I think we are basically done with the kitchen. Eventually we’ll get the time/money to do a little more (such as counters, new cabinets, etc) but until then I absolutely love the kitchen.
May I present the Old kitchen (when the house wasn’t ours)
Not a bad kitchen. Remember all the “stuff” isn’t ours. This was all the previous owners appliances. She did leave the fridge, oven, microwave & dishwasher.
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And you remember some of these pictures right?
The first weekend assessing what I had to do
All the boxes from unloading kitchen stuff
Every time I’d get the cabinets clean they’d fill up again, it seemed never ending!
At the end of the first work weekend
Digging up Linoleum… sucky job!
After the first day of laying tile.
Finishing up laying tile
Grouting is so much fun!!!! haha… PC had to convince me I wasn’t icing a cake.
He got his fair share of grouting too.
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Drum Roll Please……..
I want to present to you, Our Kitchen…..
Are you ready?
Can you handle it?
Am I getting annoying….?
Yeah I think so too….
Ok here you go….
…………….
……………..
Oh sorry got carried away… haha…
New Floor
New Wallpaper
I painted the hooks above the cabinets and the self along the wall
Our Kitchen is John Deere Themed (can you tell??)
We moved our appliances in
I’m not a big fan of clutter on the counters so I tried to keep it down. Some things just don’t go up though (ie mixer, toaster, etc).
We are extremely pleased with how it turned out. I found the tile on sale, 39 cents a square foot (so 39 cents a tile). Can’t beat that!!! We did crackle on the pegs. You paint it one color, put the crackle on and just as it dries you apply a contrasting color and it makes it look like old barn wood. Our original color was green with yellow over the crackle layer. So far all the appliances I had been gathering up since I was 16 years old. The only thing I bought was the blender that has a spic-it on it. I got it at the Wonderful World of Wal (aka Wal-Mart) on sale for $17. I figured it was meant to be… it’s green and everything.
Next up, I’ll have to show you the Mil Room or the Mother-in-law room as we call it. It’s also called a spare room.
At work we’ve been working on our quarterly newsletter and this is a clip that was included. I personally thought it was funny, some I’ve shared it with say they’ve heard it before but I hadn’t. I liked it so I thought I’d share with you guys.
A North Carolina man purchased 24 rare and expensive cigars. Because of their value, he insured them against fire. After smoking all of his cigars in less than a month and having not yet made a single payment on his fire insurance; He filed a claim against the insurance, stating that he had lost his cigars in a “series of small fires.” The insurance company refused to pay, knowing he had simply used the cigars as intended. The man won the case because they failed to specify the type of fire the cigars were insured against. Because they failed to define an “unacceptable fire,” the insurance company accepted the ruling against them and paid the man $15,000 for the cigars he had lost in the “fire.” However, the best is yet to come. Shortly after the man cashed the check, the insurance company countered and had him arrested on 24 counts of arson. The man was sentenced to 24 consecutive 1-year prison sentences.
Can we say, “Here’s your sign.”
So this week has been an interesting one and we are just at Wednesday…
My Monday morning started off I was running fairly on time for work, ran downstairs, wrote out my car payment (I still mail it b/c if I pay it on-line they won’t let me pay extra), grabbed my car keys, put a stamp on the envelope, ran over to the kitchen, grabbed a couple cookies (breakfast of champions), put my car keys on my finger (the ring around my finger), grabbed my purse, grabbed my house key, grabbed my cell phone and checkbook I left laying on the kitchen table, ran out the door, threw all that into the car and thought, now where are my car keys. Looked around, didn’t find them so I grabbed my house key ran back up stairs couldn’t find them in the kitchen or dining room so I grabbed the spare thinking I threw my keys back in my purse but didn’t want to take the chance, ran back to my car and wondered what was on my finger. Yeah I’m sure you already saw this happening as I was blabbering. Found my car keys on my index finger where I put them originally… So I proceeded to pull out the driveway and called PC to tell him he’d left his door badge at my house but that I had it so when I jumped out to put my car payment in the mail I was preoccupied so I got back in the car, partial way down the road and couldn’t remember if I put the flag up. Called my grandma who lives down the road and asked her too on her way to town. She told me later that night I hadn’t put the flag up. Whew, glad I thought about that! This was all before 8am and I’m not a Morning person to the 10th degree :). My co-workers joke and say I don’t fully wake up until around 10am. I think I somewhat agree with them!!
