4th of July Recap

Well I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. Ours was busy, if nothing else.

Friday night we went to a local fireworks show, which was very good. Saturday we went to A’s parents’ house for a bbq and to visit with everyone (A’s grandparents came down to visit, too). Sunday was full of baking beer bread and cookies. We took some cookies to our friends’ that evening when we went to a bbq there and then to watch BIG fireworks. It was all very fun, but I was glad I didn’t have to work Monday so I could rest!

Monday A was off too, so we worked on cleaning the house and started putting knobs on the new cabinets. We got all of them on the doors, so all that’s left is the drawers. They look great! That afternoon we went to test drive some vehicles and to Menard’s. Yes, again. (You’d think we’d get tired of that place by now, wouldn’t you?) We bought a new ceiling fan for the kitchen and a new light to put over the kitchen sink. (The ceiling fan needed replaced because you can’t turn the fan on without the light or the light won’t come back on.)

I’m really liking my new kitchen...I will be glad though when we get the flooring put in, too, though and it will be finished. I’ll be glad for a break from home improvement projects.

Last night we got a cucumber, a bell pepper, a tomato and 2 cherry tomatoes! (We didn’t mean to pick the pepper or one of the cherry tomatoes…they just came off by mistake!) We should have a few more cherry tomatoes to pick tonight, too! I’m so excited that our garden is finally producing a bit more. I was worried about it there for awhile!

Oh yeah, and Yoshi is still growing in case you wanted to know. We had to expand his collar again this weekend, and now he’s so tall we can reach his head without bending over!

How does your garden grow?

Ours is officially producing! We have picked two (little ones) Roma tomatoes and 1 regular tomato, and one cucumber. We have tons of baby tomatoes all over every plant. It is wonderful! We haven't eaten any of it yet, but I can't wait!

Oh yeah, and in other news, I officially have a working dishwasher now. Sweet!

We went to Menard's. Now Menard's is coming to us.

In all the excitement for posting pictures last time, I forgot and left out the most interesting part!

Remember how I said we brought home an AWFULLY lot of boxes for cabinets on Thursday?

Well, we were right, our instincts were correct, and it was all true.

We brought home just a couple too many boxes...like, let’s say, well, exactly DOUBLE what we were supposed to have.

How did this happen, you ask? Well, when I finalized the cabinet order, we switched one type of cabinet from a slotted cabinet to a pullout (for cookie sheets-it’s a wonderful thing). No big deal, they switched our money over to the new order and everything was good for moving ahead.

Except that Menard’s apparently forgot to cancel the first order of cabinets.

So both orders came in, we picked both of them up, and all the fork lift guys and the guy checking our trailer on the way out, let us take both orders home. Nobody caught the slip.

And when we were putting up cabinets, we had inadvertently opened some duplicate cabinets a couple times before we realized what was going on. So in some cases, where a board didn’t look quite right, I got to just choose the prettier one!

The whole situation was really a little bit crazy. When I went to Menard’s on my lunch hour Monday morning, they were in a bit of disbelief themselves, that even though we got checked over that much, we had been sent home with a double order. They asked that we bring them back and mark through the boxes what we had used (since we had probably opened several from both orders). I asked them (politely, of course!) if we could have someone come out and pick them up (keep in mind, we live an hour away from the store, and we had to borrow a trailer to bring these things home in the first place). I got a call back that night saying they would be able to send a truck out to our house and when worked best for us?

So the Menard’s truck is headed to our lovely abode tomorrow morning. I will again have my sunroom open (so you can walk in it!) and the second order will be going back where it belongs!

Before before, before, and AFTER!

Well, I've been gone awhile but I've got something good now to make you feel better about the whole thing. Because I know you all missed me so much...


This weekend was a busy one for us, starting with Thursday night. Thursday after work I met A at Menard's to pick up our new cabinets! Wahoo! We loaded up four pallets of boxes (that's right, I said four and the boxes were double stacked) which seemed like an awful lot for our 10 foot current kitchen plus the 7 or so feet of top cabinets we were adding. But more on that a little later.

