Winter sunshine

It's winter down-under in New Zealand. The last week has produced gale force winds, horizontal rain and a sudden drop in temperature that sent us running for our winter woolies. Today the clouds and rain departed and the winter sunshine returned. It seems such a fragile and fleeting thing, that sunshine, and somehow all the more delightful because of its fragility. Outside we went, past the farmers market full of shoppers, past the cafes full of people drinking coffee and breakfasting, down onto the beach. The dog was apoplectic with joy, running around in circles chasing her tail and anything else that moved. The children laughed and ran barefoot on the sand. I walked and breathed in the sun-warmed air and thought about how blessed I am.

Amazing how a bit of sun can reinvigorate! So while the great cull gets underway, I thought I would share a recent bit of kitchen DIY. When we remodelled our living space downstairs, opening up the multiple tiny rooms to make a larger open plan area that would feed out o the deck and garden, the old kitchen no longer fit. There wasn't money in the budget for a brand new kitchen, so we bought a kitchen for removal off the Internet for next to nothing. Just bare in mind that cheap second hand kitchen = functional but ugly. I've struggled along for quite a while with this unattractive and uninspiring kitchen with inadequate storage space. Most of my crockery and pantry items lived on two mismatched bookcases against the south wall. Then one day while cruising Pinterest, I found this (scroll down 5th to last picture), pinned by The Vintage Wren. It was exactly right. A bit vintage, lots of glass and white, and lots of orderliness...perfect.
"Quick" I said to The Bloke, "we're off to Bunnings". Two weekends later the bookshelves are gone, replaced by ...

while there is a bit left to complete it, the improvement both practically and visually is vast. Now back to the culling...