Monday I was given an award from Kathryn on my blog! Yey! But then when I came in first thing Tuesday, I’d lost a follower. Oh well… I’m still not sure who it was. There is another blog I follow Just call me Jo… that had the same issue. She lost a blog follower. I’m thinking it might have been a conspiracy :)… or not.
Today I got my first hate comments on my blog. Who knows… I guess you can’t please them all. I’ve never tried. I just write b/c it’s what I’m feeling or seeing or thinking or whatever.
So people do Wordless Wednesdays but as you can see, I’m not one of them so let’s see, I think I’ll still share a photo or 2… now which photo do I want to share…. I think I’ll share the latest shots of our MIL Room. We aren’t quite finished, when we get completely finished I’ll show before and after shots 🙂 Oh and we call it the MIL (Mother-in-Law) room because when my parents were building their house my dad always called the spare room his mother-in-laws room so to me that’s what they’re called :). I started it and PC picked up on it 🙂
Oh and I was way early to work this morning. I got grief over that one too. Usually I walk in right on time. Go figure…. I hope you all have a wonderful Hump-day!
So I got on to catch up on my blogs and what was one of the coolest things I saw? Take a look:
You see it right there?? Right there under Winners, Nicole J from MO… oh wait, hey that’s me! Woohooo I won! I never win 🙂 I signed up for a contest at The Coupon Goddess and I won! Woohooo, go me! You should check out her website, she’s got some great info and awesome giveaways!
In other news… One last weekend before we have our first house unveiling to PC’s family. We are having a big 4th of July get together at our house with his family and some friends. I’m getting nervous but our MIL room (mother-in-law or else spare room) is getting so close to being finished and my opinion, because that’s really all that matters, it looks gorgeous! It’ll look even better D-U-N (done)! I might be jealous of my spare room… the verdict is still out, we haven’t done much to our room yet. Waiting until after the 4th.
So over on To Much To Do; So Little Time (check her out, I love her posts!!), she has signed up for the FlyLady… Don’t know what that is, neither did I, in fact neither did she until she did her research! Woohooo and I benefited from her research! Haha I signed up for the emails and PC & I have a joint “wedding” email account… that’s the one I used, I think he’s annoyed with me b/c I haven’t had much of a chance to read the emails yet… Anyway one of the things TMTDSLT talked about in her post about this was the first task was to make your kitchen sink shine and boy did hers!!! Well newsflash, I did that last night. Made me feel so much better!
Over the weekend we had Father’s Day dinner at our house (our as in mine & PC). Our house finally FINALLY looked more like a house than a wreck! Little projects are starting to come together (FINALLY!!!!) and you could actually see the living room floor. We made Spaghetti (PC’s famous concoction!) and had garlic toast and a small garden salad. For desert, Peach Cobler & ice cream. All I can say is, THAT WEDDING DRESS BETTER FIT COME SEPTEMBER, or else PC is going to run my butt off the entire month before hand, and he was in the army, he knows how to drop the weight!
So we put up our mailbox finally last night. Yey, now we can get bills, oh wait, that’s not a good thing, that’s BAD!!! Very bad!!!! Bill’s Bill’s, stay away go to someone else’s house, so they can pay you!
I love the Gorillacam app for my iPhone. It lets me zoom when I’m sitting in the truck waiting on PC :)… Sorry PC I didn’t mean to get a butt shot, you just kept it pointed at me, I think….
All last night I kept teasing my mom b/c she hates her iPhone and kept telling her, There’s an App for that :).
So I haven’t taken pictures of the latest Kitchen changes but these were from a week ago. It’s really starting to come together. In fact, Almost done!!! Yes our kitchen is John Deere themed (green/yellow) but I have a nice variety of John Deere & just green & yellow stuff so if we ever get tired of the JD we can just go another direction and not be out to much! See I was thinking!
Over view shot of the paper & border with the trim and tile, just remember and keep in mind, it has changed again…
Here’s an upclose of the border.
Whew, who knew changing a house would be so much work. At least we are doing this before our wedding! Then after we’re married, we can just come home to a beautiful house! And anytime I say the word or spell the word Beautiful I hear PC quoting a movie line, “B-E-A-utiful!” (name that movie, give up…. Ace Ventura.)
