Friday, March 28, 2008

Let the demo begin!!!

We started ripping out our ugly ceramic tile kitchen floor on Wednesday! I am so glad to see that eye sore go!! The guy who lived here before us seemed to thing fake marbly looking white tile with black grout was the greatest! He did the same thing to the kids bathroom!! Yuck!!! I much prefer how it looks now with the tile out and the white adhesive covering the subfloor!! I am SO glad to get rid of the white kitchen!! It really is not nice especially when you have 4 little hands living in the house!! White cabinets, white floor, white countertop = YUCK!!!!

I've gotten really bad the last few months about caring for the cabinets and countertops! I've been cutting right on the formica (which did I tell you how much I hate white formica - it soaks up everything spilled on it and many times doesn't even come clean with a magic eraser!), not wiping down the cabinets, even tried to not mop the floor, but I had to stop rebelling against that!

So, we got the tile layer off except for under the fridge and stove, we'll do that tomorrow. Next up is the subfloor, then the circa 1950's lovely green and red floor. After that is up, we should find our hardwood floors. I won't say it was easy, I think we have the hardest part ahead of us yet, but it is a good stress reliever and thankfully our kitchen is only 11x11 square! Here are some visuals.





How I long for my lovely quartz counters, deep maple with a cocoa glaze cabinets and lovely beige glazed porcelain tile (which will not show a chip if it does somehow get chipped!). Ahhhhhh . . .

We bought all new appliances yesterday!! We got mar-proof stainless steel so they don't show the fingerprints! I'm amazed at the cost of appliances these days! Did you know it costs an extra $200 to get stainless steel sides (rather than black) on a refrigerator? Yep, it does, and we did it, it'll look SO much nicer!

We got all Professional Series appliances except for the stove as it had a warming drawer on the bottom (which I never use) and didn't have the warming burner.


We hope to have the floor all done by Sunday evening, then our part of demo is done!! The rest is for the professionals!! Kinda wish we would've had them do the floor too! LOL

Monday we'll go shopping for lighting, new faucet and a new garbage disposal!! Fun stuff!

Monday, March 24, 2008

Coming to a close!

Easter break is coming to an end!! Tomorrow morning is back to the grind!! 7:15 sure is going to be tough considering we've been getting up at 10 and 11am the last six days!

What fun we had though!!

We painted eggs:


We had real bad winds here again. This time it managed to rip off the lattice trellis we have around our back patio. So, we'll have to replace that as soon as it warms up so my multiple clematis have a place to grow up!

Daddy gave Jack a buzz after the Macy beauty parlor incident! Now the two of them look exactly alike! Forgive the horrible pic!


We hung out with some of the mlpa gals and their kids:


Upon arriving home from Mr. B's, this was sitting in the driveway!


Chris went and picked it up while we were gone!! Here are the twins enjoying the interior! Jack brought out his toy level and tools to help Daddy get it set up!


Then, of course, yesterday was Easter!! Jack woke up at 7:15 and went downstairs and found Macy's basket, she heard that and had a breakdown, so I had to re-hide it! We went to Grammy and Pappy's for Easter dinner and the kids did an egg hunt there.


Jack now has a respiratory thing going on with a low grade fever. Poor guy, he slept most of today. Looks like he'll probably be missing school tomorrow.

We got word that our kitchen remodel is starting next Wednesday as long as there are no problems!! Our cabinet guy is working on putting the cocoa glaze on our cabinets right now!!! We now need to get our ceramic tile smashed out of there by Wednesday, we'll probably work on that this weekend during the day. I'll work on getting everything out of the cabinets this week! We have to go buy the new lighting, faucet and garbage disposal! Appliance shopping must be done too!! Woohoo!! Very exciting!

I managed to get one layout done during break too. I just LOVE the new Daisy D Wonder Years line!! It's so me, nice and bright!!


Thanks for reading!! Have a great week!!

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Random nothingness!

Not a whole lot going on here! Looking forward to 3:10pm today when school is out for a week!! We've got some fun plans for the days off!

We got a pancake puff pan last week. Have you seen that infomercial? The kids love it and have wanted one, so when we saw it at Boscov's, we had to buy it!

It does make a yummy puff, but definately better with plain batter!! The blueberry ones didn't get totally done all the way through.

My favorite Tastycake of all time is in the stores right now!!


I feel bad for the parts of the country that don't have Tastycakes!! Hippity Hops are to die for!!! Dangerous, I tell ya!!

Jack and I made Irish Soda Bread yesterday for St. Patrick's Day. I can never get a smooth disc out of the dough, so it's always lumpy on the outside but oh so yummy on the inside!


