Tomatoes... I just grow a few different types. What does good one year seems to fail the next. With variety I seem to get a couple hits from the season. I don't work real hard at gardening. Peppers! I have jalpeno, cayenne, and habeneras growing in my kitchen. I make pets out of them and even for some emotional attachment to them. They live for years and put out peppers all year long. The cayenne have been the best at that and the habeneras mostly duds in the winter. It does look like my habenera is about to put out a batch of peppers... it flowered and now I've got baby pepper bumps where the flowers were. I still have lots of habenera peppers from the summer crop which was huge. Last week I started a half dozen jalapeno, cayenne, habenera, and some new red habeneras. If they all sprout I don't know what I'll do with 24 hot pepper plants... some in pots and some for the outdoor garden. Mostly I want the new habeneras. I have a yellow habenera with very good flavor but not the one I'm looking for. My cayenne is from my own seed so that should be a known flavor profile... great in lentils and black beans. Peppers take 2-3 weeks just to sprout but after that are tough little plants. Much better luck growing from seed after building a sprouting table with a 4' shop light.... easy room enough for 70 seeds to sprout and grow a few inches tall. I've even started saving seeds so my garden gets plants from a gene pool that has done well with my particular conditions. A couple nice things from potting and keeping hot pepper houseplants. I get fresh peppers all year long... they hang on the plant edible for a month without spoiling. When I do pick a couple I know exactly how they taste... jalapenos best in chili or nachos, cayenne best in beans or lentils, habeneras to lots of heat to chili. My cats would add that jalapeno leaves are delish and habeneras make fun cat toys to pick and bat around... after the Red Savina cultivar they don't bite the habeneras while playing with them anymore. Red Savinas are not much to cook with... 5 times hotter then most habeneras but they did not have a flavor that did much for me... interesting promise as a deer repellent when dried and ground (pity the deer that gives it a sniff). : ) lyra

Can you put the sink on the wall where you currently show the fridge/dw, moving dw to the end where the fridge is. Then fridge down beside the pantry, stove pretty much where it is. And a small prep sink on the island close to fridge end. That would make the kitchen work better re. your stated goals re. 1 cooker/baker and 1 helper/cleaner. It would let you have the ice tea maker and vitamix between fridge and stove (with water handy at the prep sink behind), keeping snackers, tea drinkers, and smoothie makers out of your main cooking/baking space. And you could use the area between range and sink as your baking area with your kitchenaid mixer and bread machine, utilizing the depth of the corner counter depth for their regular storage while still having the usable countertop in front when needed. The breville might work in that run too. It would mean you couldn't reuse your corner sink base, but it looks like you have the other corner cab by the peninsula that you could repurpose for that space. Good luck!

Is another living room the greatest need you have in your house? Will it be for the kids to hang out in? Or a quieter adult retreat? We turned our dining room into a home office with matching desks facing each other placed in the middle of the room, so together they are about the same size as a dining table. It looks like it might be large enough to fit a modestly sized sofa in there, with a small round table with 2-4 chairs that you could use as a gaming table. Any musicians? What about a music room?

I would suggest to invest in an e-design service for the help you are looking for. If you buy on the high street from places like cb2 or pottery barn, you are looking at a 20K investment. It's worth to hire a professional for advice