I'm starting to get a sense of just how much I'm going to love our new kitchen/living room. The couch has arrived and is beautiful and comfortable despite the fact that Cate is choosing to sit on the floor beside it while she reads some books. The configuration should help encourage seating for a good number of people. We have had our green plaid couches since we moved into our old house -- we bought them used from the family we bought the house from. This is the first real piece of furniture we've purchased and it's thrilling.

Yesterday, I decided to go ahead and start filling my new cabinets rather than waiting for the hardware install. I've put it off for weeks thinking it would make things too difficult when the hardware is installed. The most pressing reason I changed my mind was knowing that we have movers coming today to bring appliances upstairs and our GC might choose to use them to move the shelving that stuff has been sitting on out. If the movers don't move those shelves out, it will be much more difficult to find somebody to do it later. They're fairly big and heavy and our GC is not in physical shape to do it himself. By having them empty and ready to leave, I've made it as easy as possible for our GC to have a method to get them out so I don't have to wait til Christmas to get them out (they'd be in the way of where I want my Christmas tree).

The upshot is that I now have a sense of just how wonderful the layout is going to be. The large and deep drawers are wonderful and make it much easier to find things. My spice racks are wonderful and should make finding the right spice a snap (I alphabetized them! I know I'm a dork, but it's so great!). The shelves we have are easily adjustable so it's been easy to find just the right spot for things. I was very thoughtful about where things went, so that baking things are all together, and near the oven and baking station. Plates and glasses are near the dishwasher. Cooking and baking supplies are where they will be handy. Moving around my kitchen I think is going to be heavenly. And I haven't even used all the space available. I've got a few more shelves and drawers empty.

The appliances are in my garage and will be moved up today. The oven will be installed over the weekend. It looks to be a pretty amazing oven, with capability to rotisserie a chicken or sear a steak at super high temperatures like they cook them in most of the really fancy steak houses. It's been easy to get discouraged during the process -- the mess, the disorganization, the mess-ups, the thousands of minutiae decisions about sink facuets and lighting options. I'm just beginning to come out of the fog to see just how amazingly fortunate we are and how beautiful things are going to turn out. A few more weeks and I hope to have things back up and running for good!