Eat Here

I put Jon to work on Saturday, hanging up mugs (no more used water cups laying around my counters!) and my awesome vintage metal "eat" sign I found at a local antique store (on sale - bonus!).

More House

Per request, here is a shot of our photo wall. There are 3 rows of 8x10 frames and 1 row of 5x7's. Most of the pictures are black and white, and I chose a few in color that have lots of turqouise or gold in them. I love that I can switch photos in and out as I please, and that there are many many memories to sit and gaze at.

These are the curtains I just put in the dining room. I decided I liked the blue toile better in my kitchen, so adjusted these gold ones for the dining area. They were too short, so I added the gold silk skirt at the bottom. I still have a little fine-tuning to do on them, but I'm happy with the change.

Here is our new kitchen again, with a few pops of red I was looking for. I tried the little red pom pom fringe with my toile valance, but Madelyn said it made her feel like she was at a Mexican fiesta searching for a sombrero. That wasn't the look I was going for, so I ripped that seam and just kept it simple.

I spray painted the R at the window and the mug hook hanging on the wall. The framed photo is hiding some ugly cords and a baby monitor. I am still on the look-out for some other pops of color. One of these days maybe I'll get a cherry red Kitchen-Aid! That would do the trick. :)

Kitchen Makeover

It's almost nearly completely done! Look at my lovely kitchen. Jon put the last cupboard door on just as we were leaving for Illinois. It was exciting to come home again to our freshly painted kitchen. We still have to put in new flooring and install the lights above the sink and underneath cabinets, but I'm loving the new look.

Here is the before.

beadboard

When my dad arrived a week ago, nearly the first words he said were, "What projects should we do?" My answer was ready: Beadboard.

Dad and Jon worked all week and got the beadboard all up. Last night Jon got the crown moulding up. Now it's my job to putty and caulk the seams, and then the painting can resume again! Thank you, dad, for all your hard work. I am so excited to see the job progress.

Kitchen Questions

Here is our new kitchen ceiling with light fixtures attached. The light is so much better than with the old flourescents. Softer yet brighter, and right where I need it. We still have a pretty good bump across one part of the ceiling where the drywall was uneven, but we are going to fix up the walls and wait a bit before we try and do anything else with the ceiling. Maybe it will be less noticeable once we have other pretty things going on.


I now have a small dilemma - When we tried to remove the wallpaper that had several coats of paint on top, it damaged the drywall pretty badly. We want to just cover all the wall space now with beadboard paneling. You can see there is not a whole lot of wall space to cover. It is mostly windows and cupboards. I plan on painting the bottom cupboards black - so the black appliances blend. The top cupboards will be a creamy white. Questions:

1. Should I paint all the beadboard and trim the same color as the top cupboards?
2. Should I put the vertical blinds back up over the sliding glass door, or do white or maybe pale pale blue curtains?
3. Should I remove the decorative molding that is above the kitchen sink? It might be pretty painted white. Or not.

Emma's 7th and a Little Demolition

Emma turned 7 yesterday. She invited 3 of her friends over for an afternoon of crown-making, wand-waving, and princessy food-eating. She picked out this pinata,

which she commented had, "a very freaky face",

and "her legs are mutated!" - but still she was pretty enough to take home and fill to overflowing.

She had a great day, and it was made extra special by having grandma and grandpa here for a visit.

My mom and I took the girls to Home Depot in the morning to make their free project.

It was pretty fun making these little message centers.

Not sure what we are going to do with three of them, but here we have them. While we worked on these, my dad and Jon were doing a little demolition in my kitchen.

I've been wanting to take out the dropped ceiling and flourescent lighting in my kitchen since we moved in. We ended up with this amazing looking sight just in time for Emma's party guests to arrive. We now have some new dry wall over this crazy green stuff, and hope to finish before my parents have to leave tomorrow afternoon.