Sunday, January 25, 2009

Kitchen Transformation...

Thought I'd post pictures of what my kitchen has been through since I moved in.

January 2006
This is what the previous owners did. All plaid and rooster/chicken wallpaper...




October 2006
We painted it red...





September 2007
My mother-in-law and I painted it "dust storm aka Raggett Brown" while Jeff and his dad were at a NASCAR race....






January 2009
The wood trim transformation in progress...Trim opening to dining room has been painted. Doesn't it look great! I can't wait for the rest of the trim to finally look like that!




We did a lot more sanding today but still are not done with that process. I will never ever again complain about painting because it's 100 times more "fun" than sanding will ever be!

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Sometimes life catches you off guard....

...or Jennifer takes the picture when we aren't quite ready!

Friday, January 23, 2009

Happy Birthday, Jennifer!

Today is my oldest sister's birthday!

Happy Birthday, Jennifer!



Sunday, January 18, 2009

Baskets and Dishtowels

A very easy way to shop for gifts for friends (or even for yourself! I have!)....please stop by my mom's dishtowel site and sister's coiled basket site. They are both just a click away. You can't go wrong! Click on their logos below! =-D







Covered in a heavy dusting of spackle...

More about this lovely home renovation project we took on....We tore down the chair rail and Jeff had to spackle around where it was. The plan for today was that he was going to sand down the spackle and I was going to paint...blue. I bought three different shades of blue and also tried two neutral shades of leftover paint from other rooms and nothing was looking good! It wasn't even that we couldn't agree with eachother on a color...we just hated everything we tried.

So, we called Jeff's Aunt Carolyn who basically has a gift for decorating. Jeff's mom said to send Cayolyn pictures of the dining room, as well as what we've already painted (the kitchen) and also of the living room since we plan to paint that as well, after we get the trim painted in there. Pictures are below. Apparently, you can't go wrong with Carolyn's advice! I'm excited to hear what colors she picks for us. =-)

And now for the reason behind the title of this blog.... Jeff started to sand down the spackle with his electric sander. I came downstairs a bit after he started, do see the room COVERED in a huge cloud of white dust. We had covered the dining room table and china cabinet so I thought we were ok....until we noticed the dust was landing everywhere.....even covered the railing that led to the upstairs!! So, needless to say, we spent about the next 3 hours just vaccuming all our possessions on the first floor, dusting, mopping, doing laundry, etc. It was crazy!



The light fixture is brused nickel but for some reason it's looking brass in the pictures.

I hope to have "after" pictures loaded sometime this week...which means I have to get paiting sometime soon! Stay tuned!

Friday, January 16, 2009

Sneak Peak

What do Jeff and I do on our Friday's off?! Home improvements, that's what! This winter (hopefully done before Spring), we are painting all of our wood trim downstairs. This has turned into much bigger of a job than we anticipated but it's well worth it.

Have you ever wanted something so bad that when you finally get it, you realize you looked over a few things? That's what happened when we bought the house. The wood grain trim didn't even phase us, until we started trying to paint and couldn't find a single color that didn't fight with the wood. So, we finally decided to pain it white. Much is involved with that...sand, wiping down, taping, priming, painting, etc.

Today we finished painting the trim in the dining room...which included two doorways, to the kitchen and living room so it was a big room to take on for it being our first one. Oh, and I must add, painting baseboards is NOT fun. I did come up with a brilliant idea though regarding the carpet and not getting paint on it and it worked just well!

Ok, so here is what the dining room looked like before....ugly, right!!! It was this color when we moved in.



And here is a sneak peak of the new white trim from the kitchen leading into the dining room.


I can't wait until it's all done...we still have to paint the dining room, paint the living room and it's trim, paint the hallway and kitchen trim, and then maybe paint the hallways. I am choosing a blue for the dining room...almost gray but not quite. It's strange, I'm not a fan of blue rooms but I have a vision for the dining room and it includes blue, not sure why!

More to come...stay tuned!

Monday, January 12, 2009

Three things

Three things are on my mind at this moment:

1) The light fluffy snow in the next-to-none breeze, looked so pretty tonight when I left work...probably the prettiest snow fall we've had this season...BUT, I'm still waiting more than ever for the day I can drive home when it's not dark and with my windows down!

2) If you are going to steal, that's one thing. Steal from Petco...that's another...if you are that hard up for money, you shouldn't have a pet. However, teaching your own CHILDREN how to steal, is just wrong! I witnessed this in PetCo tonight...interesting story. And finally, the debit card you are using that got declined, is probably declined because the person you STOLE it from already canceled the card.

3) I'm so happy The Bachelor is on. I know Jason Mesnick is already engaged but I can't wait to see who he picked. He deserves so much better than DeAnna anyways...she was too materialistic for him.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

Author?

My profile pic makes me look like an author. You know, you open up a hardback book and the author's picture is right there on the inner cover? That's what I feel like my picture looks like. But, I'm not an author (and you'll soon realize that as you read my blog). In fact, I don't even like to read. But, totally unrelated, I did finally finish reading a book tonight that I've had in my possession since July. That's pretty good for me, really. Anyways, here's a bigger version of the suspect picture? Author? What do you think?

Saturday, January 10, 2009

My first entry...



Well, here I am. My first entry in my new blog. (Still blogging in the other blog that Jeff and I share which you can find in my "Blogs I follow" section and it's titled "Do What Now?"

Yeah, my first entry...It'll be short and sweet, like most of my entries. Nothing too exciting here, folks! I don't have kids to post about but will most likely talk enough about my cat to the point where you just might think he is my child! LOL

As my profile states, I'm just a simple person, leading a pretty simple life, hence the simplicity of this blog going forward! =-) Most of my entries will consist of what Jeff, I, and friends do for fun in Kansas City.

Tonight, we are headed to Bonefish Grill. This is a place that Jeff's parents took us when they were visiting for Christmas. We had a good time with them and Jeff's sister and her husband. Jeff and I didn't know we had a Bonefish in this town. We'd never heard of it before then. However, you can find pretty much anything here...we seem to have it all! Fish Bone was delicious and I'm excited about getting to go back! After that, we plan to see the new movie, Grand Torino. It looks like a pretty good action flick.

Well, that's all for now...pretty borning, eh? ;-) That's ok, I'm not one for a hectic crazy life...this one suits me just well!

Hope everyone is having a good weekend.