A gift for my family

Last night at about 10:00pm, I had a serge of energy and wanted to give my family a gift. It took me till midnight but I had a good night sleep from it! Thanks to the inspiration of Tammy's blog and a friend who had just moved to the base and showed how she cared for her family by making their house on the base a home.

I think this gift for my family will last a bit longer as when they saw it this morning, they all yelled: "Wow! Mom! Thank you for a clean kitchen, can we keep it like this 'forever!'?"

Let's just say, we will give it a try!

Here are the pictures I took. Hope you enjoy them!

I cleaned up the kitchen! for the hundredth time, maybe...? This time, though, besides cleaning it, I also implemented a new "glass of the day central". I love my kitchen window, I like washing dishes and can enjoy the mountain view every now and then.


On my "rolling" counter top, I am defrosting next week's meat for a little while and then putting
them in the fridge to let them thaw completely. Tomorrow is my main cooking day. Can't wait!


On the left side of the horse shoe kitchen counter, I have my phone center and my new "glass of the day central", the foil package is tonight's dinner - Turkey meatloaf - being defrosted and my beloved Kitchen Aid Mixer - correction: My daughter's beloved Kitchen Aid Mixer. She is the cookie baker here at our home. :) Another thing, no more cookbooks here! The counter looks so much roomier.

My monthly menu plan is posted in front of the cabinet door. I use Post-it notes for things I need to shop for. My control journal earned its place on this counter. :)

Before this "glass of the day central", we would wash so many cups and glasses because no one remembered where they put their glasses! I was so tired of washing over ten glasses every day just because we can't remember... I was going to create some coasters with my scrapbooking papers and laminate them, but my dear husband REMEMBERED the glass coasters and suggested using them to save me the trip (he thought of it this morning when he saw me using jar lids for the system)! Thank you, honey, that was a great suggestion and they do look much better. Peter doesn't have one as it was a set of four coasters. I will look for something similar for him later, but I don't think we will be confused as whose sippy cup it belongs to. LOL.

I got this set of glass coasters for Christmas a few years back from my daughter-in-law. I couldn't put them out in the living area due to Peter's curious little hands. :) But they are perfect here! Robert drew that picture for me.

You can put pictures in them. This solved the problem we've been having - missing/misplaced "glass of the day".

I have many of these cheerful red plastic tumblers and since I need drawer space and, again, trying to keep Peter from getting to the knives and tools that I use frequently, I thought I will put them in these plastic tumblers and see how I like them. I have used the first two for about a month now holding cutting knives and steak knives and I love it! It is convenient and all I need to do is to rinse the tumblers every few days. Works for me!

This was where it all started. I was so sick and tired of the counter mess. I wanted to reclaim my counter and my sanity.

Last night's cleaning wasn't the first time I cleaned off the counter but the only time everyone is agreeing to do their parts in keeping the counter clean and neat from now on. The difference between this pic and the third pic is that I got rid of the cookbooks on the counter. Since I plan my monthly menu at my "office" cabinet, I now store the most used cookbook there. I still keep the Control Journal on the counter, though.