Kitchen update - Dec 2013 - A very Christmassy kitchen

I've been wanting to do a kitchen update for a while now.The last time I posted about the kitchen, I had just finished painting. We still have a long way to go in here, but we are making progress. 

It's very Christmassy in the kitchen right now. I hung some red Christmas lights from the curtainrods (they aren't staying! They are just there for Christmas) 

We haven't bought curtains for the kitchen yet, but I had a huge bolt of red and white striped material that my mother-in-law gave me. Since we are planning to add some red color to the room, I decided to use the material for some temporary curtains. I kind of like the way they look, they really brighten up the kitchen. 

These "curtains" are fastened to the rods with safety pins. I didn't even bother sewing them. I'm pretty sure we will take them down after Christmas and get some real curtains.

 

Notice the "curtain" on the door is hanging up with magnets

This side of the kitchen still looks a little bare to me.
Looking at these pictures, I don't think I like the baskets I hung on the wall. I'm pretty sure I'll be taking those down.
I also need to finish painting the trim white.

Here are a few pics that show the Christmas lights a little better. It looks really cool in there at night.

I have been wanting to paint the insides of the cabinets white. The pine looks awful to me.
I've been waiting for my 3 and a half week christmas break from work to get started.
Today, we bought some paint and I got to work emptying out the cabinets.
I decided it will be easier if I do one section at a time.

Tim gave me a refresher course on how to use the sander, and how much I needed to sand down the insides of the cabinets. We needed to scuff up the wood so the paint would stick.

I sanded all the wood and wiped everything down to remove the sawdust.

This is where we are now after 2 coats of paint. We are using Behr Ultra-pure white semi-gloss, which is the same thing we used on the fronts of the cabinets and all of the trim in the house.

I still need to give these another coat (or two), and then I'll make my way around the kitchen.
After it dries, I'll put down shelf paper before I load our dishes back in. We haven't found any shelf paper we like yet, so we need to keep looking until we find something. It's so expensive! I refuse to spend that kind of money on something we don't love. I hope we find something soon, I'll have to be able to put the dishes away by Christmas!
It feels good to finally get this project going though. I really like everything painted white, I think it looks much better than the pine did.