my favorite kitchen gadgets

I have three that jump out at me.  I love them all for their beauty, simplicity and joy they bring to me in the kitchen.


The first is simple.  It's a couple of mugs that my son bought me for Christmas one year (picked them out himself!).  They are bright and cheerful colors, and are the perfect way to start the day with a hot cup of tea, which I do every morning.

cups of hot tea happen every morning.  cinnamon rolls - not so much.

The second gadget(s) are a couple of berry bowls I recently purchased at Anthropologie.  There's a bigger story here though.  First I owned this gorgeous berry bowl:

It was the most gorgeous berry bowl I'd ever seen.  Purchased from a seller on Etsy, it was small and petite, but perfect for rinsing berries and small bowls of grapes, and was used just about daily.  It was a beautiful robin's egg blue, complete with black specks and everything.  And after more than a year of owning it....it was broken by one of my kids, on accident.  After I loved this bowl so much (and before this one broke), I had purchased another green one from a different seller on Etsy.  This one went into daily rotation.  I was seriously crushed over this one, so I wrote to the seller I originally purchased it from, and begged her to make me another.  She suffers from pretty bad arthritis and doesn't make them anymore, but after a few months, she sent me another.  And then - within 2 weeks - it was broken again.  UGH!!!! The green one was broken within a few months of that.  Sigh...


After that, I was done buying one of a kind handmade items only to have them broken within months.  Do NOT get me wrong - I'm all about supporting handmade and filling your home with these lovely things, but in our case, I just can't purchase super functional items like berry bowls and expect my kids to never touch them.  It's just not practical.  So, I replaced them with these two new ones from Anthropologie, knowing that if they get broken, I won't suffer the same heartbreak I did with the others.  :-(  So, a large aqua and small yellow have a new home in my kitchen.

The third item is a gorgeous handmade maple cutting board made by an amazing seller on Etsy, Red Onion Woodworks.  It's thick, and has incredible graining which seems to glisten when well oiled and cared for.  One side is more solid, and that's our "use everyday" side, and the other has a bit of the natural bark side showing, and so we save that as the "serving" and "entertaining" side.

Mine is actually in need of a little TLC, so I just need to do a bit of sanding and another treatment of mineral oil and we're good to go!


What about you - what go-to kitchen gadgets make you smile in your kitchen?  Check out the Kitchen Gadgets Link Up Party over at Censational Girl to hear about lots more!