It's the little things

This week I did two mini updates in my kitchen. I love it when little updates make a big impact. In this case one update made a big impact and the other one was more for my own benefit. Since this home was built in 1925 it has a few little cute features that don't come in newer homes. One such feature is a little shelf built into the kitchen cabinets.

While I like this little shelf I'm never been truly sure what to do with it. At first I just piled little crap on it.

Cute shelf, cute stuff, and yet... still bland. Then I had an idea, what if I paint the background of the shelf? That could be cool, right? I could paint it a great accent color and then do some other stuff, but I thought a pattern would look cooler than a solid color. But painting a pattern is hard so I thought what about fabric? I dug through my scrap fabric and found a piece that was perfectly sized. Next, I got some scrap cardboard and cut it to the size of the back of the shelf, then I wrapped the fabric around it, and voila!

This piece of fabric is from the IKEA 'As Is' section for only fifty cents. I really like the fabric background but the styling is a little random in this shot. This fabric stayed up for the past few months but then I slowly got tired of it. Which is just fine because it's just fabric wrapped around cardboard shoved into a shelf so I just took it down. I went through my scraps of fabric again and found another one that I liked and wrapped that around the cardboard and put it up.

I like this fabric a lot better (it's also from IKEA and only $0.50). The black color grounds the shelf. The styling is getting better but it's still a little amateur. Don't worry I'll keep working on it :) Yay, for $0.50 updates! On to the next update...

Do you notice anything weird in this picture? No? Well, that's because this next update is really only for me. If you look closely at the bottom of the blinds you may notice that they are stacked about five inches high... this has annoyed me for months. I bought standard sized blinds because that is all I can afford and while they fit the width of the window, the length was all kinds of wrong. First of all the windows in the kitchen are casement windows which means they are on hinges and the open up like this (Source):

Why wouldn't I just show you a picture of my actual windows opening up? Because they are painted shut. Yeah, I know super lame. I hope to some day get them un-painted (however one does that) because that would be cool but for now they are shut for good. Anyway, back to the topic at hand, the blinds. I replaced the vinyl blinds that came with the house because they were disgusting. I picked these faux wood white blinds. I really like the blinds except for the fact that they are way too long. And while this bothered me I had no idea what to do about it. That is, until I read this blog entry about how to shorten them. I mean seriously, saying that this blew my mind is an understatement. I was so excited! There weren't really directions on how to do it but I didn't really care I just started cutting crap because I like to life on the edge like that.

I lowered the blinds all the way and cut the strings between the bottom piece and the last slat. Then I pulled out all the slats I didn't want anymore, cut the strings below the last slat, and tied them back together.

It looks so much better! I highly doubt anyone besides me would ever notice the difference, but it makes me so happy! Even better? This update only took about ten minutes and cost me zero dollars :)