Eat your colors

Long before Michael Pollan penned Food Rules, my parents taught me the importance of having a balance of colors on your plate. It's an easy nutrition lesson that is explained by the various vitamins, antioxidants and nutrients associated with the colors of different fruits and vegetables. Likewise, our kitchen reflects an eat-your-colors-like rule by bringing in pops of color to brighten and warm our otherwise dingy and dull student apartment.

A while back we relocated our favorite rug from the living room to the kitchen, totally transforming the room. A recent post on The Newlywed Diaries suggests that a rug in the kitchen is unexpected and makes the kitchen more of a living room. I definitely agree. It certainly makes it more comfortable to cook with soft, thick wool under my toes.

Here's how our kitchen looked without the rug:

Here's our kitchen now:

The rug is from Crispina Ffrench and is made from old sweaters that are dyed in bulk and woven together kind of like those loop potholders we made in Brownies. (She has a blog, too.) Of course I worry about spills and such, but the rug is relatively easy to clean because it's made of natural fibers. In fact, Crispina explains her favorite way to clean the rugs is as follows:

My favorite way to clean them is on a fresh layer of snow. Spread the dirty rug out and walk all over it (don’t wear muddy boots!) then flip the rug over onto a new spot in the fresh snow and do the same. This technique pulls all the animal hair, dust bunnies and lint balls off the surface. Spills can be cleaned with a gentle scrubbing brush and soapy water.

Hilarious! I had to try this out, especially now while Philly still has snow on the ground.

It worked reasonably well. Better than our crappy vacuum, anyway.


Here are a few more close-ups of our pretty rug. Do you have pops of color in your kitchen? Where do you find your inspiration?