home fashion: Kitchen Updates & Hydrangea Love

Like many of you, our kitchen is grand central station. It's one of my favorite rooms in the house because it has so much great storage, lots of natural light, and pretty fixtures and counters. I love to keep fresh flowers in the kitchen and hydrangeas are a beautiful treat. Today I'm sharing this bunch of blue, green, and white hydrangeas to brighten your Monday.

I mentioned that our kitchen gets a lot of natural light. Maybe too much. We have blinds but they look kind of "unfinished" since our living room and breakfast room have drapes. So, I finally decided to add roman shades to the kitchen windows and chose a fabric from Calico Corners that should arrive soon.

I'm going to sew them myself, but make them fixed, so hopefully, they turn out. I think the shades will soften the windows and add a bit of color to the room- I chose a blue and white Ikat. I considered adding wooden shades, but after bringing some home to see in the space, decided against it. I think the fabric will look better.

And, inspired by Emily A. Clark, over the weekend I painted the inside of our open kitchen cabinets dark gray. It looks so much better, I can't believe I didn't paint them sooner. The shelves still need to be styled and I'll be adding white ceramic pitchers, like the one below. I found a couple at Homegoods for just $10, but I need a few more.

Doesn't the pitcher look pretty holding the hydrangeas? I often forget that flowers don't have to go in traditional vases- pitchers, mason jars, and cups make beautiful vessels for flowers. Here, I had to use floral wire to hold the stems together more tightly so they stayed bunched up.

I'll be sharing the roman shades and kitchen cabinets with you soon.

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Also, I'm super excited to be taking James to hang out with my girl Cassie (Hi Sugarplum) and her kids in Galveston this week. Cassie has become a wonderfully close friend and I really appreciate her so much. She is the real deal. Her kids are just awesome and they got along great with my son- don't you just love when that happens?! Her daughter is seriously adorable and kept picking up James and holding him like a baby doll- (he didn't mind, in fact, he enjoyed it:) Can you believe her son is almost as tall as me??!! He's only 11! And when they left our house he said, "Thanks for having us over!" So sweet . . .