Preview

Here's a little preview. I will change the lens on the camera tomorrow to get a full shot. By the end of the evening, one whole side of the upper cabinets will be installed. Yay! :)

CABINETS are coming today!

Wooooo! Hoooooo! That's all I have to say on the matter.

p.s. Will post pictures when they get here (probably in their boxes) :)

Blessed

Terrible picture, but you get the idea. I made it for my niece's baptism yesterday. I figured if I didn't post a crafty project soon, my faithful blog readers might desert me (at least the ones who check this blog for craft projects! LOL!) I am hoping to get some pictures tonight of some cards that I made with friends...we are going to start selling at local craft fairs. Kitchen is coming along nicely. The tile is now finished and we have the table back in (for now--it has to go back in the living room once the cabinets get here so they have a place to store them until they are installed). Woo hoo for having a functional table in the kitchen, at least for now! :) Thanks for looking...everything's by Stampin' Up!

Kitchen progress

Sean, his uncle, and his cousin worked on the tile last night. Here's Sean, above, chipping old subfloor out from under the sliding glass door so they could slide the tile under there.

Here's a picture of the tile and the accent wall color.

Looking towards the basement door. Major progress this weekend and last night! Grouting Thursday, sealing Friday or Saturday, and we can move the table/chairs and appliances back in on Sunday. It's like I am finally getting my house back! At the end of the month, the cabinets are coming in and the new appliances as well. So exciting! :)

Business up front, rats nest in back....

This is what Gracie's hair looks like every morning. The front of her hair is nice and presentable. This is with no combing whatsoever. Here's what the back looks like:



Total rats nest. It's been this way since her surgery (a year-and-a-half). I don't know if the strands of hair were weakened and damaged back there or what. We either have to give her a shower in the morning or spray her hair with a water bottle and use a fine-toothed comb to smooth it down. Is it just that she has really fine hair, or does she thrash about on her pillow, or what? What a goober she is. :)

Pantry Chicken Chili

Tonight's dinner was awesome and about as effortless as it gets:

Pantry Chicken Chili
2 (9.75 ounce) cans white chunk chicken, packed in water, drained
2 (14.5 ounce) cans great northern beans or any white bean, drained and rinsed
1 (16 ounce) jar of your favorite salsa (we got roasted garlic...yum)
3 chicken bouillon cubes
Water (I used a jar and a half of water from the salsa jar after I dumped the salsa into the pot)
1-2 small blocks pepper jack cheese (or whatever kind you like...8 ounces...2 blocks makes it REALLY cheesy)

Combine all ingredients but the cheese in a pot or crock pot and cook for a couple of hours until the flavors are meshed well together. Once cooked, add the cheese and stir occasionally until melted. Enjoy!

Selections

This is the kitchen paint color and the tile color we chose. Don't mind the unpainted areas down at the bottom...the cabinets/baseboard are going to be covering that part. The green is called La Fonda Wild West Green and the tile is called Forest I believe. I will be updating more as we finish each task. :) Cabinets were ordered on Tuesday and they said we have 3-4 weeks of waiting time, so that should give us time to get the tile installed. I am so excited I can hardly stand it! :)

The daughters of an English major...

Gracie broke a beaded bracelet this afternoon and picked up a few beads herself. She was about to put them in a bowl of Goldfish crackers that I brought to her for a snack. I told her not to put them in there and she put them in my hand. She asked if there were any beads in the Goldfish and I told her no. Just a minute ago she called, "Mooom, there certainly WAS a bead in the Goldfish!" She cracks me up! My little 4.5-year-old with a large vocabulary. :)

In related talking news, we were at Home Depot this weekend looking for some electrical stuff for the kitchen and Ava, as usual, said "hi" to everyone. We stopped in one of the aisles for a while and Sean was looking in a couple of bins. There was an employee there straightening or taking inventory and Ava of course said hi numerous times to him. At one point, she said "thank you" to one of us and the employee said, "how old is she, 2? 3?" I told him that she was 18 months and he was shocked. He said that she talked very well for her age.

Remind me later that I am proud of them for this when they are driving me crazy one day with the incessant talking! :)

Another Ava Shot

When I was looking through my folders last night for a picture of Ava to post, I realized I didn't have any good pictures of her since December. I had to remedy that today, so here she is. What a cutie, huh?

Ava, for good measure

Haven't shared a picture of Ava in a while. Here she is at my in-laws house on Christmas Day. She had a pretty green dress on, but I think she spit up on it and it was being washed at this time. She had it back on by the time we left there. :)

20 Photos

I got Photoshop Elements for Christmas from my parents this past year, which I LOVE. I found a tutorial for how to make a photo collage on Jennifer McGuire's blog (click on "How-To Videos" and I believe it's on page 3 of the videos...go down to the bottom of that first video page and hit "next" and do the same thing with the second page. The video is right above a blue and green card with a frog on it, midway down). I am going to a scrapbooking weekend this month and I have sooo many pictures of Gracie that I haven't scrapped, so I decided to make several collages and make some pages with basically all photos and share little tidbits if applicable on the second page of the spread. These photos were my favorites from my "November 2005" folder through "April 2006" folder, so a span of 5 months. Where did my baby go? These pictures basically start at the age that Ava is currently...I can't believe I have TWO kids who have been this age already and that I will have a 5-YEAR-OLD in July!!!!

Anyway, thanks for looking at my sweet non-baby (anymore, that is)! :)