Show and Tell Tuesday: Favorite Room

It's Show and Tell Tuesday with Andrea and today's theme is show us your favorite room!

Billions of people own their own homes and can upgrade and design however they choose.  Other people have even built their own homes and have customized exactly what they want.  Both of those options are awesome but living in NYC and not being a billionaire immediately throws those choices in the garbage.

When you live in an apartment, in any city, but especially in Manhattan or Brooklyn you basically get what you get and you're stuck with it.  Before marrying Dan, I lived in a small studio apartment for five years.  It was a great little first home for me and I fit snuggly inside but it was TINY.  My bed was basically in the kitchen.  This was my kitchen:

That's right, all you ladies out there complaining about small kitchens - try cooking on a half size stove with only a 12 inch square piece of counter top.  In fact, that photo is more accurately described as my entire apartment.  Anyways...

When Dan and I moved into our current apartment one of the criteria while searching was it had to have a full sized stove and ideally a bit more counter space.  What we ended up getting was way more than we expected. 

It's not perfect.  It's not customized.  It's got weird angles and uneven spaces and parts of it really annoy me, but this girl knows a good deal when she sees one and this kitchen is it.  It's about making the most of what you've got.

I would have been happy with just the cabinets/sink/stove/fridge area but this kitchen has a bonus eat-in area!  We have a cute two-seater table plus room for a narrow counter height table with stools.  I use this for my kitchenaid and extra appliance space.

We hung a shelf for cookbook storage and apron hooks and Dan hung a small chalkboard on the blank wall. I've got some fun "us" decor and a custom feltie art from Mandy above the table. 

We've got plenty of cabinets for food storage and dishes and a bonus dishwasher which is a huge luxury in NYC apartments.  We even make use of the space above the cabinets for more storage. 

That window looks out onto a fire escape so usually the shade is down but there is still a ton of light that comes through the shade and in the fall pretty shadows of the leaves are cast inside.  

This little space certainly isn't my dream kitchen and there are many things I wish I could change about it but overall it works for us and having experience in a tiny kitchen makes all the more grateful. Being able to cook more than one thing at once is so nice and so that's why the kitchen is my favorite in this apartment. 

One thing I'm really trying to work on is being happy with what I have and making it our own.  With blogs, Instagram, and all other forms of social media it is super easy to get down when you see something or someone who "has it better."   Money can certainly buy you a fancy kitchen but you can't take that fancy kitchen with you in the end and so I'm working on being happy with what I have. 

I ordered some cute coordinating fabrics last week and if they ever arrive I'll be making a matching table cloth and runner for the table.  Stay tuned!  And thanks for stopping by our blog.