Thursday Thoughts

Hi!

It's been a "busy" week.  I had to take time off work yesterday to take the kids to the dentist- No Cavities!  Today, C has a fitting for her dance recital costume, so it's back to town today.  I'll do my shopping then too.

We haven't done any work in the front room...

But it's fun to look back and see how far we've come... In November,

In January

In April.

And now.

So, we are making (slow) progress!

I was also looking back at the pics of the snow this winter. 

March 22.

Today.

March.

 

Today.

February.

Today.

February.

Today.

It's fun to see what was under all the snow. Our toboggan was buried under the snow with some cute rocks on it.!

 Yesterday we picked up paint for N's room!  Can you guess what color he wants?

It's the bright green  on the stripe above.  It's the same color as C's playhouse.  We had just enough paint leftover to do a stripe to test out the color.

Another project to do!  I'd better get busy!

Have a great day! :-)

Foody Friday

Hi!

The snow has been melting, but it's still around!

Here's what we ate last week.

• Fri- McCain Mini Pepperoni Pizzas
• Sat- Leftovers
• Sun- Roast Chicken, Microwaved Potatoes, Collard Greens
• Mon-Many Bean Soup (Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever (Library Book) pg 39)  I made it with pinto and black beans. Kids didn't like it very much. It cooked in slow cooker 8 hours on high, but still wasn't done, so K finished it on stovetop.  I boiled it down and now it's frozen and I think the kids will like it made into a chili probably next week!
• Tues- Tacos by K
• Wed- Whole Wheat Cheese Tortellini, Ragu Sauce- by N
• Thurs- Chicken Fingers, Microwaved Sweet Potatoes, Kohlrabi Greens

Enjoy your day! :-)

Front Room, Cabinet Doors and other Things

Hi!

April's going by fast!  Wonder what I've been working on?  A couple things (with some help from K).

First, the front room. K got the first "locker" started.  See how the round stool fits under?  We're going to build a bench to go under there. And can you see the white door inside the cabinet?  It'll be one of the doors. The walls are painted- Pearly Grey by Boomerang. The cabinets will by glossy white.

I cut some pieces of drywall to surround the window on the sides and top.  I need to find (buy) a 1x6 for the bottom ledge.  I found a piece of moulding that will fit the top, so that's nice!

Here's the front with the paint on the walls. 

 You can see the beaded board we started on the ceiling with our new Stanley brad nailer.

What else have I been working on? I replaced the cabinet doors on top of the fridge.  Here's how it looks.

Here's the messy counter pic! 

And here's how it was before.   

We kept our knife block on top of the fridge so the kids wouldn't get it when they were younger.  Now they're actually using the knives so we've moved them to the counter so they don't have to reach over their heads to get them.

 The 2 doors actually belonged to the middle cabinets above the sink so I had to rip them to fit above the fridge. They had been hanging out in the breezeway as shelves. Here's one (when the breezeway was relatively clean!) under the red coke bottle holder.

Before that, they held our tv in C's room when it was our tv room.  We'd painted one black.  I'd tested out my wood graining tool on the other one.  I slapped some white paint on, then used some sort of taupe paint for the wood graining.  The paint was latex and it was peeling off the door.  I gave both doors a quick sanding and primed them. 

Unfortunately, I sanded too much on the wood parts and removed the varnish.  This meant the wood was bleeding thru and I had to use the Zinsser Shellac Primer.  I painted them with 2 coats of White Semi-gloss paint. This is not the paint on our other cabinets.  The rest of them are some sort of oil based paint that I'd used when we first put them up.  They "new" doors are still a bit splotchy and too shiny so I may look for my satin white latex paint to finish them up.

Here's getting ready to hang the doors.  I've moved the salad spinner and rice cooker on top of the fridge. 

This let me move the kids' lunch kits over to the side of the island where the lunch containers are- much more efficient since they used to be on on the other side and I had to open both sides of the cabinets when I fixed lunches!

Here it is now. 

And before.

I like it, It's a bit neater now.

We hung a little cabinet on the right side of the wardrobe pantry.  Below it are the paper and pop bottle/can recycling containers.

Here's how it looked around Christmas (2014).  

The sewing machine was there with the toaster on it.  I moved the sewing machine into the living room to hold the keyboard. (This is turning into "If you give a mouse a cookie"....)

All those brightly colored things in the starburst are paper airplanes that the kids made a few weeks ago!

Here's the Christmas Before.  I'd used an old laptop desk for the keyboard, but it's actually broken and sits crooked. It will be going to the Goodwill (or trash?) soon.

Ok, one more thing.  I want to show the kitchen shelves.  All those baskets will be going to the front room on top of the lockers!  Not sure what will go here when that happens!

All right.  I think that's it for now!  Enjoy your day!

:-)

Snow

Hi again!

Just a quick update on our snow situation.

Well, we still have some around- lots of it actually! Here are some pics from around the yard.

In the front, there's still a snow bank so we can't use our turn-around spot in front of the (bare) Juniper tree.

You can see the ground in the field.

Fishing season started on April 15, but the pond still has a lot of ice on it!

Here's looking out the back door.  We have the little deck to enjoy, but that's about it!

Toward the neighbor's barn.  The snow is still as high as the fence in some spots. 

We can see the playhouse now, but the drift on the back of the breezeway is about 4 feet high! 

I'm secretly hoping it doesn't go away for a while.  In 2 weeks it'll be May and we'll still probably have snow!  Isn't that amazing!?! I think it's crazy!

:-)

Kitchen Paint

Hi!

Well, we've made a bit of progress in the front room, but the main thing I did this week on Tuesday and Thursday when I was home during the day was to paint the kitchen!

I bought a can of Boomerang Primer and the pre-mixed Linen colored paint.

Here's the kitchen once I moved some stuff off the walls, filled the holes and primed.

 Here is after painting the first coat on the two shorter walls and behind the shelves on the window wall.

I waited for K to get home before I got the ladder out to paint the two taller walls. It wasn't too bad. I started the painting on Tuesday.  Since I had to wait a day before I had time to paint again, the kitchen stayed a bit of a mess until Thursday when I put the second coat of paint on and moved everything back in.  

Here's how it looks now!

(Notice I turned the curtain under the desk around so it's more blue than green.)

Way Before

 Now

Before

 Now

Before

 Now

Way Before

The "Before" pics were actually taken right before. I didn't take other pics before I started taking everything down.  The "Way Before" pics were after we moved the desk on the other side many years ago!

It was a pretty good re-do, considering the paint only costs $18!  They actually had a buy 2 get one free deal, so I got the primer, Linen paint, and Pearly Grey paint all for $40!  What a deal!  The only bad thing was that it required 2 coats.  I'd kinda gotten used to doing just one coat because I'd been buying paint with primer.  However, I do think the paint is good.  It's from recycled paint, which I like.

Another good thing is that the Linen paint actually makes the blue ceiling and white trim look better!  Which is nice because often when you paint something, everything else looks bad and then you feel like you have to re-do everything!  There's still some green on the back of the kitchen island,  behind the sink,

on the microwave stand, 

and the chairs. I think it still looks fine so there's no need to repaint those(anytime soon! ;-))

Have a great weekend! :-)