Come on inside…
Picking up in February on our renovation journey…a bit of background….
Given how much we love to make and share homegrown and homemade food — we are simply foodies at heart — we also love to have people over for yummy meals. While Mike loves to joke that I couldn’t even make mac and cheese when we met, and for sure, he was much more of the from-scratch chef in our early years, we have always loved to give a good time to others and good food is a huge part of that. As we both continued to grow as individuals and as a couple over the years, I started to discover there is a passionate food-creator in me.
Whether that’s lovingly pruning our cherry tomato plants or harvesting gooseberries dreaming of the cake I will make with them, or losing myself for hours in the kitchen, cleaning and chopping veggies for a meal or even for the week, I am now at home fully in my kitchen and in myself as a food-creator. As there are so many true chefs out there with formal training, I am intentionally calling myself a “food-creator” and an even more appropriate term may be “meal designer.” In the past few years, I’ve noticed that I even start to think in meals. After a dinner party, I am already thinking about the next meal and gathering we will create. When I have spare time, I peruse recipes online and read the comments and imagine all the other dishes that will go best with it. When I go for a run or am at a spin class (pre-pandemic of course), I’m imagining the next theme for the next meal. I get giddy over a new dish that I will make for the two of us at home complemented by a few other dishes so we can call that a meal. I even love imagining what serving platter or bowl will fit best for each dish. Given my own burgeoning passion for food creation, and with both our strong foodie and gardening origins from childhood, it made sense that after many years of evolving as a couple, we recognized that having a more usable and comfortable space for bringing people together over good food was one of the most critical aspects to get right in our renovated Happy Boolo home.
We were so excited to work with our designer Julie O on the perfect layout for the main floor: flexible and fluid space to host many people in many different configurations and to serve as a highly functional and fun floor for us to create our daily meals in as well.
Our Vision for our Collaborative Kitchen & Flexible Living/Dining Space
While it was awesome fun to see the top floor get framed out and constructed so quickly from the outside, given our food and entertaining passions, it was even more exciting to see the framing for this new main floor start to take shape. We imagined walking through our new spacious collaborative kitchen and flexible living/dining space where we can bring our community together over yummy food.
Taking you on a tour of the Collaborative Kitchen & Flexible Living Dining Room with initial framing
We also learned quickly you never start a videography career without many outtakes and selfie tours are a great way to make yourself dizzy. ;)
Can’t wait to see this space fully come to life and start to plan our first dinner parties and community gatherings! Woohoo!!