Our new grill!

Weber.  I love them!

We have the little Smokey Joe from Weber that we take to all of our disc dog competitions, camping, picnics, etc.  But we only had a gas grill at home.  It was a gift from my mom and her husband 4 years ago for our housewarming party, since we were having a BBQ - but had no grill my mom pulled through for us.  It is a great little grill, but it is on the smaller side and let's face it, to really grill-one needs charcoal.  So for our wedding we registered for this bad boy.  And my dad bought it for us!  (Well, let's face it, it's for Jeff-the grill master.)

I love food grilled with charcoal.  I'm so excited to have this new grill finally put together.  We kept it in the box all winter long since we didn't have a cover yet and didn't want to expose it to the winter conditions here.  Once summer hit-that grill was built!  The first item up?  Boneless ribs. :)

Please excuse the fact that we are drinking Twisted Tea.... That's not normally our style. ;-)

We will still be keeping our trusty gas grill, for the days that waiting for the charcoal to heat up just isn't an option.  IE: Amy is hungry and therefore grumpy....must eat food NOW to make Jeff's life better.  But I am so excited to have this new grill.  On the menu soon....spare ribs.  3 racks of them.  And they will all fit in this grill!  Oh this is happening and I can't wait.

Welcome to my kitchen!

So since my blog is titled Amy's New Kitchen, I thought some of you might be interested in what my kitchen looks like. (This also helps to post something since I've been gone camping all Memorial Day weekend, and all the awesome food I prepared for the trip, I forgot to take pictures of. Der.)

When we moved into our house the kitchen was the best thing in it. Everything was fairly nice and semi-new, except the fridge, but I could deal with that so I was happy. But when we started to remodel the rest of the house, the kitchen really didn't fit our style. So we vamped it up a bit so that it fit 'us'! I love it. I love bright colors and went big with the color for the kitchen. One weekend when Jeff was out of town, I went crazy-and then sent him a picture message to show him my hard work! I'm pretty sure he wrote back, 'Wow-now that's ORANGE!' and was probably pretty frightened to come home...

I had intentions of sponging a darker yellow over the orange to give our kitchen a more Tuscan feel-but that just hasn't happened yet. Maybe one day....

Here is my awesome kitchen.  It's nothing gourmet, but it's home.

Plenty of counter top space!

I absolutely love my new gas stove.  We had an electric cooktop before and had a gasline put in so that I could have a gas range.  I love it.  And the double oven isn't bad either.  ;-)

I love that I can watch cooking shows while cooking too!

Our old fridge sucked.  There is no other way to put it.  This one was a steal of a deal though.  I think we paid less than $900 for it. 

Our wine/liquor rack.

Looking from the kitchen into the living room.

I love my magnetic knife holder.  It keeps all my knives sharp and is easy to access.

These pictures (found here) were the inspiration for what I wanted my kitchen to look like:

This is what our kitchen looked like originally-4 years ago. A LOT has changed!

So, this is my happy place.  It's my therapy office.  And the gathering place when people come over.  I absolutely adore my kitchen and even more so, adore my husband for making it happen!  He picked out all the appliances and did a fantastic job!  He treats me like a queen and I'm so lucky to have someone who loves me that much to provide me with a kitchen that makes me happy every single time I walk in it.