Our kitchen renovations are going along really well, but there are some still some things left to do so you’ll have to wait a bit longer for final pictures.  For now, I’ll share the earlier part of the process with you.

This is our living room/dining room right after all the kitchen cabinets were delivered.  It looks more spacious in the below picture than it felt.

Here’s a different angle and this is more reflective of how crowded it felt.  When we had to eat Shabbos dinner here, we felt very, very squished.  Yes, I was wishing for a Shabbos invitation!  We were very fortunate that we were invited out for a Shabbos meal (for lunch) for the first time in the eleven weeks that my husband has been gone, and the person who invited us didn’t even know all we had going on!  Amazing timing!

Everywhere we looked were signs of the new kitchen waiting to happen!  Ds5 playing with Yirmiyahu on the stairs – notice the new built-in oven below, prior to installation.

We had to move our largest couch to a different place to accommodate all the cabinets.  Our living space became very cramped, especially when the contents of the kitchen were packed into boxes that further crowded our space.  But when your kids all play in a radius of a few feet from each other regardless of how much space you have, they don’t mind so much.

Back to the kitchen.  Below is a before picture of my kitchen.  As I said before, it was functional but not incredibly attractive.  The space allotted for the fridge and oven on the left side of the kitchen was big enough for a standard size fridge and oven, neither of which is what I have.  So we left our huge oven in the original space and moved the fridge to the opposite wall which worked out well.

However, the fridge also partially blocked the window behind it, as you can see below.  I had two main goals in doing kitchen renovations, one of which was to open up this space by moving the fridge to one of the two main walls where the cabinets were.  I felt this would not only make the kitchen feel more spacious, but would improve the airflow and light.

My second goal in renovating the kitchen was to create more usable space, which was a challenge since I lost counter and cabinet space by moving the fridge to the wall where the main length of cabinets were.  Even though we’re not done – we still have to retile the backsplash and cut down a cabinet and countertop so they’ll be custom sized to the remaining space – I’m very encouraged by our progress on both fronts!

Avivah

I’ve been meaning to share with you my latest miracle, but today has been a tiring and stressful day so I’m afraid I won’t give it over with the enthusiasm it deserves.  But since this directly relates to my stressful day and the busyness in our house right now, I’d better explain!

Since we’ve moved in to our apartment here, I’ve had it in mind that I’d like to put in new kitchen cabinets.  The bottom cabinets are original to the apartment, and the top cabinets, though good quality, are a different color than the bottom cabinet and don’t fully use the wall space available.  Since my kitchen is functional though not beautiful, this hasn’t been a high priority.

When my husband left to the US ten weeks ago, I took the opportunity to get some things around the house taken care of.  My husband works really, really hard and it’s not relaxing for him to have a list of projects to work on when he gets home.  So I try not to even mention my thoughts about the things I’d like to do around the house!  I decided with him away it’s the perfect time to get some things taken care of.

One of these things was to see about improving the way space is used in my kitchen; I’ve been preparing for homeschooling by doing some things to make our home feel more homey and to make the space more efficient for our needs.  About two months ago I began scouring the internet looking for used kitchen cabinets.  As some of my long term readers know, we’ve done a lot of renovations in the past ourselves, including putting in a new kitchen in our house in the US.  When we did that, I bought a high quality used set of kitchen cabinets in excellent condition for a great price, and this is what I wanted to do now.  Of course, the savings aren’t just in buying the materials inexpensively, but in not having to pay for labor costs.

That was the snag with my scenario this time around.  My husband is in the US, my oldest son is in Jerusalem and doesn’t have vacation until mid-July, ds14 isn’t home until 7 pm most nights, and to top it all off, we don’t have any power tools.  But where there’s a will, there’s a way, so I kept looking and trusting that somehow we’d be able to upgrade our kitchen for a budget friendly price.

