Weekend Post

Not much going on here except the usual weekend craze.
Friday night Daniel had swimming and we all decided to go watch. Let's say my arms were aching from changing Michael's position in the small chair I was sitting in behind the glass. Daddy went to watch Daniel up close. We're not sure what happened but the teacher claims he lost his confidence because he just started to cry. We asked him why and it seems now that he actually has to swim towards the teacher in the deep water he got a little scared. After our big speech in the car about trying hard and his fears will go away and it's OK to be scared sometimes but if he keeps trying he will learn how to swim in the deep end and blah blah blah. He's fine, daddy was on the edge of his seat. I think we'll go back to mommy going to swim class and daddy staying at home on Friday nights. He does better (or so I'm told) in his Saturday sports class. Not sure I believe that. Mommy will get swimming and daddy will get sports. :)
I hate moments like that, the ones that I know he's scared (hell I suck at swimming so who am I to judge), I want to run and and take him out of that class, I want to tell that young teacher that her rough approach is not the right approach for my sensitive guy BUT I know I need to back off because this will be the norm. He needs to know how to deal with tough teachers that don't say "you're so good, you're doing great" at every single class. I also don't want him to get discouraged and not want to go. It's a fine line...
Friday night a friend of mine and I went for a walk around our neighborhood with coffee cups in hand...filled with wine. We got excercise all right, along with 1000 mosquito bites.
Saturday, was the typical weekend craze. Ry and D went to his sports class while I stayed and cleaned, fed and played with baby.
Saturday night was my nephew's championship game. They lost and Daniel and Ry came home cold and at 10pm! Michael has a cold so we stayed back and marinated steaks.
I went through my phone pictures and realized there were quite a few dating a while back.
Check this newborn out....holy cow! My mom says he looks like a hampster. Yes, I do see the resemblance. He was tiny. Why do newborns look huge in pictures?!

We also went weekend warrior on our house. Ryan power washed the back, I washed the windows, we trimmed a tree, organized ONE part of the garage (not to be confused with THE garage). We lifted our grill onto our deck and can now officially grill while standing in the kitchen. Life is good.
As we were trimming the tree and branches were falling, there was Daniel, laying on the grass with his helmet on looking up at the sky, with one leg over the other. No, he's not into physical labor. The boy will be a Dr. although today he claimed he wanted to be a clone trooper when he grew up.
Speaking of...
Everytime my sister comes over Daniel locks himself in the room and surprises her with this when he comes out...

"This is not a clone trooper, it's Commander Cody mommy"

 

We love our neighbors :) My niece.

We had awesome steaks for dinner on Sunday and went to Menchies for dessert. You pay by the ounce and daddy went a little nuts with his toppings because his ice cream cost $6! LOL.


This was Daniel's and mine second visit

Baby had none, he's feeling a little under the weather.

 That was our exciting weekend! We have a few things planned for the next few weekends.

Kitchen Reveal

It was 3.5 weeks of pounding, dust and living in the family room BUT it's done, the full kitchen is finished. Technically, Ryan reminded me the entire remodel took 18 days since we can't count the weekends, that's pretty good. We would highly recommend our contractor. His workers were wonderful to work with. I will admit working from home twice a week and being available to answer/guide 100 questions is key. We inspected every night and if there was anything we didn't like we let them know and they fixed it.
So, here it is...(decor will be added with time).

Walking through the front door BEFORE

Walking through front door AFTER. There is one lonely trial bar stool. We went shopping and are trying it out.

View in the kitchen blocked off by this BEFORE

View in the kitchen AFTER wall removed. Forgot to remove the tomatoes and pastries.

Island with ample storage on both sides. Viola, clean island.

Granite. Juparana Delicatus.

View from dining room BEFORE

View from dining room AFTER.

Window BEFORE that did not allow access to the back yard.

French door AFTER with access to  a small deck. We don't have to walk through the family room to get to the grill.

Deck AFTER

Stove BEFORE circa 1970s. Still can't figure out how to turn these pictures.

Stove from 2012 AFTER

Backsplash

Backsplash close-up

Travertine floors AFTER. We had wall white tile before.

