HOORAY for my little kitchen!

Hooray for me!  Rhonda Hetzel of Down to Earth blog in Australia was featuring a series of posts about "you, me, and the kitchen sink" over the last few months.  She selected MY little farmhouse kitchen at Sand Flat Farm to be featured today!  I sent some pictures in of mine not knowing if they'd ever have a chance at getting noticed - She's got thousands of readers.  I'm so excited!  You'll have to go see her post HERE!

I didn't know about it being featured until Becky at Hospitality Lane let me know! Thank you Becky!

Rhonda has such a neat blog - it's all about being self-sufficient and making do and gardening and thrifting and it's always so informative!  She is a wonderful resource for cooking, mending, green cleaning, slowing down, keeping poultry, and just plain ole being mindful and thankful. I've been keeping up with her blog for quite awhile now and she is my GO-TO blog when there's something I need to find out - anywhere from soap-making to composting & worms!

I have been thinking lately about doing another post about my little farmhouse and kitchen because when I first posted pictures, it was way back at the beginning of my blog over 2 years ago and only 1 or 2 people read it.

Here's the main farmhouse and I've used this pic for my banner photo several times. Will probably go back to this picture at some point.  The farm was handed down to us through my husband's family and we've had it for about 3 years now. It was in complete disrepair. Here's a picture of the farmhouse after we refinished

everything. This farm is about 78 acres. It used to have Indians here, then it became a rose field, next it grew crops, then the last few years, its been raising cattle as well as growing hay for sale.  The house is about 75 years old which is not ancient, but it was all hand- built, as well as a couple of the pieces of furniture - my pie safe and another little cabinet.

It's still needing the porch rails painted and some landscaping done. We had to get the house leveled, took out the gas and put in central AC/heat, re-wired and re-plumbed most of the house, had new floors put in, new appliances (all others were gas), pulled walls down and floors down completely due to some rot, I personally caulked, sanded, Kilz-ed, and painted the entire house with some help from my daughter especially, and my husband. Oh yeah, we had siding & new windows put on the house, too.

Couple more shots of the kitchen which I love so much and feel so old-fashioned cooking in. No dishwasher - just washing up (like Rhonda says)  I guess the microwave is not old-fashioned, but just play like you don't see that. Most of my dishes came from hand-me-downs from grandmothers and mom, and the other stuff came from garage sales, etc.

A little bit of the laundry room (which is quite large) and the back door in the pic above.

Here's my living room. Sorry about the lace curtains in the window - makes it hard to see. I've done alot more in the house since these pics were taken. Will have to update you sometime!

Here's mine and Tony's room. My dad welded two pieces of iron fence together to make the headboard, and I found that neat white floor lamp in the dumpster at my office!

This is the pink room - my daughter's. She did most of this room. We only have two bedrooms, so if you stay as a guest, you'll be surrounded by PINK!

Last shot for today. This was in the fall of '07. This little farm has been such a blessing directly from the Lord to my husband and myself. It just fell into our laps. We've tried buying 2-3 other places during the course of our marriage but they just didn't work out. Now I know why - the Lord had something even BETTER for us!  Just being there and working in the garden, spending time with family and friends cooking out or hanging out, whatever we're doing is relaxing and has de-stressed us so much. It's our little get-away! Our great plan is to move out there one of these days soon. We're just biding our time until our last kid is out of college. 

Again, Rhonda, thanks for the feature, and thank you all my bloggie friends for looking at my house again!  I'll have to show you a few more pics next time!  Hugs and kisses to you all!

I have some new pictures to show you that I took yesterday. These are of my kitchen and living room. We still have some decorating to do, but I'm pleased so far with the results. I wanted "old-timey" and I was thinking shabby chic, but it's looking a little more cottage-y with all the colors I'm using. I think my hubby likes it better than all the white and pink - plus I have him and two sons that are definitely not going to try to go the extra mile to keep white and pink spotlessly clean! So, I think this will work for us.

I'm very proud of my kitchen cabinets - we had to work with what was there and were not going to go in and do new cabinets. Check out my $4 TV cabinet. It was falling apart, got it at a garage sale. I think the lady would have paid me to take it off her property. My dad reinforced some of the loose boards and I painted it pale yellow. It was a nasty dirty white - worse than shabby chic white. I am still looking for a big cupboard to put my TV/video equipment in, but until I find it, this is going to work great. The top opens down to hold my DVD player and videos, and the bottom is spacious and Dad's going to put an extra shelf in there. I can store DVD's, my stereo equipment, quilts, books, whatever. I'm not real crazy about the TV being out in the open right now, but I'll have to put up with it for the time being. Sorry about the light coming in the windows. The sun was streaming in and it turned out really bright. I'll have to take a morning or night photo of the living room. It has lacey balloon curtains and it's really pretty with the sun coming in through the windows, but it's hard to see in a photo.

Did you notice my cabinet hardware? Soup Spoons! Aren't they cute??? I found a lady at Canton that has tons of silverplate and silverware mismatched stuff and bought them for $3 apiece which is cheaper than hardware at Lowe's or a home deco store. That old pie safe was built by the same old great uncle that built the house. It moved around quite a bit after he died, but we had in our other home and moved it back out here. It's neat that it wound up back where it started out!

My dining table is an old chippy glass-topped outdoor table and chairs which I recovered the seats on. All the old mismatched china came from grandparents, estate sales, etc. All my big bowls were handed down to me as well as old linens. My coffee table in the living room was from a garage sale - it used to be a dining table that my father in law got at a garage sale and he cut the pedestal down and put the feet back on it and painted it at least 30 years ago. Fits right in. I'm loving working on my cottage!

You know, I don't believe in ghosts, but old houses have lots of creaks and bumps. But I always have a comfortable feeling in the house. The folks that built and lived in the it - relatives of my husband and his dad - I think about them and their lives. I met the old uncle a couple of times many years ago - he was nearly 100 when he died. I fancy that somehow they'd be proud of what we've done with this old house and how it happy it makes us. So, Uncle Claude, if you're there, hope you'll like what we're doing - you're welcome anytime!

I'll show you more pictures later. Gotta get to work now!