New Car --- Finally!!!

Well crazy times call for crazy measures!!

Things have been crazy busy in this crazy house over the past month or so. After B's visit, he decided that being away was not going to work out for us anymore! He is home now and starts a new job on Monday.

In the past month we have taken the popcorn crud off the last of our ceilings, replaced a hall door, and put tint on our big sliding glass door. Not a whole lot going on in the home improvement department, but man have I had car issues!!! Ugh its been rotten!! Well tonight we finally got our old SUV going again but its only a matter of time before something else decides to give us trouble. Sooooooo... I got a new car!!! Yaaaaaayyyy!!!! Lets just hope things work out with the newest addition to the family! His name is Nixon and he is a 2012 Kia Sorento!! I am a little peeved though because when I asked about rebates yesterday, while we were signing papers, they assured me there were none... I looked it up on the KIA website today when I had the chance, and lo and behold I am entitled to a nice cash back bonus!! It was valid yesterday!! So tomorrow Kyle and his finance buddy are going to get an ear full from me if they don't hand over my pretty little(big) check!!

I wish I had more fun stuff to show you... I haven't painted the ceiling yet but that is next weeks job since B will be at work on my day off.

-S

A doorway you can't use???

Things have been pretty crazy since B has been back in the country. I have had to be much more thrifty in my projects because our income has shrunk considerably(worth it to have him home). So the projects have slowed a bit but the ones we have done are amazing!

Lets start with the popcorn ceilings!!! Sooo ugly!!! But so nice now! We spent days(weeks) sanding and compounding and sanding and compounding and sanding and and and oh man it was a lot of work to smooth out the ceiling. Ill admit, though, it was only one part at a time with a day or two in between. Our living room had so much dust in it that I had to vacuum our couches, then run a swiffer over them, and THEN wipe them down with a wet cloth. We tried covering them but it didn't always work. Anyway, Id include pictures but its just a boring old ceiling and I'm sure you'll catch glimpses of it in the next projects picture bank.

Next we got rid of those awful looking doorways we had...
As you can see there are big modern walk through openings that we normally use. Next to them, however, are the remnants of old doorways. Real doorways... minus the doors. Who, might you ask, would modernize a house by making big grand openings next to old doorways and then neglect to close up those old openings? A crazy person, that's who! We have been wanting to fix this for every minute of every day of the three years we have owned this house. We finally got around to doing it! (So for three years we were the crazy people)
The two openings are referred to as the kitchen opening and the hallway opening. So we did the hallway opening first, and I would totally post an "after" picture but I didn't get one before we started in on retiling the hallway... Suuuuper messy!!

But anyway, we ended up working with an architecture to make sure our house was not going to fall down when we closed up the openings and made the hallway opening a little wider.

The pictures at the bottom are the "after" pictures for the kitchen opening and on the other side of that wall we put in that custom shelving unit instead of closing it completely!

Curb Appeal

We had such a fun time when B came home for a visit! The major thing we did together was weed cloth/ rock in the front flower bed!! I get soooo tired of pulling weeds and nothing ever grows in there except for bushes because they get drowned anytime it rains!! So to make things simple and clean looking, we replaced the top 6 inches of with rocks that we lined with weed cloth!

-S

Before

Before... again...

Progress!!

Still workin on it!

Such a hottie ;)

Lookin Good!

Yaaaaaaaaay! All done!

Recap!!

What a crazy few months!

Let me catch you up on all that I have been doing!

Finished the rock wall.. mostly!
Laid sod in the back yard
Made the pond functional
Got a Kitchen Cart!!!!
Planted a ton of flowers
Saw some of last years bulbs come up!
Spray Painted some stools for the table
Built a table
Planted and harvested some onions!
Planted Potatoes, Carrots, and Lettuce
Framed a few more of my pics for the walls
Rearranged the living room furniture
Made Red Velvet Cheesecake
Made Carrot Cake Cheesecake Cupcakes (that was a mouthful... pun intended lol)
Planted some Roses
Planted Raspberries, Blackberries, and Blueberries
Organized my office.. mostly lol
 Shampooed my carpets!



-S

Jet used to be so tiny!!!

Just another day in Paradise

Got these at a greaaaaaat price ;)

The tablecloth was also a home creation :)

Reinforced the legs with angle braces!

The battery cables were suuuuper corroded!

Workin on the battery cables in my car!

Old Pallets

Surprisingly comfy

To hold ice and drinks!

I replaced a bunch of old outlets because they weren't holding the plugs in!

Kiiinda organized!

My first rose!

Yay for lilies!!!

First tiny little raspberry!