Friday began the installation! Our parents came to help, and in about 2 hours the top cabinets were ripped out and the new cabinets on top were installed! It was fantastic! Then Saturday was spent taking out the bottom cabinets, figuring out the crazy plumbing that is in our house (because, you know, when has anything in our house been completed correctly?), and installing the new cabinets on bottom along with my new countertop and new deep (8 inch!) kitchen sink. Can I just say my kitchen looks amazing right now? And that's even without the new floor that we will eventually be putting in, when we can get up the gumption.

By now, your chants of "pic-tures, pic-tures, pic-tures" have become distracting, so I guess I will oblige.

This is what I like to call the "before before" picture. This is the kitchen we bought (and this is how the entire house was decorated, if that gives you a better idea of what we've been dealing with).

This is what color we painted it. Lovely sunny yellow kind of outdoes the border above in my opinion. But I digress. Do you see the cabinets in these pictures? This is what I had before. Note the missing cabinet pull on the top cabinet and keep in mind that the sink had apparently leaked for QUITE a while since the mold was unbelievable. And they smelled like icky mold, too.

Now, can I get a drumroll, please! Enter the new lovely oak cabinets! That smell nice and new and have not a trace of mold at all! Not to mention the incredible storage I have now, compared with before. (Please ignore the mess on my countertop. I promise that it doesn't always look that way. At least most of the time.)

Look at all these cabinets! My kitchen actually looks like a kitchen now!

You may have noticed the cinder blocks stacked on each end of the counter. Here's a close up for you.

This is what happens when the counter top is stored on its short end instead of its long sides. You get a bowed countertop, and must resort to any and all heavy objects laying around in your yard to weight it down so it will be level and the glue will stick. After a week of this, hopefully your countertop will be flat again. We really hope so, anyway. If it doesn't work for you, DON'T BLAME ME.

I'm in love with my kitchen now. I actually like putting dishes away! Wonder how long I can keep that up...

TaTa!

Mission Accomplished!

Well we did it! Ordered the cabinets. Finally.

Menard’s was a mad house. I mean, seriously, a mad house. You had to rush around to grab what you wanted before it went out of stock. Luckily, we managed to snag the 99 cent tarps we had decided to get and a dishwasher that was on sale. I’m so excited to get our cabinets in just because I’m excited about cabinets, but also because I’m excited to get the dishwasher installed! Wahoo!

My cabinets will be cool. I’ll have one that is specifically for cookie sheets and one that has a pot and pan pullout thingy. Awesomeness. We’re already planning organization and the right order to demolish the old ones in. Because we have to install our new flooring before the cabinets. But you already knew that, I’m sure.

Anyway. I’m tired of rain. It has rained for a week straight and I’ve had enough. Our yard is a soppy jungle and poor Yoshi’s pen resembles a pond in some areas. Yuck. We’re supposed to get some sunshine this week so hopefully we’ll dry out some, soon!

I shopped for a friend’s shower and wedding today, and I’m glad to have that out of the way. I’d tell you what I got her, but I’m not 100% sure she doesn’t read here. I know she’ll like it though.

We also did some junk cleanup around the house this weekend, which was probably prompted by our having to stay inside. We almost overheated the shredder and threw away a ton of old sale ads and newspapers and all the cabinet books we had from our research. And we caught up the laundry. I always love when that happens.

Hope everyone’s weekend was at least a little less soggy than ours!

Can we ever have a project just go smoothly from start to finish?

Well, this week has been a whirlwind. Work is so busy the days just fly by, which is very nice, and then all week we have been pricing and debating about cabinets for the kitchen.

We’ve decided to go with Menard’s because even though they probably weren’t the best quality of all the places we priced, they were definitely the cheapest. And they will still be better than the ones we have now, which had shelves held up with sticks (yes, sticks) when we moved in. I’m pretty excited, but we are running into some minor snags (which, given our recent history, is no surprise).

