My New Kitchen...IN LOVE!!!

So...I got a brand new kitchen!!!  WOO HOO!!!  I'm completely in love with it too...it's wonderful!  However, the reason why we wound up re-doing our kitchen was a smidge irritating.  I had been noticing for several months that our oven wasn't cooking things right.  It would take an extra 30-45 minutes to cook most things...which was no bueno in my book.  I cook dinner once or twice a week...enough for a night or two of leftovers so that we have yummy dinner every night of the week.  So, this whole extra time for cooking thing was really getting frustrating.  One of the reasons is simply because I don't have a lot of extra time to wait on food to cook.  With my commute to and from work, I'm on a time crunch to have dinner ready by a decent time...my tummy tells me so!  Plus, I don't like to have other people (my hubby, family, or friends) waiting on me to have dinner on the table when it should have already been there 30-45 minutes prior.  I really started noticing the oven right around Thanksgiving...great timing right?!?!?  I was baking the pies the day before so that I could free up a little more time the day I was cooking the big meal, and the pies just wouldn't cook.  I'm pretty sure they cooked double the amount of time required...so they were in the oven for almost two hours...ridiculous!  Well, we made it through Thanksgiving with the oven still working, which was a huge relief.  But, that very next week is when disaster struck.  I was making brownies for a luncheon at work and Cody and I are in the kitchen and we hear this loud "POP!"  We both look at each other trying to figure out what it was when I turned around and saw this red glow coming from the oven...yikes!  Well...I have no clue what to do.  So, I do the smart thing and open the oven door.  NOT...that was so dumb of me!  Thank goodness we have friends who are firefighters!!!  But, we didn't have to call them...thank goodness!  As soon as I opened the door Cody flew up behind me and shut the door and turned off the oven.  Praise the Lord I married a smart man!  He's many other things of course...but that night I was extra thankful for his smartness!  He told me that the oxygen from the air could cause a fire to start if I opened the door where a potential fire was...duh!  How did I not know this?!?!?  So, now I have this new bit of information...but brownies that need to be cooked and our oven is...well dead.  Thank goodness my parents are close...otherwise I would have had to come to school empty handed...and that's no good for anyone!

Now that we realize we have to buy a new oven, we just decide to break down and buy a new microwave and refrigerator while we're at it.  We had already bought a new dishwasher last February...so we didn't have to worry about that.  When we bought our house, we knew the appliances and kitchen were something that we wanted to change and update...but we just thought we would do it on our time...but our appliances had other ideas!  After work one day, we went into Sears and got an amazing deal on some awesome Kenmore stainless steal appliances.  We went in the Monday right after Thanksgiving and the guy that helped us gave us the black Friday prices...amazing!  We got a convection/convention stove, a french door fridge with the freezer on the bottom, and a microwave that can also be a mini oven if need be.  The dishwasher is awesome too...also Kenmore...but I've been using that for about a year now!  Once we realized we were getting new appliances, we knew we had to get new counters and a back splash as well.  I know that in most cases you don't HAVE to do these things, but for us, we did.  See, when the builders built our house, they put in a stove that was a built in.  Meaning, when it went out, we had to cut part of the counters off on the sides and part of the cabinet off on the bottom for the new one to go in...since it was a slide in...not a built in.  What's crazy is that these built in ovens cost twice as much as a regular oven...even more than the oven we got that can be either convection or convention.  We thought this was crazy...to spend twice as much on a oven and not get one that's as nice as the one we got.  So, we made a phone call to Encounters to give us an estimate on granite and an Austin stone back splash.

They came out and were so nice and so helpful...and made our kitchen look like it's from a magazine!  Cody and I had so much fun picking out the granite and talking about what it would all look like when it was done.  When we were picking out the granite and stone, we also decided to have them do the area under our bar where the bar stools are.  There are scuff marks and such from when people sit at the bar and there shoes scrap on the paint...so we thought if we put the Austin stone there too...that problem would be solved.  After picking everything out, we scheduled a time for them to come out and install everything.  Our appliances had already arrived...I guess we had had them about a week before the guys came and installed the granite and back splash.  They came on a Monday and were finished by Thursday...and it was perfect timing!  They finished getting everything done and cleaned up the day before I was off for Christmas break!  So, I was able to have a brand new kitchen with working appliances so that I could cook Christmas dinner and not have to panic that something was going to go out.  I spend a lot of time in our kitchen and Cody was so sweet to be the one to suggest that it was time to have it re-done.  He also really loves the way it looks...he comments on it quite frequently!  Having the kitchen be updated makes our house just feel more like us.  We've been there almost four years and little by little we've updated it and made it be just perfect for our style and how we like things.  I feel so blessed to be able to have a home that I come home to everyday to the little family that I love so much.  God has truly blessed us in so many ways and I am so thankful for the life that He has given me...I couldn't be happier!!!  Now...I'm off to cook something delicious in my shiny new kitchen :-)