"Much Better"

Those were the words that Uncas used when I walked in the door tonight. Yep - I went and had my hair fixed, as I like to call it. I seriously hated my new hair color that much, that I had to do something. I think it looks 100 times better!!!

Unplugging

We have had a busy April. I was out of town the first two weekends and then last weekend was pretty much all consumed with the kitchen floor. As a result our house is sort of a disaster area and lately I have found myself on my computer looking at random things. So, this weekend I am going to clean, relax, hang out with my puppy and just try to get a handle on everything that is coming up. We have a very busy May ahead - full of lots of fun things. I just want to make sure that I am rested and ready to go!

After I post this message, I will be shutting off the computer and watching some tv with a little puppy dog snuggled on my lap. Have a great weekend!

Oh Crap!

So - you know how sometimes you have a really good idea and in your head you have it all pictured so clearly. And then when the idea becomes reality, it ends up looking a lot different than how you pictured it? Yeah, well that's what happened when I got my hair colored tonight . . . I really had it pictured more of a honey blond . . .

The Reveal!

There it is - our new kitchen floor! I know - I have been a tease about what tile we picked out, but honestly, it was a huge departure from the white/beige color that we were originally thinking. When we were at the tile store last week - I fell in love with this blue tile. We have a blue mixer and our curtains in the kitchen have blue in them as well. I was a little nervous about the floor being too dark, but it turned out beautifully!!!

The top picture is before we did the grout, but the lighting is better than the bottom picture which was taken tonight. Here are a few more pictures from us tiling.

Uncas placing the first tile.

Halfway done!

Getting ready to place the last tile.

On grout duty.

I look forward to having our kitchen back to normal. It's amazing to think we did it all this weekend, with time to spare. Now it's time to go to bed. Have a great week!!!

New Kitchen Floor - Part 1

On Friday night, Uncas and I started the long anticipated project of tearing up and replacing the kitchen floor. Since day 1 in the house, Uncas has wanted to redo the kitchen floor. I have too, but realized that it would be better to hold off until after we painted the walls and the cabinets. The old floor was pretty gross and dirty and didn't match the look of the kitchen that I had envisioned. Originally we thought about doing the peal and stick tiles, but as time went on, Uncas did some more research and decided that we could actually do ceramic tile in there and do it ourselves.

Once we painted the kitchen cabinets, we looked at the calendar and picked this weekend to do the floors. Then the search for the perfect tile was on. We found it last week and placed the order. I was getting really excited, but on Friday afternoon I was starting to feel a little apprehensive. Can we really do this project ourselves? Will the tile look ok? How is Sammy going to deal with this upheaval in our house?

On Friday night after work, the first thing to do was "before" pictures! Then we moved the fridge, stove, side table and bookshelf out of the kitchen. Our dining room has the stove and fridge and everything else is in the living room (including Sammy's food and water dish).


Up next - tearing out the baseboards! This started out relatively easy. I watched Uncas do a few and then I actually tried my hand at it. The we started the part under the cabinets and the sink. Not only was it a hard angle, but one piece was especially stuck. Uncas tried and tried. I started tearing up other baseboards and then I started tearing up the floor. I got about 3/4 of the flooring tore up when Uncas finally got that stupid piece out! Fortunately for us, the flooring was really, really easy to tear up!



Once we finished tearing up the floors - I swept and vacuumed the floor. We were ready for the next step! But since it was around 10 pm, we decided to call it a night.


Saturday morning we woke up and started working the floors by 8:30. First order of business - laying down and securing the cement board. Once again, Uncas started while I observed. Then I took over screwed it down, while Uncas measured, cut and placed it on the floor. We were lucky that the weather was incredibly nice outside. Uncas was able to cut the cement board outside and Sammy played and played in the yard all morning and most of the afternoon. Finished up with the cement board just after 1 pm, so we took a break for lunch.

Supervisor Sammy chewing on a rawhide.

After lunch it was on to the real thing! Time to tile! Friday night when Uncas picked up the tile, the guy at the store gave him a tile cutter. Unfortunately after trying to cut a couple of tiles and breaking them, we decided that we should rent the wet saw like we originally talked about. So - off Uncas went to get the saw. By 4 pm we were back in business. Uncas did all the measuring and cutting. I primarily laid the tile. Uncas would come in and tile a bit to give me a break every once in a while. Just before 10 pm, Uncas put the last tile in place (I let him do the last two because my knees had had enough). It seemed like days ago we had put down the cement board, but in reality it was just in the morning. After we cleaned up, we headed to Wendy's to grab some dinner. We came home, ate it and went to bed just after 11.