So I’ve been telling a story. Probably getting on some nerves b/c I won’t just out with it… but I promise I’m getting there and it’ll so be worth it, and well if not, it’s at least worth it to me :). If you have missed any of it, get caught up b/c I’m working on the next part of it. I know you are quaking in your boots or stilettos just waiting :)… patience my friend! One Year Ago…. One Year Ago…. Cont’d One Year Ago… Part III
My mom’s been working on Tbug’s bedspread for her room! It’s going to be so stinking cute! Here’s a sneak peek… It’s hard to see the brown bows but there are 2 just to the left bottom side! I think she’ll be super duper excited! I am. I might even be jealous of her room come to think of it!
I’m not sure if it’ll be done for the fourth party but when T-bug gets back from camp it’ll be waiting for her. Last night my mom & I already re-arranged her room b/c I wasn’t happy with how it was. I think I like the set-up better, until I change my mind again! Which might happen since I’m a woman and it’s my prerogative!
Well, I’m not sure much else has been going on in my life. My biggest goal lately has been to NOT cuss anymore or at least less… but when dumb people show their heads I get annoyed. I guess I cussed yesterday [under my breath] loud enough the guy in the office across from my desk heard me… Woops… Bad Nicole. Must work on that! And I was doing so well too!!!
Otherwise it’s been a slow week and I haven’t taken many pictures even. All these I think were predominantly supplied by my iPhone…
I’ll leave you with our lovely weather Forecast for the next 6 days… hopefully I don’t melt away! Although I absolutely, positively DON’T complain about being hot because I HATE WITH A PASSION being cold! 🙂
It’s the woman’s job to wash dishes? Her feet are smaller….
Then you see a guy standing on the floor who has been knocked out with a cast iron skillet :). haha I know bad joke but it’s all I had right then. Bear (or bare) with the punny (er… funny) jokes 🙂 I’m in that kind of mood and that’s the way I roll :).
So I FINALLY got my photos off my camera from the other weekend’s work weekend at the house. My goal Memorial Day weekend was to have all the dishes washed and put in the cabinets before this last weekend so I was out of the way of the floor process. I also washed EVERY dish before it went into the cabinets. I figured, let’s start out clean! I also washed all cabinets and lined them with new shelf liner.
My car was full, PC’s truck was full, and definitely the trailer was!
My thoughts, this may be the one and only time in my life I’ll have a chance to start out with a clean house, at least in this house.
I want it spotless when we move in, even if PC does move in before me!
My future Father-in-law took this one. I was gung ho… by the end of the weekend, I was pooped!
The dishwasher ran, the washer ran, I hung clothes out to dry, the dryer ran, it was a cleaning day… er weekend… oh and the boxes.
Don’t turn me into Hoarders, I swear this was all out of there every morning, I just brought more in throughout the day!!!
I lined all shelves with shelf liner!!
My FFil was being ornery and took this photo of me… nice huh?
For 2 people who are just starting out, I would say I did good. I’ve been collecting stuff since I think I was 16. Makes it much easier so you don’t have thousands of dollars spent all at once trying to fill a house! That and we found stuff from my college apts that we actually wanted to keep. We found stuff to get rid of too! For the most part, I opened all boxes in the front yard. Now if I knew it was a box full of kitchen stuff we made exceptions and brought them in the house to open so I didn’t have to make millions of trips back and forth to get stuff from the front yard.
I’d just get the kitchen counters cleaned off, make the comment that might be it and find more boxes to fill our counters. I finally quit saying those words! They were dangerous!
Here’s another photo like above, just a different angle. What cracks me up is there is my blue shoe over by the fridge. I think it is becoming my signature trademark!
See this is a different pile of trash! I told you it would disappear and soon be back!
By the end of Monday night this is what my kitchen looked like (and of course the blue shoe is still there….)
So the next weekend (this last one) we laid the tile in the kitchen floor and my pretty kitchen became not so pretty again :(.
I thought I had a picture to share of my dirty counters again… guess not 🙁 oh well picture a mess again, but that’s because we had to move some things to get the stove and fridge out.
We are getting there… slowly… I don’t remember moving into my apartments being this slow going, but I guess when you aren’t laying new kitchen floors and painting/papering walls it goes a whole lot faster. Wish I could remember what I did with all the boxes when I’d empty them in my apartment, and what the heck, how did I come up with all the boxes to pack things again. That still remains a mystery 🙂
So this weekend was the official floor changing weekend! Woohoooo I no longer have a dingy floor! I’m super excited! Instead, I have a gorgeous floor and a swollen hand and on top of that, a slightly hurt pride… Let’s explain.
