Weekend Getaway

Last weekend we headed up to South Haven Michigan for a little weekend getaway with some college friends, and this time the husbands came along! This was different because we normally just have weekend trips with the girls but we thought we would invite the guys this time!

We stayed in a house that was about 2 miles from the beach and downtown area. The house worked out great for everyone!

Friday was raining so we played quite a few board games and headed out to dinner that night at a cute restaurant downtown named Clementine’s. We also frequented this ice cream place all weekend called Sherman’s.  I think we all ate our weight in ice cream there! I know this girl sure tried!

This was the kind of place where a small was really a large and 2 scoops were really 4!!

Saturday the weather was much better so we headed to the downtown area. They happen to be having some kind of festival that involved a vintage car show which was pretty cool!

If I had to take one home with me it would have been this mint green beauty! Why don’t they make cars these colors anymore?

We hit up some antique stores which is now becoming our favorite past time. 

And here are all the goodies I scored:

I got this cookie jar for $8 that is in really great condition.

I found both these plates for around $10 each. 

I also got this cute little vintage dinner mint tin that was in really good shape and matched some of the other green things in my kitchen. I think it looks right at home on our kitchen desk area!

And finally I found this little vintage silver cup for $2 that is currently being used as a candy dish.

We also made it to the beach on probably the most windy day ever! 

It was such a great weekend catching up with these girls that mean the world to me! We all live in different states and it can be a rare occurrence when we can all find time to get together so this was a great weekend!! 

Awesome & Awkward Wednesday

AWESOME:

-Realizing your turning into your mother.

-Love that my husband knows who Michael Kors is, but only because I make him watch Project Runway with me…so he says.

-Singing along to a song on the radio at a stoplight and looking at the car next to you and realizing their singing to the same song as you.

-A date night out that involved stir fry, home depot and shoe shopping. Best. Date. Ever.

-Finding out that they make special zombie bullets for when the zombie apocalypse happens. (In case you’re wondering you can buy them at Bass Pro) I told Cody we needed to buy a few cases to be prepared.

AWKWARD:

-Thinking that someone is talking to you and answering their question when in reality they are really talking to the person behind you. Awful.

-Riding my Mom’s new Schwinn bicycle while wearing my Dad’s new motorcycle helmet.

-Telling your husband not to get water at the restaurant you’re at because it tastes like penny’s (you know all coppery) and having the waitress over hear me before taking our drink order and say, “Can I get you something to drink… besides water?”  With an attitude like I just insulted her home made family recipe of water.

-Having our front yard look like a martian threw up green chunky slime all over it; when in reality it is just that lawn patch stuff that’s supposed to fill in bare spots…fingers crossed, hope it works!

-Having a little boy ask me in the checkout line if I can take him to go to the bathroom…and I respond with “umm let’s find your Mom…” And of course we don’t find his mom, so I take him to customer service and tell them he can’t find his mom…..fast forward 7 minutes when I am all checked out with my bags and this little boy finds me again this time with his mom in tow and lets her know that I’m the lady that made him pee his pants… 

Awesome and Awkward

So I decided to start this new tradition. It’s called awesome and awkward Wednesday. I did not think of this myself obviously, because I’m not that smart, but I thought it would be great for two reasons. One it will hopefully force me to blog more often and two I feel like I have a lot of random things that happen to me that I like to talk about and I think Cody gets sick of hearing it...so now you do:) So get excited!  


AWESOME:


-Finding out Amazing Race casting calls our coming to our area in September. You better believe my dad and I are applying. A preacher and his daughter? You know were shoo ins to fit the “religious” stereotype.

-Booking a weekend getaway with college friends that is less than a month away!

-Having the guy at the video rental place tell me for the 20^th time that I look like zooey deschanel and ask to take my picture so he can prove it to his friend he was telling…yea I felt like a rock star then shot him down about the picture. Made me feel good, but can you say creepy?

 -Spending a Saturday morning going to antique stores with your husband and out to breakfast at bob evans and realizing  you’re the youngest couple there under 70.

-Being able to sing an entire rap song that I hadn't heard since high school in the car with my husband as he looks at me wondering who he married. 

AWKWARD:

-Not being able to remember your neighbor’s name, especially when you’re trying to get their attention.

