Getting Your Kitchen Festive Fit!

At Christmas, the kitchen is probably the room that will get the most use in the house. With the extra visits from family and friends at this time of the year, there is so much more socialising, drinking, eating and just general use of the kitchen.Whether its unexpected guests popping in for a quick drink and nibbles or a planned dinner party with lots of guests and a three course meal, your kitchen is going to need to be ready to face the battles of festive socialising. So to help you, we've created a list to help you get your kitchen match fit for this busy season!

Architecture- NK Living, Photography- Chris Snook

De-ClutterDespite this being an activity that is generally completed after Christmas as a New Year activity, we actually find it more useful to de-clutter and 'spring' clean before the festivities begin, so you can start this busy festive period with a fresh, clean environment.With cupboards slowly getting fuller throughout the year with newer items, it's likely you haven't had the chance to organise your cupboards and cabinets, and there are certain items stuck at the back of the cupboard that you specifically need at this time of the year. By organising these cupboards, you will be able to see exactly what you do have, rearrange their position in the cabinet, and equally tick items off your Christmas list that you've realised you already own! By having bespoke storage solutions in your cabinets, including spice racks, pull out caddies, baskets and custom-sized drawers means that you can keep your kitchen organised all year round and never have to worry about your cupboards being untidy.

Alongside organising the inside of cupboards, we would also recommend ensuring that the rest of your room is as clear of clutter as possible. This may involve removing certain utensils or accessories from your work surface and demoting them to a nearby cupboard for the rest of the festive period! This will ensure your room doesn't look overcrowded- especially if you've decorated the room for Christmas- and will ensure that friends and family have room to place their drinks and food when they're visiting.Welcoming AtmosphereAfter de-cluttering, you may start to feel as though your kitchen is looking a little bare, and whilst clean and clear to host and socialise in with friends and family, there are a few things missing. We would recommend introducing a few welcoming accessories to ensure your room still feels ready for visitors!Bringing in new textures is a beautiful way to make a room welcoming, and whilst many may think of this as just being textiles like cushions and throws- it really doesn't just stop there. Textures can be in the form of flooring, tiles, metallic accessories and so many other things. One kitchen that we have seen do this is the Highbury Kitchen, which has so many different materials and incorporates the Scandi trend so beautifully.

Design- Kia Designs, Photography- Anna Stathaki Our Ladbroke Kitchen is another kitchen that uses so many textures and is so welcoming because of it. Despite its dark colouring, this kitchen is incredibly rich almost engulfing you in a sense of warmth when you enter the room, with bright metallic accessories helping to keep the room bright and open.

SeatingAt Christmas time especially, it is important that you have enough dining area in your home. Whatever the size of your kitchen, there is always a way to incorporate some form of dining area into your room, whether this is a seating arrangement at your island, or an actual dining table. Christmas is all about spending time with your loved ones, and there is nothing better than sitting down together to eat a dinner and talk to each other! We think that these kitchen designs with stools tucked up under the island are the perfect solution, and create a beautifully informal dining area that is perfect for just quickly serving up a meal to hungry children or for gathering with friends for a quick drink.

If you do have a large kitchen however, a dining table is an absolutely beautiful addition, and will completely change dinner times in your household. Not just in the festive period, but all year round, sitting down at the table to eat dinner with your family, and catch up on each others lives will really help you to reflect and relax more in your home. Norfolk Oak have created some absolutely beautiful dining tables for clients, including the beautiful table below, for the Cley Kitchen.

Out With The Old, In With The NewWhilst Christmas is one of the most happy and fun times of the year, it can also bring with it many different problems. The main one of these being something going wrong. I'm sure many of you can remember at some point in your lifetime an oven breaking on Christmas day or a dishwasher going wrong and having to laboriously hand wash every piece of cutlery and crockery you've used. Both of these problems are definitely not the end of the world, but they can make what can be quite stressful task even more difficult. If you know that your dishwasher or oven or any other crucial appliance are temperamental or are definitely likely to break any time soon, we would recommend replacing these before Christmas. As a Miele Premier Partner, we would always recommend purchasing these appliances, simply due to their incredible quality and style.

If you haven't already installed a new kitchen into your home, it's likely that at this point you'll start to notice what other things are wrong with your kitchen, and what you really want to change. This will give you the inspiration to start a plan of what you would like in your kitchen, and to start forming a design for your new room. A recent project we have just completed is our Redhill Kitchen, which is beautifully eclectic and makes a very bold statement despite the fact that it is an incredibly compact kitchen.

Architecture- NK Living, Photography- Chris Snook Check out our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram page for more!