Snag #1: Our kitchen is small. Super small. Miniscule, when compared to some kitchens. We have 10 feet of counter space, as it stands now, alongside a 72 inch wall where the stove and refrigerator sit, side by side. Smallness means limited options. Which is fine and totally doable, but requires some creativity on our part. Especially because of:

Snag #2: Our kitchen plumbing is stupid. Which is saying something, because it’s not like there’s a lot of it. Only the sink hook up. Our faucets turn backwards, and the plumbing runs throughout our cabinets, requiring holes drilled in the partitions between cabinets. I would really like to avoid this with new cabinets, but I don’t think that will be possible. Which leads me to:

Snag #3: Our kitchen sink and window are a strange distance from the corner of the kitchen. Meaning to get the bottom corner cabinet I would like to have would push the sink base about 5 or 6 inches over. Which means the sink would no longer be centered with the window. Which was about the only thing in our kitchen that was done properly. (Because we found out it’s not usually for the stove and refrigerator to be side by side likes ours are.) I would really really like to avoid putting the sink offcenter.

We have to make our final decision by Sunday, only because that’s when the fantastic sale (netting us a free sink base!) will end. We thought we were basically done yesterday evening, and just needed to do some final little measurments to make sure everything would fit. But the more I think about it, the more I am really not happy about pushing the sink off center (I think it will look funny), and now we are both sitting around thinking about rearranging stuff completely. The lady helping us will probably be extremely relieved when we finally do get done and get out of her hair!

Wish me luck! I think we’ll need it!

Fish frys, Playdoh, and NEW STUFF! Oh my!

Well, boys and girls, this weekend was certainly packed chock full of entertainment.

Saturday was a beautiful sunshiney day, and after the necessary errand running in town to the bank, post office and my parents to get the baked bean pan and visit my cats, A and I headed home again where we just basically puttered and enjoyed the nice weather. That evening we went to A’s parents for a fish fry—I brought baked beans, which I am proud to say turned out very well. Not quite like Mom’s, but good nonetheless. Everyone said so. Just ask ‘em. Well, ok, maybe you could just trust me on this one?

Anyway, after we all had lots of yummy food everyone settled in to play cards. A and I ended up (kind of by default) being the “babysitters” of J and J, the two kids, ages 4 and 1. Lots of fun! And let me just say, if I wasn’t before I am now an expert PlayDoh ball roller. I can make them faster than you can say “bah” in the words of the 1 year old. But oh boy, can you say exhausted when we finally got home around 11:30? Well, I could.

Sunday after church we headed up to the city to buy cereal bowls (we broke one and had a coupon and decided that we needed more anyway because we kept running out), a birthday present for A’s sister and a new computer chair. We ended up getting all that plus a brand spanking new knife set and all the seeds for our garden this year (which we CANNOT wait to start!). This was a little more than we intended to get…but let me explain.

First of all, our knife set was junk. Every single knife in the set was serrated. Every. Single. One. Even the paring knife. Do you have any idea how difficult peeling a potato is with a serrated knife? Well, I do not advise you find out if you don’t know. You might lose a finger. Or something. Anyway.

We decided to use some of our wedding money to buy a better set and we had a coupon to Kohl’s plus the Kitchen Aid and Chicago Cutlery brands were both 20 % off. After much agonizing and hemming and hawing, we finally decided on these:

Which so far seem to be fabulous. (And pretty.)

We also filled out our cereal bowl set in these two colors (we already had six blue ones, one broke, so we replaced it and bought two in the red color):

Our computer chair searching was also successful, as we were able to find one for only $25 at Staples that is light years ahead of our old chair comfort-wise. Which is all I care about for my Sims marathons important computer work. Here’s the one we picked (we got the gray one…which I think totally looks black.)




All in all, a very successful and enjoyable weekend!

Details, details!

Well, details you wanted, so here they come.

Sunday was A and my first wedding shower (of 2 total) and boy was that an event! Though it was a little nerve wracking to sit up in front of about 50 people (albeit my family and friends) all come to sit and watch you, we had a lot of fun. And got a lot of wonderful stuff, too!

Remember this post?

Well, I managed to acquire this:

Which I’m syked about! I can’t wait until we get our house so I can get it out of the box to look at….

