Hello friends! I'm getting back on track with sharing my Small Home Style series, sharing ideas to help make those tricky small spaces not only stylish but also practical. I love when design is both pleasing to the eye and makes sense in real life, not just pretty for pictures. As a small home dweller, I know the challenges people face when dealing with limited space, but challenges also create opportunists for fabulous ideas. Trust me it can be done! No matter how small or large your kitchen is, it can almost never feel big enough. However with a few design tricks that are pretty + practical, you can have an amazing looking and feeling kitchen.

I truly believe design should feel good, meaning every time walk into a room in your home it should feel good and feel you.

ONE. Add a Shelf Above your Kitchen Sink. No pretty window to look out of above your kitchen sink, no problem! Add a shelf or shelves and transform the dead space into use space to store cookbooks, small dishes or herbs

TWO. Go Vertical! If your existing cabinets stop stop of the ceiling, turn that dead space into usable useful space. Adding a shelf above your cabinets can create extra storage for your beloved serviceware your don't use everyday.

THREE. Peg Board System. Hang a pegboard in your kitchen to transform blank wall into a organized wall that can hold a variety of kitchen items: pots, pans, cutting boards and more.

FOUR. Go Bold with Color. I love love white kitchens, but a small kitchen is also a place where you can take big risks for huge impact!

FIVE: Use Your Counter top Wisely. Declutter your counters and stylish store items on your countertops and use trays to help corral items.

SIX. Open Up Your View. A full wall of cabinet doors in a small kitchen make a kitchen feel even smaller, nix your solid cabinet doors for glass inserts.

SEVEN. Bring the Outdoors Inside. Grow an indoor herb garden in your kitchen, place small planters in your windowsill, on the counter or hang on the wall. Adding greenery in your kitchen can give your small kitchen a boost of style + it's so practical.

EIGHT. Paint a Chalkboard Wall. If you have a small galley kitchen, chances are you can a blank useless wall, transform the blank with Chalkboard paint.

NINE. Floating Shelves. Go wide open and remove all your upper cabinets with open shelves, or remove 1-2 cabinets and install floating shelves. A few open shelves in a small kitchen can really open the style factor.

In my kitchen below, I placed three floating shelves between my cabinet and fridge. The shelves help create a focal area and perfect for storing my cookbooks, pretty bowls and misc service ware.

With a some stylish design tricks even the tiniest kitchen can be a perfect combination of pretty + practical.

Looking for more kitchen design ideas? Click here to read about my kitchen and how I transformed my dated 1950's merged with bad design from the 1980's into a kitchen that wows me and makes my heart happy every time I enter.

How have your maximized your small kitchen and given it style?

I so love this time of the year! The early Spring months for me are always about tidying up my outdoors, simply put sweeping away the dreary days of Winter. I know, I know California 'Winters' are a joke, but still! I've been busy working on making the outside all pretty for Spring. I recently tackled a few Spring updates on my front porch and wanted to share my: 6 Ideas to Spruce up your Entry for Spring + my outdoor plans for our house for Spring.

ONE: Give the outside of your home a good Spring Cleaning: Clean your front door, outdoor lighting and sweep your porch.
TWO: Tame your garden hose with a modern garden hose holder. To keep my garden hose in place and not all over my lawn, I use a wrought iron garden hose holder.
THREE: Flowers always create a friendly welcome, layer in flowers in both your garden beds and in containers sitting in your garden and hanging. To create a colorful front entry, I added flowers in containers to my garden bed that help fill area I'm unable to plant flowers in due all the pvc pipes from our sprinkler system.
FOUR: Upgrade your mailbox! Boring mailboxes are a snooze fest. Instead of going with a basic boring mail box for my house, I went with envelope mailbox that is super fun. Every time I check my mail, I smile.

FIVE: Create a fun hello for guests with a witty front door mat. Check out Esty for some fun versions, or DIY your own fun version using a basic Ikea doormat like this one
SIX: Lastly, replace your ho-hum doorbell with a happy one. I replaced our basic boring doorbell that I loathed with a cute pineapple doorbell, read more about it here.

In addition to DIYing a funny doormat this Spring for our porch, we're finally adding shutters on our house. We had shutters before rebuilding our house and loved the classic look it gave our home, houses just feel extra sweet with shutters.

I kept going back and forth between no shutters and shutters, since we'll only be able to put shutters on one window, due the placement issues we didn't have before. I think the shutters will be a cute addition to our large living room window.

What Spring updates are you doing around your home? Needing some more outdoor ideas for your home? Hop over to these inspiring outdoor posts: Door Inspiration from Across the Pond, 6 Ideas to Create a Pretty Front Door, 6 Ideas to Add Curb Appeal to Garages, DIY Garden bed with Irrigation.