After a month of looking, I hit pay dirt!  I found a two year old kitchen, great quality, nice looking, being sold by the person who had just purchased the home that this kitchen was in – his wife wanted to renovate.  The price was good, he was willing to negotiate with me and was pleasant to deal with.  We set a date for me to come by to check it out in person, and then pushed it off for two more weeks because he wanted to wait until he was living in the house.

About fifteen hours before I was finally set to look at this kitchen, I got a call from a friend who is a real estate agent.  She just sold a home and the sellers want to give away the kitchen that is there because they’d like to put in a new kitchen.  Did I want it?  I thought it was unlikely the measurements and features would suit our needs but it was worth taking a look.  At 11 pm I headed over to check it out, and since there was a short with the electricity, was able to see it by the dim light of my cell phone’s flashlight.  Very surprisingly, the kitchen had all the features I was looking for, though it was a very different look than what I was intending.

There were removal costs for this set of cabinets that the first one didn’t have, but it would still be cheaper than buying them.  Not only that, it would leave money in the budget to pay others to do the labor, and this was a really appealing feature of this kitchen!  It was a decision in line with something I’ve been working on but haven’t had time to share with you, be being conscious and taking active steps to value my life energy and make life as simple as possible for myself!   So for the first time ever in our family, none of us will be more actively involved in the physical renovations.  Dd16, ds14 and I are all very happy about this, since we know from previous experience what’s involved in a kitchen renovation.  Hashem is so good to us!

Right now my kitchen is partially dismantled and my house is a disaster, stacked with all the kitchen cabinets, the contents of the previous cabinets in boxes all over, the old cabinets on my porch….There is a big snag that was discovered after they had begun putting the cabinets in that affects how the kitchen will be assembled and is requiring me to mentally be flexible and consider different possibilities than what I had painstakingly planned based on repeatedly working out the exact dimensions of the space involved.  So I’m going to go to sleep and hope that some amazing solution will come to me when I wake up and that the kitchen will look even better than I planned, since the alternative is to be really stressed out!  Somehow it’s all going to work out so I have to keep trusting the process and not get caught up in the pressures of the moment.

Avivah

Before Yirmiyahu was born, we were given some baby items, including a high chair.  At the time, I was told the high chair was missing some screws, but since the factory of the company (Keter) that makes this high chair is located in Karmiel I planned to buy the missing screws from them.

Fast forward to just a couple of weeks ago, when we pulled the high chair out of storage to put it together and put it to use!  We noted the missing screws, and I headed to the Keter factory store in the industrial zone to buy some.  When I arrived I was told that this is the older model so they no longer have parts available for sale.  I began thinking how ridiculous it would be to have to throw out the entire chair just because of some missing screws, but they are made in a specific way and it would be extremely difficult to find a substitute at the hardware store.

Then it occurred to me to ask them if they could order the screws for me.  They initially didn’t think so, but I asked them to check on this and after asking someone in a higher position they told me they could.  I was told they would order an entire set, enough to replace every screw and small part on the high chair.  I didn’t need all of that but this is the only way they could order it.

When I asked how much it would be, the woman in charge smiled at me and told me they weren’t going to charge me.  I wasn’t expecting that but of course I was very appreciative!  (My kids have asked me why it seems that so often nice things like this happen to me, but I believe that we all have wonderful things happening all the time – perhaps because I try to be conscious of it and share it with my family, my kids get this impression.)

The moral of the story?  If you have an item that needs a part that is hard to buy, try contacting the manufacturer for a replacement.  Usually you’ll have to pay for the parts but generally it will still work out to be a lot less expensive than buying a new item!

Avivah

Last week someone offered me some free fish, which I readily accepted.  He said something about some heads, so I thought he meant the fish had heads or some heads were included.

Well, I got home and to my dismay (initially), the entire bag was salmon heads.  My first thought was that I had no time or inclination to deal with them, and to give them to the stray cats.  Then my frugal-try-something-new-and-see-how-it-goes instinct kicked in.  I did a quick internet search for what to do with fish heads, and was interested to learn that in some cultures the head of the fish is the favored part due to being the most nutritious.