PC thought pulling up the Linoleum would be quick, pain-free, and easy.
But that’s beside the point… I think. It might have frozen my brain come to think of it… I’ll have to check and get back to you.
Nope, still good, I think….
This was our first weekend to work on the house and boy did we ever! I still haven’t had a chance to sit down and look at the photos I shot in raw so I can show progress so until I get a free minute I’ll show you some photos that my Future Father-in-law (FFil) took.
We worked our butt off this weekend to the point my legs and ankles were sore every night when we finally called it a night. I knew Sunday night that I needed to go home and go to bed when at 10:30 Sunday night I was loading the dishwasher (I washed every single dish before it got put up) and started crying to PC I didn’t know where I was going to put any more dishes. But came back first thing Monday morning all refreshed and knew exactly where to put everything. Every time I would empty a box, I’d think I’d found all the dishes and low and behold I’d find another box of dishes. I got the point I refused to say I was done. My only problem now is I know I had one more set of FiestaWare in Green that I can’t find the box so I’m scared that means I have a whole nother box of Kitchen stuff……… I guess we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. Heck I’ve been collecting things since I was about 16 for my house “Some Day”.
But we ran hard all weekend. We were up at 6am every morning, not by choice but b/c of excitement and my brain making lists of things for me to do, and we’d go to bed about 10:30 or later every night. I was so tired come Monday I almost took a nap at 10am but we continued working along. My goal for the weekend was to have the kitchen done by the end of the weekend because I won’t be able to get in there this coming weekend. PC and AC are going to be laying tile in the kitchen so it’ll be off limits.
We also got Tbug’s room painted. I love it! It isn’t quite finished, we still have to put the trim back up on the walls and paint that other than that, we can start moving her stuff into her room and decorating it. I’m super excited about that!!! This was taken off my cell phone so the quality of the photo isn’t the greatest. Like I said lots of great Raw photos….
So as a break every afternoon we jumped in the pool for a short bit. OMG it was friggin cold! So here’s some photos from the pool excursion 🙂
PC was the craziest, he jumped in first. Ok not the craziest, the kids and his dad had been in earlier in the afternoon but still…… 🙂
There he goes
Ladies & Gentlemen, he’s in
PC: Come on Baby (that’s me), jump in…. me: Are you out of your mind? It’s cold!
Oh Fine and I’m in!
@#$%#$^&$#$!!!!!! Geez what did you get me to do, it’s cold! LOL
PC: Baby you did it! We took the first 2 jumps off our diving board at OUR HOUSE….
Me: I’m cold let me out of here!!!
Our next goal was to get Tbug to jump off the diving board. She’d been jumping off the side into the shallow end but she wasn’t real sure about the diving board off into the deep end. I convinced her to go in with me and that I’d make sure we came straight back up. I counted to 3 almost jumped in she squirmed past me and I almost fell in. It was funny. So then we told her that her daddy would be on one side of the diving board, I’d be on the other and we’d catch her. She still wasn’t buying it. Finally PC said to put her tube on her waist and jump in like that. He even demonstrated for her.
Once she saw him do it she was sold but the deal was he had to be on one side of the board and I had to be on the other to catch her.
Ladies & Gentlemen, She’s In!!!! First jump of many!
We told her once she did it the first time she’d want to do it more. Sure enough on Sunday she jumped in; she told us 8 times and she actually started jumping out toward the middle and swimming all the way to the shallow end. We created a monster!! LOL
Dill Pickle (PC’s nephew) was still to scared but we finally got him to jump off the side into the shallow end which he hadn’t done yet this weekend that I’m aware of 🙂
Other than the water was extremely cold it wasn’t to bad. The pool is shaded most of the day but parts of it are in direct sunlight. As you can tell the afternoon is shaded 🙂 I’ll get more photos of the house up actually so you can see our progress if I can ever find a minute to look at the raw images either on PC’s Mac or else photoshop on my laptop. Ah technology 🙂
OMG I swear this week is dragging by, but why is it you ask? Well it’s because we have possession of our house now! PC and I are so super excited to get in there and start remodeling making it our home that we can’t stand ourselves! Of course he is moving in before me but still I’m just as excited. I’m anxious to put our stuff in it, to decorate it our way, to have pretty tiled kitchen floors, and new carpet in the guest room and, and, and, I might explode waiting for Friday night when we start packing up the trailer!
