Welcome back to The Garden here at the Lodge Kitchen! I’m so happy to finally be back up and running and be able to add more recipes to the page!

The majority of last year I have been busy developing another blog called “Same Hat Different Me”and chronicling the stories of my weight-loss journey. The entirety of last year was fraught with distraction, but mostly devoted to my writing at KelleeKate.com.

Also, as some of you may know, we had a bit of a snafu here at The  Pine Creek Lodge last year when an unexpected leak turned into an even more unexpected flood, that took over took over our lives as well as our kitchen for a bit.

This new development resulted in an impromptu remodel of both our kitchen and family room…(and thanks to the dog, our stairs and upstairs hallway as well), and it was quite a task.

A slow leak went undetected underneath the (old parquet) floors and out into the family room for some time before accumulating in the aforementioned flood. Eventually we had to pull them all up, along with a built-in counter-top peninsula and the majority of the affected kitchen cabinets. It was a hot mess.

We were horrified when we saw the water coming out from underneath the cabinets after we pulled up the floor

The Captain is enjoying the demo portion of our little disaster

The last little bit of moisture being dried up off the subfloor

The flooring has arrived!

 I always had it on my list to redo the kitchen great room with it’s outdated flooring and inefficient layout, but it turned out to be a way bigger job than we had anticipated. And once we got started, one disaster led to another.

The family room portion of the remodel

Hand scraped saddle Hickory laminate

While the floors were being laid, and the leveling cement was still wet, our over excited dog Finn got loose and ran willy nilly right through it before bolting up the (carpeted) stairs into the (carpeted) hallway and leaving all of his little doggy cement footprints everywhere.

The imprints of the dogs new “cement shoes”

Then the carpet on the stairs as well as the upstairs hallway also had to be pulled up and replaced.

Dogs and wet cement do not mix!

 Whew!

So, from June until October our lives were turned upside down by a myriad of home-improvement projects. But now that the holidays have come and gone, things are finally getting back to normal.

Upstairs hallway before remodel

Upstairs hallway after remodel

Needless to say, it’s been an ordeal, but also a blessing in disguise. The old kitchen was tolerable at best, and
I can honestly say have been quite enjoying my new kitchen, and I love being in my new space more than ever!

Thank you to all of you for hanging in there with me while we were getting the kitchen upgrade. Let me know if there any particular recipes you would like to see posted here. But until then, stay tuned, because I’m going to go fire up the oven, and get my chewy gingerbread molasses cookies onto our 2017 menu, fresh from the new and improved Lodge kitchen.

So, pull up a chair, let me pour you a cup of coffee, and let’s get to some cooking!