Such pretty flowers! Half of which were planted 2 years ago :)

Made a shelf because R doesn't have enough room for her stuff.

The table I built is bar height!

The beginnings of the onions!

Harvested onions

Ready for the freezer!!

"Fruit Basket" cake lol

RIDICULOUSLY DELICIOUS Red Velvet Cheesecake

Chocolate Cheesecake: Used my moms recipe but added some cocoa powder :)

I love thick graham cracker crusts!

Fudge Brownies

The brownies baked up and around the fudge... oooooo yummy!

Brandt figured this out! Waffle iron quesadillas!

Brownie cake... seriously just two layers of brownie with frosting in between...

Shortbread with strawberries, marshmallow cream stuffs and raspberries(half frozen lol)

Green Eggs and Ham

Everything is going green these days! My family has had a Garden on and off for the past 20+ years. The kids in the family were charged with keeping the weeds out of the garden and it seemed to foster hatred toward anything green. Gardening was not fun for us. As I grew older, I began to appreciate the pay off. I have a certain fondness for FRESH tomatoes. The bland grocery store tomatoes just don't cut it these days. In the summertime i LOVE salads. I cant seem to get myself to eat them in the wintertime. They are flat and tasteless. I guess you could say I'm a seasonal "salad dodger".

I have decided to embark on the concept of indoor gardening. I saw a picture of a converted bookshelf and went nuts. Some of the shelves had tube lights installed shining down on them and there were trays with plants in them. The lights were obviously grow lights because plants cant grow without sunlight.

So first I needed a bookcase!

-S

Kitchen Phase 2: Round 2!

I am done with the cabinets!

It took FOREVER to finish sanding and staining and sealing the cabinet doors. I had to work on them three or four at a time with a week or two in between because Jan and Feb have been SO busy for me! This post has taken two or three attempts to finally publish!

I wish the counter tops and floors were done for the full effect, but whatcha gonna do with limited funds and time!?!

I think everything came out really well, however, the sections below the stove did not come out as evenly as I would have hoped. I think my drawers were made from a different kind of wood as my cabinet doors, and on top of that I think they were all made from fake woods while the base cabinets were actually real. This made for some funny differences in textures and "character" lines. I'm thinking in another year or two I will probably end up doing a antique white paint job over the whole lot. For now, though, I will enjoy my hard work!

I had to do four or five layers of polyurethane on top of the finish to get the finish the way I wanted.

Hope ya like them!

-S

Kitchen Phase 2: Round 1

Well not new... just refurbished.

OH MAAA GAAAASSHHHHH

My friend and I finally got around to picking up some cabinet stain and by the time we got home from our quick Lowes run, I was WAY pumped. So at 6pm, the "little" project began! I didn't clean up till around 10.

Vacuum attached to help with dust.

I have had really good luck with Skil branded stuff. I used my Skil sander for most of the sanding.  In previous blogs I have mentioned tools that have been really helpful to me. I have referred to these tools as "my" tools. Unfortunately, they are not all mine. Some are my husbands tools and he wanted me to be sure that you knew this! Now that's out of the way, here we go!

I advise wearing some sort of ear protection.

Once all of the cabinets were empty, I took the doors off. The doors still need to be sanded, but this project isn't even close to being done. Anything I couldn't fit in the lower cabinets, I covered with sheets. I used sheets instead of plastic because I was worried that when the cleanup started, the dust would just fly off the plastic sheets. The dust kinda stuck to the cloth sheets and I was able to fold them up and get them into the laundry without making an even bigger mess.

Oops

In my haste to begin the project, I left a few things out on the counter. OOoooops!

I almost forgot to sand the inside edges of the cabinets. I was aaaallllmost finished when I realized this sad detail, and it made the project feel like it took forever.

 It got pretty messy. But between old clothes and swiffer wet mops, cleanup wasn't too bad.
The next afternoon I made tortellini over the stove. My stove MAJORLY started to smoke. I think I may have gotten some wood dust in the catcher thingy below my burner! I cleaned it all out and things were fine, but it kinda smelled like a bonfire!

Soooo Purdy!!!!

Tomorrow I plan on doing the rest of the kitchen.


Here's my Plan Of Attack! :
~Sand Cabinet Faces
~Stain and Seal Cabinet Faces
~Put Stuff Back In My Cabinets
~Sand Cabinet Doors
~Stain and Seal Cabinet Doors
~Be SUPER Excited.

I figured I didn't need the doors to be able to utilize my cabinet space. If I do the doors last, then I have a functional kitchen much much sooner! Plus I can sand the doors outside where the clean up will be virtually nonexistent!

Cant wait to get started again!!

-S