The Heart of the House

To me, the heart of the house is in the kitchen.  I enjoy cooking and love to eat, so that is where I spend most of my time.  Even when I'm not cooking, I'm hanging out in the breakfast nook by the kitchen, which is a great place to get work done.  When we did our house search, the kitchen was my area of concern.  There were obviously other factors I looked at, but the kitchen had the highest priority.  While our kitchen is not huge, it is just the right size for my culinary projects as well as all the gadgets needed in order to be ready for any food challenge.

This is the view beginning to the right of the kitchen entrance.  We have a double oven and gas stove, which were both musts for me.  Also, our fridge is awesome, which is all thanks to hubby.

You can see the archway as you enter into the kitchen that mirrors the archway from the living room into the dining room.  That is the laundry room beyond the smaller archway.

The farmer's style sink is so beautiful and goes well with the vintage touches in the house.  A window allows light to stream in.

This counter is just to your left as you enter the kitchen from the dining room.  The coffee bar in the dining room has cleared up much needed space for prepping food.  Though, tonight is just take out... that's what the boxes on the counter are.

Our laundry room is hidden in these cabinets.  The front-load washer and dryer hidden inside allow us to be energy efficient and give us even more cabinet and counter space for folding.

Although the kitchen is the heart of the house for me, hubby feels that the backyard is the heart of the home.  He loves being outside, though Dallas summer takes a little more courage to brave the heat.  We have outdoor couches set up under a pergola with a built-in fan, which helps us fully appreciate our garden without getting scorched.  Hubby spent a large chunk of last weekend weeding and sprucing up the backyard, which was a step in the right direction.  This fall will definitely see some fun garden parties and maybe some fire pit s'mores in the winter.  

Here is a view of the backyard from our backdoor.  The couches and such are to the left outside of the picture.  The trellis in the back leads to what I call our secret garden.  The building you see next to the trellis is our detached garage.

 Now you can see the corner of one couch and the door to the garage.

This is our side yard, which is along the side of our house (duh).  The door you see at the end, leads to our study.

This is the current state of our secret garden.  The side yard looked like this last week, so hubby did an impressive job with that.  This may be the next project.

The real heart of our home are our two pooches... aren't they the cutest?

Nooks and Crannies

One of our new home's selling points was the breakfast nook.  It is so cute and cozy with sunlight that streams in through the windows.  Originally, I thought it was a little unnecessary considering that we already had a dining room table and that most of the time we just ate at the coffee table in front of the TV.  Now that we are in the house, we actually use our breakfast nook for breakfast and our dining room for dinner (we still eat lunch at the coffee table). 

It was a bit tricky to get it all in one shot.  There is a shelf above the window that used to hold vintage coffee pots in the previous owner's home.  We're not sure what we will put up there yet.

The breakfast nook is located in the room beyond the dining room just before you enter the kitchen.  Hubby and the dogs will hang out in the breakfast nook and talk to me while I cook.  Hubby's mom and pops were in town this weekend, and I made a pancake and bacon feast that we ate in the breakfast nook.  Although we don't have a counter with bar stools (a feature I really like), the breakfast nook allows for people to be part of the cooking process without being directly in the kitchen. 

We've hung my cutest aprons up on the wall.

Just across from the breakfast nook is a small butler's pantry where we've put our wine glasses and server-ware.  Here again there are older influences that came from the original house.  The etched mirrored cabinet panels are beautiful and give a nod to the mirror design in the master bedroom.  My little sister gave us the Pacifico sign that appears above the cabinets.  Even without having seen the house, she gave us such a thoughtful gift that blends flawlessly with the house's style.

Maui decided she wanted to be in the picture.


 

Just because we love them, a picture of the puppies sitting outside our bedroom.

And a video of Lanai (affectionately called Little Leni) dancing

Time to dine

The tour of our new house continues.  Decorating has been a slow process with busy schedules, but hopefully I will have artsy projects to update you on later in the summer.  For now, the tour takes us to the dining room.  We are using much more of our dining room now than we did before, which is wonderful.  The most fun part of the dining room is the coffee bar we have set up.  Hubby loves coffee and has been collecting mugs from different places he has visited.  As a way to show off his love of coffee and keep the kitchen counters and cabinets a little clearer, we set up a coffee bar to house all of our coffee machines and accessories. 

The dining room is located just past the living room through a really pretty archway

There are windows that line one wall of the dining room letting in great natural light... that's our wine fridge in the corner

This is the coffee bar, my favorite part of the dining room... our plan is to add paintings/prints above the mugs either in a coffee theme or a travel theme

 And because I think they are adorable, a picture of our pups as they sit here with me