I'm a girl and I read directions...

Pride is a slippery little slope with humility waiting at the bottom.
I bought a hutch for my kitchen – assembly required. You’ve got to love it when you think you’re close to being done assembling something only to find out that a piece is in there wrong and it’s going to require almost complete disassembly to fix it. I was close to finishing the base cabinet and sliding the drawers in place when that’s what happened. The center support for the drawers with the slider on it was backwards – the drawers would not go in. I was able to figure out how to remedy the problem with only partial disassembly of the cabinet. Yea, me. Assembly of the upper shelves went much smoother. And presto-chango, 4 hours later three boxes of parts turned into this:

My boys

My mom's 60th birthday is in 2 weeks but due to scheduling conflicts, we all made it home this weekend to celebrate it. She didn't want a party, just family. It is a rare thing for the entire family to be together. It was good to hang out and spend time together. We made dinner so that the little men could participate without a problem. JT's not sure what to think of Marshall, but he did pretty well. Marshall just watches his cousin intently. Not too long from now they'll be getting into mischief together.

My boys - the cutest ever!

Marshall and Aunt Jen

He is his mama's son. Hannah is only 1 year younger than me. We both sucked our thumbs. Grandma Marshall visited us when I was about 5. She told us that if we kept sucking our thumbs, we'd eventually suck them off. Mom said she saw my eyes go big, I took my thumb out of my mouth and never sucked it again. Hannah, though, gave Grandma a "yeah right" look and stuck her thumb back in her mouth.

Cake Stuff

I recently discovered this store in search of a specific cookie cutter. Awesome. Lots of cookie cutters, cake pans, candy molds, frosting, cake & cookie decorations, and even classes on cake decorating. Cake Stuff is in the strip mall at Central & Tyler. It’ll inspire you to bake.

Wheel grease & cookie dough

(Per your request, Miss Sanchez, a new post.)

I am a list person, a detail person. I like finishing things so I can cross them off my list. But there are times I have to remind myself that people are more important than accomplishing what’s on my to do list. I co-hosted a baby shower at my house on Sunday. Saturday’s list was long and I was stressed over getting it all done. Farmers’ Market for fresh produce (huge, juicy cantaloupe!), Dillons for all the other groceries, clean the house, make cookies, last coats of polyurethane on the final cabinet doors, getting those doors hung after they dried. Tanya came to help frost the cookies – the duckies turned out very cute, and helped me hang the doors.

In the midst of this, a neighbor stopped by to say my roommate’s car had a flat tire. Thank goodness it was in the driveway. So I changed the tire for Michelle – she got a rush out of getting the lug nuts loose while I was getting cookies out of the oven. I picked her up when she dropped her car off to get the tire fixed. And praise the Lord, it ended up everything on the list got done in more than enough time.

It’s a good thing for me to be tapped on the shoulder by God and reminded that people are more important than my list and that when I do what’s important, the rest will get taken care of.

Progress!

This is a picture of my kitchen from when I bought the house. Plain wood cabinets, flowered wallpaper, yellow linoleum, old appliances. Outdated and NOT me.
Over the 4 years I've owned the house, I've been making a lot of changes. The kitchen has been a work in progress over the last 3 years. But I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Started by stripping the wall paper and painting yellow & brick red. Elisabeth & I replaced the ceiling fan that matched the wallpaper over the dining room table with a wrought iron look chandelier. I replaced all the appliances. Dad and I tiled the floor (mostly Dad). My parents bought me a nice shiny stainless steel sink for Christmas/birthday to replace the chipped & stained cast iron sink. And July 2006 I decided to tackle refinishing the cabinets. Got started and then my job got in the way, so I've been without most of the cabinet doors for over a year.

Since I returned from France, the goal has been to finish the kitchen remodel before any other projects are started. I have made major progress. A massive thanks to cabinet maker extrordinaire, Tony Racchini, for 3.5 hours of his time tackling the not fun job of rehanging the cabinet doors yesterday. It's so weird to have cabinet doors again but I am very pleased with the results. I added trim to the edges, primed, painted, glazed, and polyurethaned the doors. I still have a few doors left to finish. And I have to rebuild and do the same thing to the drawers and add trim at the baseboards and make new curtains. But the list is getting shorter and having the doors back up is a huge leap forward.

And I have new countertops on order. Don't know exactly when they'll be done, but should be within a few weeks. Yea! Progress, finally!