Lately...

Apparently I took a blogging hiatus. I'm back now...at least for today! :)
You may know...I haven't been feeling fantastic lately. Aside from work, I've spent a lot of time napping, lounging, and doing small tasks around the house.

Here's a little glimpse of new things that have been happening around our casa.

There's been a lot of laundry going on. Perhaps a bit more than usual. I blame the warm weather on multiple outfits worn each day by both of us and "two shower" days (also known as super hot days!)


Then something exciting happened in the gym room. It magically grew and window A/C...

and a TV... Ok the truth is we had this TV sitting upstairs since Christmas of last year. It was a gift to me/Michael won it at work. Unfortunately, we didn't have cable anywhere else in the house except the living room, so it sat unused for quite some time. (The empty TV box-which also sat upstairs for months-became a home for a monstrous beetle that scared the you-know-what out of me last week...more on that another time!) When we renovated the kitchen we put cable into the bookcase in front of the treadmill. Major improvement!


Next up, Michael decided it was time to get back into his long list of house projects. First up was sanding the trim around the back door (new) window. Hopefully before winter we can repaint the trim so things look a little nicer.

another action shot:


Another project I attacked this weekend was finally sorting through our pile-o-papers that needed to be filed. We let this get way out of control throughout the kitchen renovation because it was just too complicated to get it done--or perhaps we were just too lazy?!?! At any rate, I spent an hour or two this weekend sorting through the pile and organizing everything for filing. I filed a portion of it before deciding it was just too darn hot upstairs to do any more. At least it'll be easy to get it done now.
No post is complete without random pictures of the activities that have gone on. Sorry this isn't very exciting!



This "junk" room still houses some miscellaneous kitchen stuff, artwork that needs to be hung, my good old college desk we never use, our printer, and a whole bunch of someone's boxes of stuff from his parent's house. Perhaps someone can encourage said person to go through them and put things away??? A little help here!

Taking Our House Back!

Even though the kitchen isn't complete, we decided to take our house back! We spent most of Saturday moving back into the kitchen-entirely. This meant also getting the dining room back to it's original (bare) state! Even though it isn't a finished room, it's a major improvement over how it's looked for the past few months. We moved stuff, wiped everything down before putting it way, cleaned the room, etc...

Here's how it looks now:





Stocked Pantry:


Cabinets with stuff in them:



Proof that I used our kitchen this weekend. I made Mom G-K's famous chocolate chip coffee cake, lemon cookies, whole wheat pancakes, and chocolate chip whole wheat pancakes. Here's the proof (of some of it at least!)



A few views of the kitchen in it's current state:

(woops forgot to take a picture of the fridge, in it's final resting place. It looks like a built in...love it!)




One of my latest creations. It matches the kitchen better in person. The flash really alters the colors too much. It's the new island centerpiece. Nice isn't it?




Feels good to have our house back. In fact, it feels like a whole new house! Can't wait to get the place finished!

Long Overdue...but still not done!

First we got some lights installed, and some appliances, and some crown molding...





And then we experimented with placement of the small island. They'll be cutting off the bottom toe kick and replacing it with more furniture like feet. The Island will be removed to re-do the floors (again) but this way we could experiment with placement.



And then the trim was painted! Looking good...



And then the floors were sanded down...again. Was this the 3rd time or the 4th. Side note: they've been done 5 times and still aren't great. But we give up!




At this point, we were tired of waiting...so we moved back in!



Love my spice cabinet!!


But love my trash/recycling drawer the most!




And then we got hardware. Love it!




And this last batch of pictures are for Mom G-K...to prove that we did indeed remove all the protective plastic from the beautiful new appliances. Good looking stuff if I do say so....pays to spend a little more and get all the stainless appliances with no black. Love the look!








p.s. It's really tough to capture the true color of the cabinets. It's a very subtle neutral with a hint of green. It's fantastic in person...but odd in pictures!

p.p.s. You may be wondering why we didn't put a fridge in our kitchen! HA! It's still in the dining room for the foreseeable future. Since they had to do the floors 5 times there was no sense in having it moved yet. Soon...hopefully!