Here he is testing it out!


Notice his nice haircut? Yeah, that's courtesy of Macy's Beauty Salon! She takes walk-ins and is free of charge!

Jack had a modified preschool day today from 11-12:30. Chris and I went out for lunch while he was there.

Friday we are hopefully going to pick up our camper! Yay!! Then we can start planning our first long weekend in April! Super exciting!!

Still waiting on a kitchen start date!! This is such a long process!! I just want it to be done!!

I'll leave you with this layout. Didn't turn out quite like I hoped, kinda blah feeling to me so I'll probably end up scrapping these pics again in the future!


Have a great week!!

Friday, March 14, 2008

It turned out to be a gorgeous day!!

Macy had off school yesterday and today for conferences. I didn't need to go to a conference for her, so that's nice!!

I decided last night that I'd take them to Hershey today since Chris would be working. Well, we woke up around 9am and it was raining pretty hard, so I had to think of alternative plans! The rain ended up stopping and it turned out to be a gorgeous day with a high of 60 degrees!! We'll try to hit Hershey during the spring break next week!

We went to IHOP for lunch. They have special Horton Hears a Who foods right now. Jack had the "who-cakes" minus the green eggs and ham! He loved them! They have some pink and blue boysenberry syrup on them plus sprinkles and a bubble gum lollipop! Can't beat that!!

Then we went to the mall for our yearly Easter Bunny picture!! Jack kept giving the bunny kisses! This is the best of 4 pics that they took.


We had to go to AC Moore too to get me a new heat gun. The little monster decided to play with mine and I think he burned it out!! grrr . . .

Came home to have some craft time. Since it was gorgeous, we did it outside! I bought some little dollar family shadowboxes last week, so we painted those. Jack's started out nice and colorful like Macy's, but whenever he paints, he smooshes all the colors together then and winds up with a lovely shade of gray!



I did some much needed yard cleanup while they painted, then they helped me after they were finished!! We've got one side of the house done, we'll work on the rest over the weekend if it's still nice out!!!

It was definately too beautiful of a day to be inside!!! We were out for hours and it was so nice!! Yay for spring coming!!!

Jack got his preschool pics back last week, so I'll leave you with that!!!



Have a great weekend!!!

Tuesday, March 4, 2008

A Hint of Spring!

Yesterday was beautiful, it got up to 60 degrees!! We were all outside for most of the day! Today is warm as well. Jack and I got to sneak out for a few minutes before it started to rain.

The kids enjoyed riding their bikes and scooters yesterday and also swinging on the tree swing!





Later in the day, after Macy got home from school and after we ate, she and Chris went to the camping store and came home with a receipt for a down payment on a pop up camper!! Did I just say that? Me, buying a camper? Nah, we had a good camping experience when we went to NY back in August, much better than our local camping experiences, so it'll be fun! Being up off the ground will be excellent! Less chance of critters biting at my toes! LOL We went to an RV show at our local expo center last weekend and enjoyed looking at pop ups up to the $300,000 home on wheels! We decided we wanted to buy used (no chance for engine problems with these!), since this is our first, not to mention it would save a few pennies! We searched around and found a local dealer listing on Craigslist. We went and looked at it on Sunday and it's in great shape!! Chris and I thought about it and decided to go for it!! The dealer is at a big RV show this week, so when they get back next, we'll go and pay it off and get our lesson on how to use it! I'm excited, already planning a trip to Maine with stops in the other New England states on the way! We're also going to try to do a weekend every month! Should be really fun, camping is such a great family bonding experience!

I'll leave you with two layouts. I did these for the ScrapGal March newsletter. The theme this month is "inherit".



Thanks for reading!! Have a great day!!

Saturday, March 1, 2008

I was heading to bed . . .


but felt the need to make this instead!

I've been wanting to do it for a few days and decided tonight was the night!

It's a quick project. I cut the shape out of Hambly using my Expression, then cut the outline part out of a piece of Fancy Pants.

The hardest part was rummaging through all those felt alphas to find the right ones, and then creatively piecing them together if I didn't have the correct letter!

Of course, a project is not complete with bling and Radiant Rain sprays!! Added a little silver Glimmer Mist with the Rains on the flower.

No big plans for the weekend. I think we're supposed to get some snow tonight, but it's not doing anything outside right now.

In more scrapping news, I had 3 layouts accepted for the Making Memories Scrapbook Idea Gallery 2008! Super excited about that!!

Have a great weekend, everyone!