Tired of Your Kitchen? Here’s a Creative (and Inexpensive) Way to Make It Feel Fresh

She might be a designer, illustrator, and Substack author by day, but by night, Jenna O'Brien takes on a different role—hostess of her makeshift, in-home restaurant, "O'Briens". While many have recently taken up the age-old art of hosting dinner parties, O'Brien has taken the hobby a step further by turning her NYC apartment kitchen into a restaurant for her, her husband, and friends to enjoy.

"I think home should be the safest and most joyful place you have," O'Brien says. "It's very sad to me that some people don't have that, or for different seasons of their life, they may not have looked forward to coming home. So, I feel like if someone is in a season where they do have a little more control over their home situation, why not make it the most joyful and safest place to be?"

Learn precisely how O'Brien transformed her kitchen (and how she approaches mundane tasks like cooking dinner) to bring more joy and whimsy to her home.

The Inspiration

O'Brien says transforming her kitchen into a restaurant was the result of "problem-solving and creative play." After moving to New York City and tallying the cost of frequent eating out, she knew she wanted to change her eating and cooking habits. As a chronically creative person, adding her own spin to the idea of cooking at home wasn't difficult.

"You truly get to creatively direct what you're doing in your home," she says. "Like all these restaurants make seasonal menus—why not you? You're going to make your coffee in the morning anyway. Why not spend a little extra time on a weekend and make a pumpkin spice syrup or something so you want to drink it at home?"

O'Brien started transforming her kitchen by gathering design inspo from her and her husband's favorite restaurants, grocery stores, and coffee shops in the city. She then looked for commonalities among locations that left an impact on her and her dining experience. As a designer, branding and use of color were always top of mind.

"For me, because I'm a designer, one of the major things why I personally like a certain restaurant is often the branding and the world they build," she says. "So that was what I knew would be the first step for my kitchen."

The Process

After gathering plenty of design and organization inspo, O'Brien got to work on rebranding her kitchen. First step: creating custom labels and a logo.

Step 1: Design a Logo and Labels

When designing custom labels for pantry and fridge items, O'Brien wanted the branding to feel cozy and approachable, but still colorful. She landed on a palette packed with shades of blue and pink, namely baby blue, bubblegum pink, and raspberry hues. She also decided on the restaurant's name and designed a personal logo.

"I made a logo with 'O'Briens' because that's our last name," she says. "And then the logo is a drawing of our dog. It's hard to find a better mascot."

Step 2: Decant and Label Pantry Items

After designing, she printed the labels off at home on waterproof sticker paper so she could easily label her pantry items. "I started with the back of house, so I got a bunch of glass jars and kind of elevated all of my food storage."

Making her way through the pantry, she labeled jars filled with oats, flour, sugar, seasonings, and spices. She then moved on to refrigerated items, such as milk and sauces. She even implemented a grab-and-go drink system by prepping lattes and teas and storing them in small, glass jars to mimic the kind you buy at the grocery store.

"It seems so complex, but if you spend a little bit of time on the weekend, you're good for the week," she says. "I could just walk up to my fridge and grab a bottle, like in a grocery store."

Step 3: Make Menus and Recipes

Just like any great restaurant, O'Brien wants to create her own go-to recipes for regular nights or for serving guests at dinner parties. "I've got to work on my recipe development a bit," she says. "I'm not a chef. I'm a designer."

After reading up on cooking techniques and confidently following recipes, O'Brien plans to create menu templates she can fill out every week. The menus will be available on her Substack page, Feeling! Magazine.

Step 4: Invite Guests Over

The final, and arguably most important, step to transforming your kitchen into your favorite restaurant is inviting others into the space. O'Brien says hosting doesn't have to be extravagant and over-the-top to be important and memorable. Hosting is meant to encourage and fill the host just as much as it does the guests.

"I think a huge part of hospitality is being a place for brokenhearted moments," she says. "What an honor it would be if my home were the one that a friend thought of coming to when something hard happened. It's for helping me, but it's also for serving others."

Don't Be Afraid to Get Creative

In addition to using repurposed glass containers for food storage and organizing products in repeating order (like grocery stores typically do), O'Brien's biggest piece of advice for rebranding your kitchen is to start with what excites you. For her, that was designing the branding and labels for her food storage. At the beginning, the whole project might seem overwhelming, but if you shift your priorities, O'Brien says the process will be more fun and seamless.

"I think you will abandon ship quickly if you start on something that you don't actually like," she says. "And so, my encouragement for everyone is to see the kitchen [as] the ultimate place to play." In pursuit of "playing" with your space and not taking the project too seriously, O'Brien says not to be afraid to use color and embrace your own unique style.

"I think we limit ourselves so much in what we could do in a home because we don't want to be extra, or we think, 'I don't know, you don't want to be too much.' I hate that," she says. "When you approach home as a creative practice, I think it makes you more excited to invite other people in, too. When we're kids, we like to dream—and I think you lose that magic as an adult, and we shouldn't. The sky's the limit."