You can hang your tea towels on bull clips, over-the-cabinet bars, or tucked into the refrigerator door handle. But here's another super simple idea if you have a little bit of free wall space: apply a strip of double-sided tape to the back of wooden clothespins, stick 'em on the wall, and clip your towels in. More

How charming is this teaspoon wallpaper? Designed by Studio Ditte, the wallpaper "tells a tale of elegant spoons, forks for posh cakes and old keys of forgotten rooms." From far away it looks just like an interesting, colorful pattern, but up close you can see the intricate spoon and fork designs. A little shabby chic, but oh so pretty. See a close-up photo below: More

I've explained our big kitchen project, shown you the demolition, and shared our financing, and now it's time to get down to business. The bones of a kitchen are the cabinets and their layout, and we knew from the get-go that we wanted to use IKEA's cabinet system. Here are some things we learned along the way. More

I've been sharing my kitchen renovation with you (sorry for the unexpected hiatus last week!). Now, before I let you in on the IKEA plans and the nitty-gritty of the reno itself, let's talk money. It's the giant stompin' elephant in the room when planning a kitchen renovation. Money is also a fast trigger to emotions and judgment, so it makes me a bit nervous to talk about it. There are so many different approaches to improving one's home, and everyone has a different set of priorities in how money fits into that.

Having said all that, the goals of this post are to open up, as much as I can, how my husband and I thought about investing in our home project, and how we made it happen, as well as why I called it "budget luxe." For us, it all came down to this wonderful little thing called a construction loan. (And if you're just dying for a pictorial update, I'm illustrating this post with photos of our kitchen addition going up!) More

Multi-purpose wire organizers are cheap and easy to come by. You may even have one right now sitting on your desk or holding up books in your child's room. This idea brings that organizer into the kitchen and turns it on its head... well, on its side, actually. More

We love being on the front end of a long 3-day weekend. Do you have plans for Monday? Any projects you're going to finally tackle? If cleaning and organizing your pantry is on the list, allow us to inspire you: could this pantry you see here be any more awesome? It's actually a relatively small space, but every inch is accounted for and optimized, from the labeled containers to the neatly lined-up flour on the bottom shelf. A place for everything and everything in its place. More

A vase of flowers is such a lovely thing — in the kitchen, on the dining room table. Maybe you cut your own flowers every week, or maybe you only see them on special occasions (like today!). Either way, here are 10 lovely vases for whenever fresh flowers make their way into your home: More

A kitchen, in spray paint.

At some point, when planning a kitchen renovation, you need to lift your head out of the daze of scrolling Pinterest, and the stacks of ELLE Decor UK and Dwell and actually, you know, plan your kitchen. I've told you all about buying a house, plunging into renovations, and tearing down plaster by the bucketful. Now, back to the kitchen itself — how in the world does one go about planning a kitchen renovation? How do you actually make decisions? What to put where, how many drawers and cabinets, where to install the sink? Well, I don't know how other people make these sorts of rather scary decisions — I can only tell you how we did. More

Last week I explained the big renovation and kitchen project we took on last year, and I showed you lots of pretty pictures of kitchens that inspired me. But in renovation, before a kitchen gets better, it usually gets worse. Much, much worse.

Want to see what's involved with pulling apart an old house to put in a new kitchen? If you've ever thought about tearing out a wall, brace yourself — let me show you what's it like. More

Yesterday I showed you the first stages of my home renovation and kitchen plans. Today I am going to take a step back and show you some of the inspiration I had filed away for my someday-future-kitchen, the pictures and thoughts that led us to the kitchen we built. Why have an open kitchen? What were the non-negotiables in the design? Read on for the scoop! More