Home Sweet Home.....

This is suposed to be a food blog I know, lots of lovely posts about food and cooking and all the lovely things that go with it....but its going to turn into an interior design / DIY blog for a moment but bare with me, because it’s all heading towards lots more cooking ventures!  - or it will in the next blog! While Cat has spent hours trawling the internet looking for new and exciting recipes to try, lovingly turning down the corners of magazine pages with recipes she wants to revisit, I have done the same thing, only with interior design magazines and I have been googling ‘tiles’ and ‘Cooker Hoods’ and ‘Kitchens’ and ‘Bathrooms’ for what seems like years, which is why there has been a deafening silence from us for a while.

We have been out of action for some time, well, since June anyway...which is, I must admit, largley my fault. It is extremley flattering to know that the lack of atCatharines events hasn’t gone entirely unnoticed over the last couple of months, it has been amazing to have people emailing to find out when the next dinner is...and it's coming we promise!

Almost exactly two and a half years ago I moved into what has turned into the atCatharines headquarters, kitchen and function space. When I moved in on a chilly March day in 2010 my poor house looked a little bit sorry for itself, so after quite a lot of knocking down walls, building steps, and hours of painting, paving and purchasing the house had turned into the atCatharines venue that we know and love (well Cat and I know and love!) and this year was the turn of the Kitchen and the Bathroom, both of which needed a little bit of TLC before they gave up on me!

The first subtle clue that something really needed to be done was a suspicious stain, gently growing on the kitchen ceiling, just below the shower tray, and so I started the rounds of googling, visits to Topps Tiles, and Homebase and Wickes and Victoria Plumb, and after much too-ing and fro-ing and about a million emails between myself and an incredibly patient builder and then a little while living with an entire bathroom suite residing in the lounge;

the bathroom went from this....
                                         

to this....

And then it was the turn of the Kitchen... The kitchen has, to be honest, served us very, very well, and produced things even I was surprised by. "I knew we were good, but i didn't know we were that good" has been used a couple of times as the oven has opened, mostly with reference to Cat's creations admittedly. 

However it was, on occasion almost impossible to work with, cooking for 17 people with the amount of work suface space we had was, at times, a little bit of a challenge, and to be honest plating up was, well, to all intents and purposes impossible, but we managed it, and loved (almost) every moment it! It was a little bit like saying goodbye to a much loved old friend, but it has gone to a good home, where hopefully its life will continue long into the future!  

 

And so, with the departure of the old kitchen a new, upgrade kitchen landed, (unfortunately) once again in my living room, closely followed by two lovely builders who got to work.

So we are all set, with a shiny new cooker and a million times more cupboards and work surface space, fully functioning lights and all sorts of bells and whistles, and it's full steam ahead, we are ready and raring to welcome everyone back to the table! Watch this space for the next date atCatharines!

xx Kat & Cat