We haven’t quite reached that home owner status in our young marriage. With that, rental property (or in this case, base housing) can be hard to manipulate and make your own with all kinds of landlord restrictions. I was looking for a cheap and easy alternative to add a bit of pizzazz to our drab kitchen without painting the walls. If you live here in Okinawa you know the same sad story of the closed off submarine like galley of a kitchen we have. It gets the job done, but in typical fashion I need it to show some character and scream “Hey! Beth lives here!” On another note, for my fellow Okinawa dwellers… Dasio. enough said, right? Daiso is the Japanese equivalent of a dollar store. It is heaven on earth and often gets me into trouble with the ol’ ball and chain. “Beth. Sure everything is a dollar… but when you fill your cart with 50 $1 items you still wreck the budget!” touché Tom, touché. But I NEED these cat shaped hot pads and I NEED these lime green and purple flip flop socks…. oh yeah, I said it. Flip flop socks, they are a real thing and I own them. I NEEDED all of these things just as I needed to figure out a fix for my kitchen.
My kitchen revolves around wine and everything great that is wine. Like a basic white 20-something girl I can’t let that go. So wine themed it is. I love wine. As I walked every…single…aisle… of Daiso I stumbled upon some cork boards. I got the brilliant idea that I would use them in my kitchen because they reminded me of wine corks. I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do with them yet but I knew it was going to be fabulous. Here is what I came up with:
There was a perfect space above our kitchen cabinets where the cork boards would fit without having to be cut down at all. I painted a series of wine bottle and wine glass silhouettes and hung each board on the wall using command strips. If you have not heard of or used these yet, you need to come out from under your rock and get with it! They are awesome! I hung each one with the command strips. These made them easily hung and will be easily removed when Uncle Sam comes to inspect our house when we move on to the next duty station in a couple of years. The strips stick out a bit at the top but when you are down on the ground and not on the counters snapping photos like a crazy person you can’t even see them. Here is a close up of the command strips:
You just have to think outside of the box sometime. Typically one would use these cork boards to hang things on with push pins, but I used them as a wine inspired boarder to go from drab to fab! Well, in my opinion… 😉
Smiles and hugs and until next time!
pricklypeargypsy 