I didn’t like the looks of any recipes that I found – too labor intensive. But I decided it would be a shame to feed the outdoor cats before seeing if any of the fish would benefit my family!  The fish heads were all from salmon, and were large.  We put about eight into a pot with some water, brought them to a boil, then let them simmer for a long time.

My plan was to debone them and use the salmon meat for some kind of fish dish.  My first thought on opening the pot was that the cooking liquid looked just like the liquid in canned salmon.  And my second thought when I began deboning the fish, was that minus the tip of the head, it looked exactly like the canned salmon I used to buy!  The same skin, bones, and the way the chunks of fish were – same physiology.  It makes economic sense that the filets are sold at a higher price, then the leftover heads are canned and sold for less.  Realizing this definitely shifted my perspective on using the salmon heads from viewing it as a less desirable leftover to a lucky find!

However, the taste is what the biggest ‘wow’ was.  It was tender, flavorful and delicious!  I made two 9×13 pans of salmon loaf using the meat from these heads and when we had them for lunch, my kids were like, “Yum, this is sooooo good!”  The flavor was much richer than canned salmon, really tasty.  And to think that at first I almost gave it to the stray cats!

Avivah

Tonight I got some great buys on chicken and meat, and it reminded me that I haven’t written about the potential advantages of shopping towards the end of the day.

At this late point in the day, I’ve found that you can often get reduced prices on bakery goods as well as poultry and meat.  At this point, bakeries want to get rid of whatever they have left because no one will buy day old baked goods the next day!  Since we baked from scratch, even reduced bakery prices are more expensive than what it would be to make it myself.  So if we buy the bakery goods, it’s only as a small amount as a special treat (eg to treat the  child who comes along with me to be my shopping buddy).  If you have a bakery section in your local supermarket, check it out – in the supermarket that I shop at, every night a couple of hours before closing they announce that the prices are being marked down by about 50%.

Tonight I was at the supermarket when I heard an announcement over the loudspeaker about something being marked down 50%, but both times I didn’t understand what it was that was being reduced.  The second time I asked the woman cleaning the floor if she had heard, and she told me it was the rotisserie chicken.  I right away headed over and scooped up the last chicken – too bad I didn’t understand the message the first time around!  The rotisserie chicken was less expensive than the whole chickens on sale at the same store, and to buy the sale chickens I would have been limited to buying just four kilos and only then if I bought 150 shekels of other non-sale items.  The manager told me that any night that they have rotisserie chickens that are still left, they mark them down.  It’s nice when you can get ready made food for less than it would cost to cook it yourself!

I also got ground meat and chicken wings on sale, both marked down 30% because it was the end of the day.  Usually really good sales are limited by a minimum purchase necessary and a limited quantity that can be purchased at the sale price – usually it’s a four kilo limit where I shop.  Four kilos is only about two chickens, so this isn’t really a substantial amount.  However, when I go at the end of the day or on Friday afternoon, I can get unlimited quantities at sale prices.   One time I bought about twenty chickens because the price was amazing (that was the maximum that my freezer could hold); I had to take a taxi home since there was no delivery service at that time of day, and the taxi driver exclaimed over what a great deal it was once he heard the price!

Not only are there often lower posted prices, there’s more flexibility in the pricing.  For example, last week I asked the butcher how much the chicken bones were.  (I make a lot of broth so I buy a lot of these.)  The butcher asked me how many I wanted – I told him how much I would buy depended on the price.  He told me it was the same for him, the price per pound would depend on how much I bought. When I said I would be interested in buying all that he had left, he was motivated to mark them down by 50%.   This doesn’t take hardcore bargaining; I’m not much of a bargainer but later in the day all you have to do is comment that you’ll buy if the price is right.  Earlier in the day these kinds of deals are harder to come by.

Avivah