-Filling a bag up with apples at the supermarket and when turning to put them in your cart they fall out of the bag and you spend the next 5 minutes chasing rolling apples around the produce section.

-Tripping over a mound of breakable dishes that are stored on the floor of your guest bedroom while your kitchen cabinets are getting painted  just to get to the dang microwave because you really want to pop some popcorn, and having the painter guy ask if you’re ok.

 -Realizing that for the past year of my life I thought I was turning 27 instead of 26.

 -Overhearing a few Jr. High girls discussing whether they would choose Peeta or Gale from Hunger Games and letting them know I would defiantly choose Peeta because he could obviously bake you cupcakes all the time, then having them give me a look that took me all the way back to Jr. High….then I promptly turned around and continued to check out at the supermarket while I reminded myself they aren't even old enough to buy cigarettes and alchohol…of which neither were in my cart I just wanted to feel better about myself.

Design with your hubby in mind

Hopefully I’m not the only one with this problem. I love design and I love color and I also love my husband who does not love design or color as much as I do. I have always wanted our house to feel like “us” and reflect our personalities and who we are. The problem is combining our styles together to fit who we are together. I’ll be honest, if I had my way I would live in a house with orange stripe walls and bright upholstered furniture. Like this…

That would probably give Cody a heart attack.

Further proof of this would be how I painted my bedrooms when I was younger. First house was bright yellow and white stripe wallpaper. Second house was bright blue walls with daisies stenciled all over the walls, third house was orange and red plaid walls, obviously this was all done very tastefully.  This was kind of a big deal in our house when I was a kid because my Dad’s middle name should be beige, so for him to be ok with all that was a pretty accomplished fete. And I foolishly thought that when Cody and bought our first house it would be just as full of color as my childhood bedrooms were. I have since realized that it’s about compromise and finding something that we both like. Sometimes I take a long time deciding what I want to do in a room. This would be the case for our hallway. It basically runs the length of our house so it’s really long and I have felt recently like it is to blah. I thought painting it a neutral gray would be the best option since it opens up to almost every room in our home. So I decided I need to treat the hallway more like an actual “room” and I wanted more color but in a more subtle to me kind of way. I found this image online of some wallpaper that I loved.

I knew wallpaper was not an option since we have spent weeks taking it off in every room of our home. So I went another route. I found a place online that makes custom stencils, and I thought I could stencil this in the hallway. But thinking this could still be too much for Cody I thought I would install board and batten on the bottom half all the way around. Like this…

I finally felt really good about how the hallway was going to look and I was really excited to tell Cody my plan and get that stencil ordered. His reaction? Absolutely not. I’m pretty sure his words were “I do not like that pattern at all; I wouldn’t even want it on a pillow.” 

WHAT??? As my vision of our hallway crashed down I tried my best to convince him about it…I even tried “But honey I don’t like camouflage and I let you use that downstairs.” No dice. After I thought about it, I don’t want Cody living in a house that he doesn’t like and makes him think of Grandma's Curtains as he put it. So on to our new plan for hallway. Were still keeping the board and batten idea and maybe painting the top half a darker color.

Am I the only one with this problem when it comes to design? My Mom has managed to help my Dad with his beige addiction….except she would do it when he was out of town….which maybe I should try that tactic with my Grandma stencil? 

Chaos

This is what our house looked like over the weekend...



Why is it always so much more fun to see others people houses in complete disaster? Ours was that and then some this weekend.

We took out the sliding glass door that was between the sunroom and kitchen. There was glass everywhere.

We took out the first layer of linoleum and sub floors....

Which then resulted in hammering in 5,000 staples in the floor...

This was my expression half way through....please help. I also had to empty out all our kitchen cabinets into the spare bedroom...

It's completely normal to have cake stands and Pyrex under the bed right?

Preparation

Well we are moving along in our kitchen renovation! The guy that is painting our cabinets is starting this weekend so we have been kicking it into high gear getting everything prepped and ready. First step in the process was to fill all the holes in the walls and sand those down.

This doesn’t really have anything to do with the cabinets but I didn’t want to have to sand the walls down after our cabinets were freshly painted.

Next was taking off all the base board and shoe molding. This is where we encountered a problem. Sort of.