Uncas using the wet saw.

The floor looks amazing! Better than I could have hoped. We still have to grout the floor, which we will do later this afternoon. I am glad to give my knees a break, but I am so sore all over! I have a new found respect for anyone who does tiling for a living. It's hard work! Both physically and mentally. Fortunately everything has gone so smoothly this weekend. The rain held off until late last night, so we (Uncas) could do all the cutting outside. The tiles lined up so beautifully on our floor that the amount of cutting that had to be done was minimal and my husband, being the perfectionist that he is, had very little waste! We ended up with almost 2 full boxes of extra tile!

I am purposely not posting any pictures of us tiling (I did take some) because I want to post the finished floor first. That won't happen until after we grout today, so you'll have to wait a little bit longer. But I think it will be worth waiting for! Now it's time to wake up Uncas and get some breakfast!!!

HAPPY 1ST BIRTHDAY SAMMY

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SAMMY!!!!!

The top picture is from the second day we picked him up. He was just over 2 months old. The bottom picture was from last week. I hope that Sammy has had a wonderful first year. We certainly have loved having him in our lives!!!!

More Easter

So as I was looking through my Easter pictures, I realized that I could just divide them into Sammy's Easter Pictures and Saffy's Easter Pictures. And so I did. Check them out.

It's hard to get back in the swing of things at work since I will have to work 5 days this week! The past couple of weeks I have taken the Friday off and it's been heavenly. I have always said that I would love to work 4 days. Who came up with the 5 day work week anyways?

I don't have too much else to report. I am gearing up for the destruction that will be our kitchen this weekend. The last major project that we have to do in there (or at least that we have planned in the next few years) is to tear up and replace the kitchen floor. We picked out the tile last week and we ended up going with something completely different than we originally planned. It's top secret - so top secret that I wouldn't even show my mom the sample tile this weekend. Now that is top secret! I do promise to post pictures on Sunday when it's complete.

And now one last picture from the weekend:

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter! I hope everyone had a great day and ate lots of chocolate bunnies! Above is Sammy posing sweetly with mine and Uncas's Easter basket. We had a wonderful weekend spending time with my parents and extended family today. I plan on posting pictures sometime this week. If you are my friend on Facebook, they are already posted there - so check out it! Ok - off to bed!

Pictures from Weekend

Work has been a little crazy this week, so at nights, I haven't felt like being on the computer much when I get home. But, I did take some great pictures from this weekend and I want to share them, so I managed to upload some pictures tonight.

A quick weekend recap:

Friday night - went to see Mary Poppins (the musical) with my good friend Mike. It was fabulous and I highly recommend it.

Saturday morning - headed to Lisa's mom's house for Caiden's party. Was immediately put to work preparing for the big day. I love hanging out with Lisa's family. I have known them for so long - they are like my second family. It was so much fun to see everyone. Lots of people came to wish Caiden a happy birthday including my parents. Some people hung around for a long time, which was fabulous and then Lisa, Amy (her cousin) and I went out for a girl's night. We hadn't done that for many, many years. We managed to stay out just past 12, but then had to call it a night.

Sunday - I went to visit my grandma. My cousin Michelle had a baby - Gavin, one month ago, so she meet me there, so I could meet him. What a cutie!!!!

Sunday night- home with my hubby and puppy!

It was a great weekend. I was able to see lots of people and had a fabulous time. You can check out all of pictures here.

Happy First Birthday Caiden

This weekend I went to IL for my godson, Caiden's first Birthday. I had a blast, but I am super tired. I promise to post more pictures soon.

Slacking Off

Sorry that I have been MIA for most of the week. I haven't been in the blogging mood lately. Sometimes I am just can't think of anything blog-worthy. I guess it's just been one of those weeks. The picture above was taken a couple of weeks ago - as I was hard at work on the computer and Sammy patiently waiting to sit in my lap.

Unfortunately, there won't be anything from me soon because I am heading south for the weekend. I have my godson's 1st B-day to celebrate (I can't believe it's been a full year already)! I will take lots of pictures from my weekend's adventure.

Oh - and the real reason for this post today was not to warn you about my lack of blogging, but the fact that I was sick of seeing the "Pruning" post. I thought I would leave you all with a cute picture at least!