Some links to the material:
Cabinets: Lowe's- KraftMaid, Cherry wood, Cognac finish
Granite: Juparana Delicatus, http://www.msistone.com/Granite/Juparana-Delicatus . All slabs are so different, you cannot go by the picture on-line, because that certainly did not represent our slab.
Backsplash: The Tile Shop, Miramar Mix with Glass http://www.tileshop.com/product/productdetail.aspx?familyID=2494&recordID=5076645
Grout used with backsplash and floor-Mobe Pearl
Floors: The Tile Shop, Amazonas Brown B/F 15X90cm http://www.tileshop.com/product/productdetail.aspx?familyID=1868&recordID=5055289 The size we have is not online yet so the link is to the closest thing.

Lighting: Lighting Universe, Fredrick Ramond FR33557CLD Vivo Mini Pendant, http://www.lightinguniverse.com/mini-pendants/fredrick-ramond-fr33557bni-vivo-mini-pendant_g905410.html?isku=7331430&linkloc=cataLogProductItemsImage

Appliances: KitchenAid

Not sure if I'm missing anything else, so if you have questions let me know.

Hope you enjoyed the tour.

Progress

Since my last post on the kitchen demo we have made some progress.
The window is out. The door has not yet arrived.

Drywall is up and behind it is nice insulation to keep us warmer and our plates and glasses too.
Electrical wiring is done.
Patching is complete. Ceiling is painted.

Tile floor is down (for the most part).

I picked up extra paint yesterday (no new colors, thank goodness).
So far the progress has been good. Once the tile is set the cabinets will start going up. Right now all the cabinets are in the garage.
Some of you have asked about the individual pieces I chose for the kitchen. I would link to the individual items that I chose such as tile, backsplash, lighting... but they just don't look the same on websites as in real life. I will take pictures of them individually once it's all done and link to where I got them. I have a fear of someone thinking it's ugly but in the end I hope it will look better pulled together, know what I mean?
We have a good team of guys working on the house and that has helped a ton. They communicate well and set our expectations. Most importantly they show up on time everyday. I have heard horror stories of contractors demoing a kitchen and then not showing up for a week or two and you're stuck waiting. So far, we have been lucky.
We hope for a completion date of a couple more weeks. We'll see.
Have a good weekend. We have some fun things planned.

Livin' La Vida Loca

It's been crazy around here, I hear hammers banging in my head at night. I actually wanted to go back to work after being in my office on Monday while the demo took place.
We've been handling it well. Although it has only been 3 days. HA!
We have a new place for eating breakfast and dinner together. It works great, prayers are still being said as we share our daily happenings and try to force information out of Daniel about his day. I forsee quiet teenage years with him with lots of "I don't remember" and "I don't know" comments. (Sigh). This is our morning and evening spot to eat. The dinner trays were ruined when my mom and I painted doors on them 2 years ago. They still work.
Check out D's glasses!!! He only needs to wear them 4 hours a day. He looks super cute. I need to take a better picture of him in them.

Floor tile and backslpash have been picked and ordered. Granite, well that was picked but now I'm second guessing it and we're going to look at another warehouse in hopes that the slab we like is better elsewhere. Who knew the same stone could look so drastically different from slab to slab.
I bought the first 1/2 dozen donuts for the workers in hopes of buying their sympathy if something goes wrong. We've been lucky and have had no major surprises. We hope it stays that way.
Dust is everywhere but so is our hope that we will have a new kitchen that overlooks our two littles playing come Christmas. Thankfully it's supposed to cool off so we can open the windows and air this place out. I bought Daniel an air purifier for his room. He started coughing the day of the demo and of course my guilt is at its peak.
So, that's that. I'll take pictures of the progresss (not much to see now) besides new electrical outlets and more clutter that has filled the living room. D loves taking a flashlight and shining into all the holes and saying "hmmmm what's this hole for?"
So, here's to another 4 more weeks of "FUN".

Destruction

This weekend was the big push to pack up our entire kitchen for the demo to begin on Monday.

I packed, Ry hauled boxes into the basement and D, well he just got in the way. We all survived and managed to meet my friend Laura and her cute family for lunch on Sunday. We enjoyed our quick visit, it was so quick that we didn't even take a picture. We did enjoy some down time at the mall after our delicious meal at Cheesecake Factory. 

 On Monday morning this began...

View from the top of our stairs into kitchen/living area.

View from front door. There was a wall right where those electrical wires are, the wall was blocking our entire view. Now the light just beams in and I LOVE IT. The hope is that as I'm cooking I will be able to watch my two little beans playing and keep an eye on things. I picture entertaining guests by our new island and having many family nights playing games together.

 It's exciting and frightening at the same time. So far no major hiccups, but it is the first day.
Wish us luck!