We saw that under the linoleum and sub floor there was another layer of sub floor and linoleum. Which is an issue because of the new floors we ordered. We ordered about 500 sq feet of cork flooring that we got on sale at Lumber Liquidators last weekend. With the flooring and the underlayment it will be about another half inch to an inch on top of the current floor. This means that the dining area in the kitchen that leads to the sunroom will have a big height difference. We are fine with a small difference that a transition piece can cover but this would be a pretty big height difference. We also have to take into consideration the height of the hallway floors that are also getting the new cork flooring. So, were not sure if we should try to rip up the first layer of linoleum and sub floor or if that will be a big mistake…as in not an easy quick project.  

We also had to patch up the spot where we took the cabinet down with a small piece of drywall. We still have to add the outside corner pieces and mud and sand that down.

Then we have this strange situation. It’s the cabinet that houses the microwave. It has always bugged me because it’s the only cabinet that is not the same height as all the others. I feel like it breaks up the counters since it comes down all the way. So our plan here is to take this cabinet out and basically build a new one that will house a new microwave that just sits higher up and will be the same as all the other cabinets.

Plus not to mention I have to empty out all our cabinets and we will essentially be without a kitchen for a week. I am seeing lots of take out in our near future.

Have I seen you before?

With pinterest, and blogs, and the internet I feel like I see a lot of the same stuff all over. And by that I mean I’ll see a light fixture I like then in the next few weeks I start noticing it everywhere online. And then it starts losing its coolness to me, maybe because I want unique things in my home that feel one-of-a-kind, even if they aren’t. So last night while perusing pinterest I saw a light fixture that I had never seen before. It is from a better homes and gardens kitchen makeover. To check out the full makeover go here. I love this for 3 reasons.

1.) I have never seen anything like it before

2.) It’s cheap

3.) It could involve spray paint which is always a good thing

They used a $40 IKEA chandelier and took those wood craft balls in three different sizes and made swags by inserting eye hooks into each one. How awesome is this? Since this chandelier only comes in black, I’m thinking a coat of glossy navy spray paint is just what this would need and spraying all those wood craft balls a fun green and white…….

I’m thinking I just found my new kitchen chandelier to go above our dining table!

Kitchen Plans

Geeze, I have been MIA on this blog for a while! I do have an excuse though…we have been busy working on the house! I will post pictures of everything we have done soon!  But on to the important stuff…the kitchen. A major selling point for us in buying the house was the huge kitchen that it had. Even though it had blue wallpaper, cabinets, and appliances we knew it was a great space we could make our own. After removing all the wallpaper and taking down some cabinets we were left with a semi blank slate...

Which meant up next was the daunting task of sanding, priming, and painting the inside and outside of the cabinets. I was preparing myself that this would probably take me a good month or two to accomplish…but after talking about it with Cody and some friends we decided it was probably best for someone that actually knew what they were doing to paint them. It pains me a great deal to shell out $$ to someone to do a job that I know I can on my own….but in reality the job they would do would last a lot longer and get done a lot quicker! This means we wouldn’t have to live in utter chaos for over a month. Which is a real saving grace for our marriageJ  And it also means we could move a lot quicker onto all the fun stuff! So,  here is my plan for the kitchen….which will inevitably change I’m sure.

White cabinets. I have always loved them. Were also planning on doing a bead board ceiling.

Subway tile, classic and this we will install ourselves....Cody and my Dad did our master bath tile floor so this should be easy peasy:) I also want to add some brackets under some of the cabinets and under the island counter top.

 Like what that little purple arrow is pointing too...I love that look and I think it adds so much for not so much money!

This is the hardware I am planning on, I ordered one of each to see what we think before I ordered enough for the whole kitchen.

I have this obsession with big white farmhouse sinks. I'm pretty sure I need one in my kitchen. And here is a faucet option that I like...I want something this style.

We have this spot where we tore out the cabinets where we plan to hang a few pendant lights....Remember what it looks like?

Well I am thinking 2 or 3 of these babies in pendant form...

And here are the cork floors we are thinking about...

As for counters....If I had my choice I would obviously choose marble or granite, but since we don't have a money tree in our back yard we are thinking of something more like Corian. Any suggestions on counter top options??

So, can you see it?

all images via pinterest