Show Us Where You Live Friday...

Kelly over at Kelly's Korner is doing a virtual home tour and today was kitchen's and I decided to participate as the kitchen is my favorite part of the home as I love to cook and bake. We unfortunately live in a rental home as we are not sure how long we will end up living in Tyler, so I had to do my best in order to make the kitchen my own. If this was a home we bought oh how different it would be!

We will start with the main portion of the kitchen. This is looking in from the breakfast area.

As you can see, we have way to much clutter on the counter tops, but there just is not enough cabinent space for everything we have. It is small but it lets me do what needs to be done in the kitchen!

Here is our breakfast area. The table is a hand me down from Keith's parents, but it works perfect!
Here is my favorite thing in my kitchen/breakfast area. My Baker's Rack! My mom bought this for me when we moved here and I just love it. I love being able to display my accent peices to my dishes, and it also allows a little more storage space!!!
We have two sets of serving dishes. The set that goes with my everyday dishes which are done by Tracy Porter and is her Octavia Hill line (which has been discontinued which I discussed here). The second is a LA themed set, which I am still working on the peices too! It is hard to find as it is only sold in specialty sites or on the tabasco.com website.

Here is some artwork that is on our walls. I love the fleur de lis as you can tell... that's the LA in me!!
And here is a close-up of our dishes. The red one and the print are the Tracy Porter ones, the green accent plates I added and are from JC Penney's. They had to be added as I only bought 8 salad plates in the red and since they are discontinued and I have 12 of almost everything else, it really makes it a little difficult to serve 10 people salads!!! Next time I will know better!

And that is where we live... well more like where I live, Keith really only comes in to find food and doesn't spend nearly as much time in the kitchen as I do! Thanks for visiting!

Cooking Class and Octavia Hill

Well last night I went to a cooking class put on by the parks and recreation department in Tyler and just loved it! The theme was light and healthy cooking and the guest chef was the head of Brookshire's Catering and she was just great! We made some wonderful receipes and I will eventually share my 2 favorite's with you, but I still have to type them up! The chef was really focusing on showing us how to use fresh herbs and fresh veggies, and the combinations that were put together were just great! I am SOOO not a lemon fan, so I never cook with it and many of the receipes had lemon juice or zest in them and I couldn't even tell. Makes me really start to think about trying some new flavors in my cooking. I will definitely start buying more fresh herbs to put in my cooking!


So, the pattern that I have for my daily dishes has been discontinued and I have been looking for a few of the serving peices that I am missing and I am starting to come across them. I found these 2 on Ebay, but now I just have to find someone to buy them for me! Unfortunately the casserole is 65 bucks already!

Eventually I will find them again and buy them all! I am still missing those 2, the rectangular baker with the stand, and the 3 part relish tray. So if anyone knows where I can find peices of the Tracy Porter Octavia Hill Garden set, let me know! I MUST HAVE THEM!

Well I will post the receipes from last night in a bit... off to do more work!