Weekend Warriors

We are both drained from this weekend.
We accomplished a list of to-do's.
First, while D and Bunia stayed home Ry and I ventured out to look at cabinets. 3 hours later we came home hungry and confused on what we wanted or what I wanted in cabinets.
Saturday, afternoon we needed to take a train ride into the city to practice Ry's new commute.

We stopped at his new building, right across from Millenium park. Of course we couldn't leave without having a little fun and some food. D LOVES the water. Let's hope that love carries into this Tuesday when he starts swimming lessons.

I have yet to figure out how to make these vertical.

 

D passed out in the stroller as we walked to the Metra line, we looked over schedules and learned his new route. Piece of cake!

We both barely walked back to the train with all the walking we had done all day. D was demanding, "Let's keep moving, and go home". We were ready to smack him with his comfortable butt in the stroller as we pushed and daddy carried a backpack filled with according to him "everything".

Sunday morning turned out to be an adventure with our refrigerator. We've been having all sorts of temperature issues with it and ice build it up in the back of the freezer. It was time for a new one, but our actual NEW pretty one isn't coming until our kitchen remodel so Friday we bought a regular fridge (freezer on top, fridge on bottom) to hold us over and it will be used as our extra fridge in the basement.  No, I was not ready to bring a nice stainless steel fridge into a kitchen that is going to be torn apart soon to have it scratched during construction and me being ticked over it afterwards. Anyhoot, our current 1970s fridge had a water line connected to it and we needed to unhook it. The idiot that tried to do it had no idea what he was doing, long story short, we had water leaking into a bucket and were forced to call a plumber. $200 later the water stopped leaking, the new temporary fridge is in our family room and the 1970s antique is still in our kitchen. I won't talk about my hubby's temper during that ordeal.
After that fiasco, I unplugged at Home Depot for 3 hours getting another estimate on cabinets. The more trips I make the more I realize what I want and the more the new things don't match the old things I picked. So, once we change our minds on one thing it's spirals into "we have to start from scratch". So, far our fridge, microwave and hood have already changed. I won't even begin with the idea I had in my head of my kitchen initially and what we are ending up picking. Both good just different. It's not so simple, but according to my sister if she had my job with remodeling my kitchen she could pick stuff out with her eyes closed. That's coming from a woman that has moved like 5 times and built 2 new construction homes and remodeled twice. Whatev!

With the heat rising so have our tempers around here, as one cabinet guy told us after I asked him "how many estimates do people usually get on cabinets?" to which he replied "you can go until you're tired and usually that's what happens, people get sick of getting estimates and looking and go to the first option they wanted". GREAT!
I'm making Ry look at cabinet samples from twenty directions and in different lighting. This remodeling stuff is not for everyone. But hey we survived the Purple House. Nuff said!

Back to the grind and to-do list

It's back to the grind tomorrow. I'm ready to get back into the swing of things.

A few projects that need to happen sooner rather than later:

1. Reorganize our closets and make a trip to the container store for inspiration. (Half of this is done, I made the trip and got some things to make Ryan's closet more organized. Mine is next and that requires more creativity as I have an attic entrance in my closet!)
2. Baseboards need to be touched up in the remaining 3 rooms. (Anyone that is putting up new baseboards, it's pointless to paint them before installation. I learned the hard way).
3. Our bed needs to be fixed as someone (most likely me) threw out the piece of wood that the slats for our mattress rest on. Our mattress is on the actual floor now with the bed frame around it. Hey 3 moves, cut me some slack.
4. Closets (entryway, family room) need some help as well with organizing.
5. The closet doors themselves need to be secured.

Why is the theme of this list about closets?!

I went over for some tea to my sister's house and saw her gorgeous new blinds, which reminded me we need those as well.
Once all the expenses started to add up, our vacation started slipping away.
The longer I stayed over there the more the list of things we needed grew. By the time I left I wished I had a drink instead of tea!
We may settle on taking off a week over the summer and plan to do something fun each day, while saving some money and buying a shed or Daniel's play set for the back yard. The choices!

2011 is off to a busy start.

Countdown

We have 15 days left till Christmas and we've been getting ready.

A fresh haircut with 2 weeks left to have it look just right.

Two versions of an Advent Calendar to count down the days till X-Mas.

What would I do if I had a stainless steel fridge with all this "art" that's on there now? I'd have an updated kitchen that's what.

We have a busy weekend ahead of us. Full update coming!