Om Nom Nom

As promised I'm back with another development in the ever growing additions of RED in our kitchen.  I recently threw a "Pinterest Party," a.k.a. an excuse to eat, drink and do crafty projects with friends.  I worked on a few projects, but I'm here to talk about one in particular, being how I added some wordy fun to our kitchen.  My "Pintspiration" came from a few places like this:

credit to The Crafty Sparrow

I liked the idea of graphic letters in a space, especially in the kitchen.  My hang up came when I thought about what word(s) to feature. I'm not the type to go with something traditional like the above "eat," or "food," or "love." Those just felt too.. expected. But eventually I figured it out (and jumped for joy when Phil approved)...

Yes, you read that right. Our kitchen now says "Om nom nom." Hopefully most of you reading this understand what this means, because after attempting to explain what "om nom nom" means to my parents, I realized it is very hard to define.

The project itself was very cheap and easy to do. I picked up the cardboard letters from Hobby Lobby for $2.50 a piece.  We knew right away we wanted to put them above the cabinets (we had been wanting to fill that space with something for a while, but had never quite figured out the right thing). We grappled for a while on what to do with them, color-wise. The original idea was to do a faux-metal treatment with tin foil and black paint in hopes it would like like rustic tin.  But after the knife block went red, and the red frame came into the kitchen I realized it would be awesome if the letters, too, were red.  And in another stroke of luck, Phil approved of red letters as well (Phil tends to not like most of my more quirky ideas so I was truly shocked when he OK'd this project).  So during my Pinterest Party I (with the help of my friend Jo), painted these bad boys red, again using more of the free paint provided by my friend Megan's poor judgement.  Making the total cost $20.

Isn't it fabulous how the red all ties together now? It looks purposeful, and as if we now have a consistent accent color happening.  Six months ago I never would have guessed red would be a prominent color in our blue and brown kitchen, but now that it is, I'm in love.

Lesson(s) Learned: Don't be afraid to show your personality in your house. While some people might find the "om nom nom" to be silly or stupid or just plain weird, I love it and it really shows our personality.  And I love that every time someone comes into our kitchen we get some hearty chuckles bouncing around the room.  And unless you are a Bluth and are living in a model home, there's really no one to please but yourself. So just do whatever makes you smile. And be happy with that.

Anyone else taking quirky risks in their house? How do you guys show your personality through your decor?

Seeing Red

Wow feels like forever since I've posted anything. I blame the holidays and the fact that we've been mid-project since December so there just hasn't been a whole lot of anything worth sharing (we are working on completely redecorating our master bedroom and bathroom, and it's been a months-long process). But today I wanted to share some pictures of a super simple, easy update in our kitchen that makes me super happy.

See, we've had this ugly knife-block for years.

I never really enjoyed the way it looked, espeically in our newly updated kitchen that makes the light wood stand out like a sore thumb (a really boring, sore thumb), but also never thought twice about doing anything with it or to it until Pinterest gave me a lightbulb moment... PAINT IT. Duh. After sufficiently face-palming over the fact that I had never thought of that on my own, I got to work thinking about what color to make that bad boy.  And in a risky move I went with....

RED.  Red definitely did not come to mind initially as a possible color choice.  My initial thoughts were colors that would be super matchy-matchy with the blue and brown tones. I was thinking deep, warm jewel tones like a nice forest green or eggplant purple.  Those would have been nice too, but also rather predictable and JCPenny-esque.  Red came to me as an idea after I randomly happened to notice the small pops of red that were already in place in the kitchen and living room...

My brain tends to yell 'MERICA everytime I think of red and blue together, which is partially why I never thought of red in the first place, but I realized that the lighter, non-'MERICA shade of blue in the kitchen and living room did not paint quite as patriotric of a picture when paired with the red as I had feared. Rather, it's a super fun, funky and unexpected pop of color in an otherwise low-key space.  I love it. Particularly because it then inspired this...

This came to be in a really random way.  As you saw above, the umbrella picture was always there (and played a big role in motivating me to go red with the knife block).  Then, while hunting through a basket of stuff in our yet-to-be-unpacked "office," I found that boat print, which is actually a card Phil got me for our anniversary last year.  I thought it was an awesome card and noticed immediately that the red flags matched the red umbrella almost perfectly.  Another lightbulb went off in my head (my head was getting pretty bright by now), and I knew it needed to join the umbrella picture in the kitchen.  Initially I stuck it on the wall unframed, but quickly realized that looked way too random and unfinished. Then yet another lightbulb went off (you might want to grab your sunglasses at this point) and I remembered we had a gorgeous red frame sitting unused in the basement.  Bada bing bada boom, we now have even more awesomely funky red pops in the kitchen that make the knife block seem totally not random and it all just makes sense now. And I love it! Oh and in addition to the sentiment of the boat card Phil got me, that umbrella picture is very sentimental as well.  Phil bought me that print when he visited Paris with his family a looong time ago, back before we were even dating (back during the time when we were really good friends, and knew we were head over heels in love with each other, but kept fervently denying it to ourselves. And each other. And our friends. And our significant others at the time. Yikes. Let's not go there).  So not only does the red = super funky and awesome color pop, but that little corner of the kitchen is now also full of sentimentality and warm fuzzy feelings of love.

See how well the red ties together now? Now if only I had some less boring, fugly kitchen towels. It's on the to-do list, I promise.

So there you have it. This update cost me a whopping $0, given that we already owned the frame and the card and the knife block.  The red paint was lovingly offered up by my friend Megan who made the mistake of buying a gallon of paint for her fully-windowed french door (and therefore had ample leftovers to share). 

Lesson(s) Learned: Don't be afraid to go bold with colors! Especially in a more neutral space, unexpected color pops can turn your place from drab and nothing special to super unique and fun and YOU.  And as with most house projects, patience is a virtue.  Take some time between your lightbulb moment and actually executing a project... you never know what kind of awesome inspiration might come your way during that period of time!

This post reminded me that I haven't shared the befores and afters of our kitchen yet! You've seen some hints of the "after," but I'll have to show you the before as soon as our kitchen is clean enough that I can take some more pictures of it. Don't hold your breath.... but I do have yet another chapter in the Book of Red to share very soon. Get excited.