Dream Kitchen

We are taking our house off the market this week.  I am thrilled!  I am SO sick of showings and all of the other stress that goes along with trying to sell a house.  When the house that we wanted to buy was sold to someone else I pretty much lost all interest in moving.  We put a lot of work into getting it ready to sell so Graig wanted to keep it on the market and now he's sick of having it on the market too. Thank goodness!

One of the main reasons that I wanted to sell our house is that fact that I HATE our old, ugly outdated kitchen. I have tried to make the best of it for the past 8 years by painting our cabinets (twice!) and getting new appliances but we still hate it. 

We have decided to put in a new kitchen! I am SO excited! My friend Stephanie is a kitchen designer so she came over last week and took measurements and is coming up with a plan for our new kitchen! 

I wish we could do this right away but we have decided to save all of the money first and then start the work.  Graig and I talked and worked out a budget and we have decided that we are going to save, save, save and start this project next Septmeber so for the next year we will be saving up money for our new kitchen. 

I gave Stephanie a big list of things I wanted in our new kitchen.  Here are some things on our wish list:

-white cabinets

-white subway tile backsplash

-stainless appliances including a range with a double oven

-farmhouse sink

-a mudroom/entrance area in our kitchen

-open to dining room

-open shelves to display dishes

-new lighting

-breakfast bar area

She wanted me to show her some pictures of kitchen that I liked to give her an idea of what we were looking for.  I got all of these pictures from pinterest.

This is perfect.  I love everything about this picture.  I want everything to be white but I don't want it to look sterile or cold. 

I love this little mudroom/sitting area.  Sadly our kitchen is teeny, tiny (10x12) so she is going to design a small bench area for us. 

Love, love, love these open shelves

I love the open cabinets in this picture and the farmhouse sink and the light countertops.  I am not sure what kind of countertops I want but I do like these. 

I like the light fixtures and simple cabinets in this picture. 

I love the colors in this picture and the cozy, lived in feel of ths kitchen.  The island is beautiful!  Sadly we don't have room for an island but I like the overall feel of this kitchen. 

We haven't seen Stephanie's first design yet.  I can't wait to see it! 

I have been looking at all kinds of kitchens online because I want this kitchen to be perfect.  I have already told Graig that I am not moving out of our house ever because it's SO much work trying to sell a house. 

Weekend painting project!

I feel like I am ALWAYS painting something!  I seem to always have paint brushes and paint cans out on our kitchen counter because I am ALWAYS painting!  It drives Graig crazy- ha ha!  and my friends make fun of me but I LOVE painting (well I don't LOVE painting but I like the results) it's a cheap and easy way to update a room!  This weekend I tackled our downstairs 1/2 bathroom.   I think this room used to be a closet (not kidding!).    When we moved in it had pink and blue flowered wallpaper so I sponge painted it green.  I wanted a fresher look so I repainted it.
  I used the nester's svelte sage that I had leftover from our sunroom painting project.  I like the results!

Here is a before

And here is the after!!  I like it SO much more now!!

Happy Wednesday!

DIY Day-kitchen!!

My biggest DIY project so far has been painting our kitchen and kitchen cabinets.  I did the BIG project the week between Christmas and new years.  I LOVE the way it turned out but it was a ton of work!   When we moved in our kitchen was knotty pine-yuck!!!  It was awful!

 I love the rest of our house and the kitchen was my least favorite room.  Right after we moved in Graig, my Dad and I spent a few days and painted our whole kitchen blue.  I  liked the way it looked for a few years but after a while I wanted a change!  So right after Christmas I decided to get to work.  It took a lot of work but I am SO glad I did it!  I really, really like our kitchen now! 

Here are some before pictures:

Here is what it looks like now

I can't wait to see the other projects that will be shown today!  I always get so many good ideas.

Happy Tuesday!

Here is quick update, this past week has been CRAZY busy!  I have been painting our kitchen and our whole house has been a wreck for the longest time!  We are putting our cabinets on tonight and then for the most part our kitchen will be FINISHED!  I am so excited.  The only things that I have left to do is pick out a  new throw rug for in front of our sink and get new kitchen towels.  I also want to get a new countertop.
Here are some quick pictures I took this morning. 

