Healthy Life ~ My Kitchen & Dining Room

Ok, so I am slightly off track with this post today.

But seriously....a healthy life does start in the kitchen some days :)

Just go with it will ya!!

Today I am linking up with Andrea @ Momfessionals for her "Come On In" series.

It is all about the kitchen and dining room today!

I am reversing the order of those two rooms today.

Again, just go with it!

We have lived in our house for almost 8 years and we are still slowly upgrading each room to our liking.

The very first room that I had to update was our dining room!

No time to dig out before photos and scan them, but here is what I found on the internet to give you an idea...

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Mix those two together and add lots of gold/brass fixtures and you have one house built in the early 1980's!

It all had to go, and fast!

We immediately tore down all the wallpaper and painted the walls a glorious shade of red.

I liked the idea of the chair rail, but wanted to change it up to make it more modern so we went with a flat black wooden border around the room.

Shortly before X was born we updated our old hand-me-down dining room set to this Amish built table and chairs.

We had them make the corner hutches as well.

We updated the old brass light fixture with one that was much more "us" :)

This is one of my favorite rooms of the house just for the color alone!

It is on the small side and our ceilings are pretty low (8ft tops!), 

but I just love having a formal dining room.

We have used it so much since X was born!

The unused highchair that needs to be put into storage.

My brother gave me the photo above for an engagement gift before we even lived in this house. 

Sorry for the flash right in the middle of it :(

Now onto the kitchen!

No time to scan those old photos still, but here are some gems I found online that will give you a good idea of the 80's look we had.

Originally our house had yellowish-beige counter tops, white/cream appliances, yellowish-brown cabinets, and the worst fluorescent lighting you have ever seen!

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Our lighting was more angled and had a really yellow tone to it.

We painted the cabinets white and put on new hardware (hard to see but they are iron twigs), updated to all black appliances, added a larger sink, removed the old lighting and had overhead lighting added, and painted the cream walls a great gray shade.

Here is the kitchen before the new counter tops...

And here is the kitchen after the counter tops were installed.

I LOVE them!

And here is what the kitchen looks like today....

Basketball hoop in the kitchen is completely normal ;)

We replaced all the old doors on the first floor with heavier doors and stained them to match the floors.

Those doors used to be an old coat closet (in the kitchen? yes!),

but we added shelves and made it into a huge pantry :)

 Fingerprints all over the fridge...just keepin' it real people!

And counter tops full of cards, cars, sippy cups, and watermelon that needs cut.

Much more lived in than those photos above! lol!

Our kitchen is the center of the house.

Our family room flows into it, you enter the kitchen from the garage, the laundry room is right off of it, and then it flows into the dining room, and small front hallway.

After looking at these photos I realize I need some color in that kitchen!
And I don't mean more toys with color! lol!

Kitchen Color: Seine from Valspar at Lowe's

Thanks for stopping by and joining me on a tour of my dining room and kitchen :)