I graduated from college May 13, 2005. That spring semester I moved back home with my parents. It was a 45 minutes from college to my student teaching school and it was 45 minutes from my parents house to my student teaching school, so to me, SAVE MONEY went through my head and I moved home in February 2005. Oddly enough, I haven’t left, YET… It’s boring living by yourself!! At least at home there is commotion!
There is stuff in my parents basement in a small room of my stuff that I haven’t seen in just over 5 years. OMG you can’t believe how excited I am to open those boxes! It’s going to be like Christmas all over again in May! We have a game plan for this too!! We have a dishwasher and a sink. We are going to wipe down all the cabinets and put shelf liners in them. While we’re doing that the dishwasher will be running and someone washing dishes in the sink. That way all things go into the clean cabinets clean! Plus we are painting/re-wallpapering some of the rooms so someone will be busy doing that. We’ve gotten some new carpet for the spare room so we’ll have to lay that, and the linoleum on the kitchen floor is coming up and we are laying the most beautiful tile! I’m not excited, can you tell 🙂
We were out there the other night changing the locks on the doors and the codes to the gate, I just walked around the house in a glow and wished I’d had cleaning products right then and there! We were out there again last night showing some of PC’s dad’s friends and again he and I were just like oh I wish we had cleaning supplies here!!! I snapped a few shots of the original house as it stands right now. Then while we are doing the remodeling and cleaning etc I’ll try to grab a few shots (if I don’t get yelled at for not helping… LOL) and then I’ll take some once everything is in place. Please sit back and relax and enjoy the show 🙂
On a side note: I clocked it mileage wise the other day… 12 miles from my parents house to work. 12 miles from our house to work. 12 miles from our house to my parents house. We live in the 12 mile Triangle 🙂
PC gets to clean the pool!
Doesn’t my car look so pretty in the driveway!!!
The office
The kitchen (all lit by skylights)
The Dining room area looking into the Laundry room
The “big” bathroom
The Guest bedroom I also refer to as “My Mother-in-laws” room
Tori’s Room
Our Room (and PC’s butt… lol)
Still our room
PC’s bathroom (and his rear again)
Anyway I hope you enjoy our house… it’s soon to be a Home!
Welcome to our home. We finally found a place to live and aren’t going to have to live in a tent in my parent’s back yard. This is exciting. Part 1 photos will show the outside of our house and around it. We are living in a Berm house. A berm house is also known as an Earth House. 3 of the 4 sides are covered with ground so in essence, it is kind of like an in-ground house… Right now it is a house but once we move in there, it will be our home!
Hehe yeah, I had my car parked in the carport… (more…)
So Prince Charming and I have finally found a place to live after we get married (as long as nothing falls through…..). How exciting is that? I’ll have to give you a tour of the house one of these days. No more living in a tent! Yey. Ok well, that’ll make sense when I say this… Everyone has been asking us where we are going to live once we get married. In my last semester of college, I moved back home because I was doing my student teaching and it was the same distance drive from mom & dad’s house as it was from my apartment up by the school to where I did my student teaching so I saved money by moving home. I’m not sure my parents expected me to stay though…. i’ll have to ask and get back to you. When Prince Charming moved home from Tuckesee (Kentucky/Tennessee line at Ft. Campbell) last fall, he moved back in with his mom. So I always joked around and said we’d live in a tent in my parent’s back yard.
We take possession of the house on June 1. I don’t want to live out there by myself so Prince Charming is moving out there and then I’ll move in after we’re married. Over the weekend we went shopping for some stuff for the house. It all has receipts so if this falls through it can all go back, but you can’t pass up the deals we found! Anyway, that’s besides the point of this post.
So one of the deals is since we aren’t taking possession until June, we still have to go out and mow the yard between now and then so they don’t have to pay someone too. And boy has that been a headache, literally… I’m so congested today I’m not sure how I’m getting air into my lungs. And I’ve never been congested mowing lawn. It’s weird! Anyway, we had all intentions of mowing the lawn on Saturday but were told Friday night we did a good job of mowing the lawn. Prince Charming and I looked at each other and then said, um… wasn’t us. We planned on doing that tomorrow. Well since we were told that we got busy on Saturday and dumb us assumed it was done. Sunday we headed out there and realized the lawn indeed had not been mowed. We looked at each other with the same oh crap look and started plotting how we were going to get out there to get it done.