This is the door way leading to our dining room

Next to our microwave

Our display shelf

This is a shot of our side door, I love these new toile curtain. 

Today is Graig's 38th birthday!! We celebrated by going out to dinner on Monday night.  He didn't want a present (like usual-ha ha) so he is going to make an extra mortage payment today as a birthday gift to himself.  Also today our friends Dan and Jenn had a baby boy!  We can't wait to meet him!

DIY Day-Sunroom!

Over Christmas break Graig and I re-did our Sunroom.  We painted it SW svelte sage and I repainted the trim.  The window trim is black and the baseboards white.  Graig re-did our wood floors, we had nasty carpet but we ripped that out.  I am SO happy with the way the room turned out!

I want to add more plates to this wall.  I got these two at a garage sale, I always find the best things at garage sales-ha ha!

Here's a better shot of the floor, I love the color that we chose.  We are going to get a new area rug for the floor. 

I also painted our heater covers black too.  I also added some new accessories. 

The other side of the room.  Ava's toys are in the corner and in the other corner is a little tv tray side table (it's just temporary I am looking for another side table I want to find one to hold our games, puzzles, books, etc.

The longaberger basket my sister gave me!  She always gets me these baskets, I LOVE them!

Happy Monday!

Weekend update!

We had a busy weekend of painting, moving furniture, hanging up pictures etc and it was SO fun!!  Our living room and sunroom are finally put back together and I LOVE the way both rooms turned out.  The sunroom looks so nice!  Our house has been a total disaster since right around Christmas time because of these room changes
Here is a rundown of what we did:  I will post pictures of our projects later this week!

Living Room (this is where we will spend all of our time)
-This past summer I painted the room Tobacco Road (I LOVE this color!)
-We painted the window trim black and the baseboards white
-We moved our very comfortable sunroom furniture in our living room
-We got a 50 inch flatscreen TV for Christmas from Santa
-We got a large area rug
For our living room we still need to get curtains and I want to get a new screen for our fireplace

Sunroom

-removed the nasty yucky carpet
-Graig redid the  hardwood floors
-I painted the room SW svelte sage
-We painted the window trim black and the baseboards white
-We moved our red living room furniture into this room
For our sunroom we still need to get curtains, an area rug and a little side table or chest to keep games, puzzles, books, etc.

Oh and Brock and Ava had a fun weekend too! 

Ava spent the weekend with our new neighbor Sarah.  Sarah and Ava have known each other for a long time because they go to the same school but Sarah recently moved into our neighborhood and Ava is THRILLED!  They spent the whole weekend going back and forth from her house to our house!

Brock spent the night with Grandma Jan on Saturday night.  They went snow tubing and Brock made Grandma Jan dinner on Saturday night.  They had so much fun together!

Kitchen cabinets-Sneak peak!

I have been painting like a mad woman in our kitchen trying to get it done. Graig has been working hard on our hardwood floors and our house still looks like a tornado went though it!


All along I have had my heart set on painting our kitchen cabinets black. I LOVE the color black and I have been slowly (very slowly) painting all of our doors and built ins on our main floor black, our trim is a glossy white. I decided to paint our kitchen a sagey green color (it's called promenade by behr). I had been looking for the perfect green color and I FOUND this color in our basement, I was going to use it in our downstairs bathroom but I never used it!

Anyway, I thought I wanted black cabinets but now I am thinking that I might try white cabinets with a light glaze over them. I am NOT sure which way I want to go black or white, I DO know that I don't want to paint them again so I might wait a few days and finish painting the walls and trim before I move on to the cabinets!

Here is a sneak peak of a little area that is almost done! I got these plates last week at Homegoods; I do know that I want to use some black and blue accents in the kitchen.

Which would you choose black cabinets or white cabinets?

A quick update!