And my parents gave us this fabulous thing:

Can you say excited? Well, I was. And am. This little item was not going to stay in the box until we got into our house and could put it away. (Actually it was out of the box within a couple of hours of getting everything home! I couldn’t help myself.)

We also got a quilt made by my Grandma. It is beautiful, and is a whirling hexagon pattern made of blue and yellow (I love those two colors together—it matches my current bedroom!) Everyone at the shower was quite impressed, of course. We even had one of A’s groomsmen wishing he could get one, too! (And really, who could blame him? I would have been jealous of that quilt if it was not mine…which it is. Yay!)

We got a nifty clock that we can put pictures in around the edges, another big skillet, several towels, enough wooden spoons for about 3 houses (but I don’t think you can ever have too many), 2 cutting boards, a knife set, a handheld mixer, a blender, a quesadilla maker (!!!) and of course, A’s favorite 2 things.

The vacuum cleaner (which I’m thrilled to have) from his parents is one of his favorites, and of course, the present from his grandparents is the other. It’s a barbeque grill. Nothing fancy, but since he’s a guy it is right up his alley. And I think I’ll enjoy it, too!

That’s barely making a dent in everything we got (it was amazing!), though we’ve gotten it condensed now into a little corner in my basement. It originally filled up our entire living room floor when we got it home!

Now it’s on to the thank you notes…not that I mind too much. But would it be too much to ask for Walmart to put the cute varieties more than 10 to a pack? I mean, really. ☺

Just call me a bargain shopper!

Sorry it's been so long since I posted. I've been crazy busy, and it seems like I don't have enough time to get everything done! But now I'm back to tell you about my crazy bargain shopping skills!

Well, I guess not really my skills. Seeing as how the whole thing kind of fell into my lap...

But anyway.

A and I bought a stove!! It is only about 6 or 7 months old, so it is pretty nice, and we got it for the bargain price of only $150. $150 for an almost brand new stove! Really the only thing that it needs is cleaning the drip thingies under the burners and the oven. Which I would want to do anyway.

It is exactly like the stove my mom has, with a nice big oven that you can put large cookies sheets side by side, and a self-cleaning oven function. I have to say that I'm thrilled!

And I'd post a picture of it, but I don't really have one, and my camera battery is dead and looks to remain that way for quiet some time since I keep forgetting to charge it, and...sigh. Maybe I'll post a picture later. If I remember. :)

And I bring you....the kitchen wish list!

So today I've been at home because the state gets the day off! (These days are always good!) Anyway, I've been watching some Food Network...and it always makes me want to cook more ambitiously. (Which is saying something because cooking is something that I usually just don't do...although I'm not that terrible at it.) It also makes me want to buy all sorts of fancy cooking gadgets! So I thought I'd list a few of them here for your viewing pleasure:

First on my wish list is a Kitchen Aid Stand mixer...preferably in stainless steel or the blue willow color is quite lovely. To me, these look so so handy, and I just plain like them. So they are number one on the list for sure! Too bad they are so darn expensive...must work on a solution to this problem. :)

Next is my favorite knife in the world...though I've never come close to using it. I abosolutely love the look of Rachael Ray's knife. You all have probably seen it on 30 Minute Meals (love that show!). I like the way it is large enough that it can cut through things that other knives might not be able to handle, but it is still maneuverable. The only place I've ever seen these is on Food Network's website, so I'd better start saving my pennies, I guess!

I also love Rachael Ray's oval skillet. It's big and deep and could be used for so many things. And it's got orange on it. I like orange.

I like this big pot too. The 2 handles look easy to grab but they wouldn't burn me! Plus, it would match my skillet. :)

A food processor would be a must have, too. I found this one at Target.com, but really I'm not too picky about these. I just want one! (And I think I wouldn't want white...too bland of a color.

And ya know, if I could have one of those microplane thingies that grates garlic and stuff, that would be really cool too. And I realize that some of these things are more on the expensive side, but a wish list is definitely NOT for practicality! It is for listing what you want, regardless of what it would cost. And all of these items would have to be in my dream kitchen! Maybe one day I'll be cooking up a storm with them!