The perfect kitchen will likely come some day – when time has changed me in ways that I can't even imagine, and for now this is the kitchen of my children's childhoods. It still is a dumpy, outdated tiny little room but it is also the room where they come running in after school, excited for hot chocolate chip cookies cooling on the table, this spot that means – more than any other room - home for us.
I always picture my dream life in my dream house then, like you, I realise the perfection in the imperfection. There are no battered cookbooks in the magazine kitchen. The messy reality is far, far superior. Still I hope you get your dream kitchen one day.
In my dream kitchen not only am I slimmer but I can also cook. Reading your posts can help keep this dream alive for me.
I like things old. When things are new, I worry about getting them dirty, or dinging them up in some way. When things are old, I can relax, let my children play all over them and just have fun. That's what kids will remember, now what the kitchen looked like, but how much fun they had with you in it.
Congrats on your first post!
We also love our house and hate our desperate-to-be-renovated kitchen. And I think you've totally hit on why we are also not making the leap (ok, besides cash) - we are a makeshift, make-do kind of family and the polished stuff just doesn't look good on us.
Welcome, Beck! I would love a new kitchen but I'm with lisa b...in my dream kitchen I can actually cook ;)
I love what Sheryl said and she is so right. Our kids will remember the fun they had with you in the kitchen, not what it looked like.
Looking forward to getting to know you better at the Kitchen Party!
great first post Beck - I have a feeling this is your calling :)
Hi Beck, Congrats on your first post! I enjoy your writing immensely and look forward to future postings!!
can you send anything to Rome? Please?! it all looks so good and appetizing!
ciao from Rome
freddie
Congrats Beck! Wonderful 1st post. I remember the kitchen of my childhood too, and the memory has has nothing to do with color or the cabinets but all to do with the love and warmth found there. It sounds like you're making the same wonderful memory for your children!
Congrats Beck! Wonderful 1st post. I remember the kitchen of my childhood too, and the memory has has nothing to do with color or the cabinets but all to do with the love and warmth found there. It sounds like you're making the same wonderful memory for your children!
Cookie, please?
Congratulations. I thought your surprise announcement might have something to do with cooking. :) Have fun with it!
Hey Beck! Very nice. But why doesn't it tell us who posted each post? Confusing.
We told ourselves the same lie when we moved into our house four years ago. Ah, well.
can you PLEASE give me a cookie!?!?!? stupid diet.
Those cookies look WAY better than the version I whipped up the other night! And yay for a second home for your writings!
yes ma'am...we're liars too. we told ourselves we'd replace the awful green family room carpet...and here was are...6 years later...
Congratulations on your new blog 'assignment'! Love the look of this new blog, and it sounds just perfect for you! I wish warm chocolate chip cookies were waiting for me in the kitchen...
Hey, I like the new digs!
We are kitchen-dwellers, too. Seriously, the other rooms in our house may as well not exist (okay, we might not do so well without a bathroom, but the room is big enough to fit a bed or two).
Looking forward to more!
Mmm...
Me want cookies. Me want cookies now.
Hi Beck! Congrats to you on your new Digs. My kitchen came complete with head to toe ivy wallpaper that I swore to remove immediately. 4 years later...
Ben's been helping us with our procrastination though by pulling it off the walls in patches. He must hate it as much as we do.
This is SUCH an episode of MTV's Cribs! ;) As long as you use your kitchen SO PRODUCTIVELY like you to, and as long as those chocolate cookies are there baking, it's PERF!
ME WANT COOKIE!!! ;)
Nothing says "welcome home" like the smell of warm chocolate chip cookies, fresh out of the oven.
Congratulations on the new blog!
Yummy! Can't wait to keep reading....
Hi Honey! Congratulations on your new blog. I am very proud of you. The cookies are excellent and I highly recommend them for breakfast. (You may have noticed a half dozen of them missing this morning!)
I know this dream kitchen. I covet it. And I am pretty darn sure it will never be mine. But one must have dreams. And those cookies! MMMMMmm!
Oh, those cookies look scrumptious. I'm actually in the middle of trying to have our "dream" (or as close to it) kitchen completed. I'm not the best cook, but I try. Hoping it will give me inspiration; and I'm sure I'll be inspired by your blog here...congrats!
Sorry for the delay in posting Beck's byline! Should be up any minute...
A few months before we moved into our new house a year ago, I got to pick everything out for the kitchen, just the way I wanted it (within reason, of course). Since then, although I love the kitchen, I have, of course, remodeled it three times over in my head. I think the perfect kitchen is like the perfect head of hair. When you think you're almost there, styles change, your needs change, and you're starting over again from scratch. Short/long, sterile/homey... What makes it right is what happens there, and those cookies are lookin' a lot like perfection to me!
I read the reference to Cribs in your comments. Will you show us the inside of your fridge next?!
Seriously, I am EXCITED about your new project here. I will be a regular!
look at how purty you are....
congrats on your new writing gig.
I can't even get my kitchen painted....
Congrats on the new gig!
And I think I know that wallpaper from the 1920's house we used to live in ....
Congrats on the new gig!
And I think I know that wallpaper from the 1920's house we used to live in ....
Yummmy!
Love the picture of the cookies...however the perfection is a little off-putting. No crumbs, not broken cookies -- are you sure that you are mortal???
Ahhh...yeah. The old "we can change that carpet/kitchen/bathroom" line. An older, wiser woman once told me that her secret was to say "Great! I'll call the flooring installers and we'll move in once the work is done" Good one!
you gorgeous little pixie elf, you.
Yay! More Beck to read! And now I will not focus on the fact that I have never - not once - had warm cookies waiting for my daughter when she got off the bus.
This is soooo cool! Congrats on the new gig and great first post!
What your kids will remember isn't the whether the kitchen was big or perfect. They'll remember that YOU were there.
Hey this is awesome. I look forward to hearing your new voice develop over here. You rock.
Hey - great digs! I need some schoolin' on the kitchen arts, and you are the perfect person to do it. I will definitely be back! Especially, if you can show me how to cook things that don't come out of cans. :-)
Did I not leave a comment here yesterday? I thought I did. I must have left it on your other blog.
Great premiere post! I for one, can use all the help I can get in my kitchen. So blog on, sister. Can't wait to read more. And congrats!
Felicitations Beck! This is a cool site.
Felicitations Beck! This is a cool site.
It may not be your dream kitchen, but it sounds perfect to me, Beck. You're making wonderful memories for your kids in that little kitchen. And that photo made me realize I need a cool stainless steel breadbox like yours. :-)
This is so so great! Congrats on the new blog!
For the last two years I've been baking in a kitchen that is (no exaggeration here) roughly the size of a walk-in closet. Two square feet of counter space has to double for a prep area as well as space for the dish drainer (which means no clean-up as I cook), and the storage space has grown to include two bookshelves and a set of Rubbermaid drawers outside the kitchen, in addition to the three teeny built-in cupboards - but the experience has forced me to get awfully creative and I love it for that. I cook more in this kitchen than in any other place we've lived. It's great.
Beck you are coming to my rescue! I love your new gig and can't wait to finish catching up on what I have missed.
I love your new "place" here - took me a while to get over here, but how fun! I love the idea that this is the house of our children's childhoods - and the kitchen, for better or worse, that they will remember forever.