I am still here. We have been SO busy over the Christmas break working on our house! Our downstairs and basement is one big disaster area! I am upstairs in our bedroom writing this because our bedrooms are the only renovation free areas in our house right now!! Graig is downstairs sanding our wood floors; we decided to save money by redoing our wood floors ourselves. He went last night and got all of the supplies from the Home Depot. Graig has redone wood floors before so I knew that he can do it but it is really messy and takes a ton of time. It will be worth it because I know they will be SO beautiful when they are done!

Our kitchen is all torn up too because I finally decided to repaint our kitchen! I have wanted to do this for so long but I knew how much time and effort it would take so I have been putting it off. Our WHOLE kitchen needs to be painted when we moved in our entire kitchen was knotty pine (YUCK!!) and I knew that we would have to paint it. I love blue so I chose that color and now 5 years later I am SICK of my BLUE kitchen so I am painting it sage green, our cabinets are going to be black and our trim will be white. I am about 40% done right now and I will show you a sneak peak tomorrow. I came home from work at lunch time today and I was SO happy because it really looks good! I spent 13 hours painting yesterday, when I woke up this morning I was so sore. I hope to have the project finished by the weekend.

This is what our kitchen looked like before I started painting.

Brock and Ava are back at school today, they had a one hour delay because of the snow we got last night. Ava has dance tonight after school and I am planning on going to the gym while she is there! I just joined this gym last week and one of my new year's resolutions is to go to the gym and get in better shape for 2010, I will let you know how that goes.

Who does this??

Christmas is a week away and we have a ton of things to do this weekend and tonight after work I decided to start painting our Sunroom!  We are going to move our furniture around in our house because our big family Christmas gift this year is a big flat screen tv.  The couches that I am moving to our sunroom are red and our sunroom is painted red so I need to paint the sunroom before we can move our furniture.  I got one whole section of the room done tonight!  I decided to paint it Svelte Sage which the Nester talked about on her blog. It's a beautiful color not too dark, not too light and I think it will really warm up our Sunroom! I use Behr paint at Home Depot so I went there tonight after work and they were able to match the color exactly!  I got their paint and primer and one and I LOVE it!!  I don't think I will ever go back to regular paint-ever!!

Here is a sample of the color, I will show the room when I am completely done, I hope to finish it up this weekend!

Tomorrow is a busy day Ava and I are going with our neighbors to watch the Nutcracker in the afternoon and then tomorrow evening we have 2 Christmas parties to attend.  The first party is a Cookie exchange it's at my friend's house and it's going to be HUGE, 90 people are coming!  Children are invited so some of those 90 are kids but still that's a TON of people.  After that party we are going to another Christmas party, so it will be a fun filled Saturday before Christmas! 

TGIF!!!

I am so happy it's Friday!! This past week has been so busy at work and Graig traveled a couple of days and he's coming home today so I am ready to relax and enjoy the weekend!! It is suppose to be about 75 degrees and sunny so it's going to be a perfect weekend. It has been so cold and yucky here the past week so the sunny warm weather will be a nice change! Two big things are happening this weekend. Brock is so happy because his Little League season is starting tomorrow!! Baseball is his favorite sport and is SO ready for his new season to begin!!

Here is a picture of Brock with his friend Theo from last season!

I am also going to get some painting projects done this weekend. I need to finish painting my trim white. I have so much to do, I think this is going to be the never ending project!!

Have a great weekend!!

Valentines Day weekend

This weekend was really busy, I spent a lot of time painting our trim, that's still not done! I have 3 coats on so far, I think I have one more coat to do. I love the way it looks. Here is the heater in our dining room. Today was a busy day, Graig took Brock to a soccer tournament Ava and I stayed home because Ava had dance practice and a birthday party this afternoon. Ava and I stopped by Wal-Mart and they finally had a Wii-fit in stock!! I have been looking for it every time we go to and it's never in stock. I am so happy that I finally found one today! Brock and I played it tonight, it was a lot of fun! I did yoga and the hoola hoop and Brock did running. I think we are going to get a lot of use out of it! This week Brock and Ava are on their winter vacation, they are looking forward to a week home from school.