Ballerina Birthday Party!

Maelie turned 4 one week ago.  But due to vacationing family members, we decided to hold off a week on the party.  So yesterday we had 8 little girls over to the house, along with grandparents, a couple of aunts and my friend Amanda, and had a proper ballerina party.  I asked Maelie's pre-ballet teacher come by and give a little lesson to the girls.  It was adorable!  

(Pics by my talented Mother in law - I was too busy to snap much of anything!)

We had strawberry cupcakes, coconut cake, jumbo gumballs, M&Ms, raspberry lemonade and pink milk.  And she blew out 4 pink candles with white polka dots.  It was a momentous day indeed!  The kids all played a rousing game of pin the tutu on the ballerina.  She danced and played with her little friends and cousins and got a pile of presents.  It was a perfect party! 

Turning 4 has definitely been difficult for me.  I guess I have felt like 3 and under are still the baby years.  But 4 is big kid.  And I guess I wasn't ready for my baby to turn into a big girl.  But I'm slowly getting used to it.  (Of course, today when she started talking about her 5th birthday party and I realized that she only has 51 weeks of her being 4, I nearly had another meltdown!)

I had a very insightful interview with her last week on her birthday and I will posting those Q's and A's tomorrow.  She is such an interesting girl!  

Happy birthday Maelie Kate!  We love you VERY much!!

Grout. Grout. Let it all out...

This weekend we finally finished the grouting!!  I didn't think I would be so excited for this phase, but I really am!  And just to share my excitement, here is the original kitchen...

And here is where we are right now...

All the grouting is FINALLY done!  Of course, there is still a hole in the ceiling above the stove where the vent hood is eventually going to go.  When we buy one, that is.  And there is still no light above the sink...we are still working that choice out.  But it definitely looks better than the before pic...right??  I can't believe how different all the white is making the floor look.  Where before it looked more grey, now it looks very brown. I can't wait to get rid of it.  I am still looking at the harlequin grey and white check vinyl floor.  It is just so classy.  (BTW, a co-worker told me a few weeks ago that my kitchen choices were "retro".  Um, no.  Classic.  Never confuse retro with classic!)
Anyway, I am super proud of the progress we have made so far.  The next major steps will be removing the wall between the kitchen and dining room, making a decision on flooring and installing the island!  Can't wait!

My First Time Tiling...

The day I've been waiting for finally arrived.  The day that we would mix up some thinset, clear the kitchen counters and get busy tiling.  I have been looking at bare sheetrock (or, in some spots, the original minty green painted sheetrock) for 4 months now.  And it was time for change!  

A couple of weeks ago, we hit the jackpot at ReStore, picking up almost 2 full boxes of white subway tile for about $15.  It wasn't enough to completely do the kitchen, so we had to pick up 2 more boxes from Menards.  They were on sale for $19 a box, about $3 cheaper than the regular price at Lowes.  Adam bought a score and snap style for $15 from Harbor Freight and we borrowed a tile saw from my awesome friend Bree.  So after gathering all the essentials and standing around while Adam did a ton of math (thank God he does it - I would just jump in and get myself into trouble!), we finally started around 4 in the afternoon.  It was brutal.  Seriously.  WAY too intricate for my hurry-up-and-get-it-done personality.  But Adam was very methodical.  He had laid tile before - the hexagon mosaic tile that was in both bathrooms in our old house.  But this was the first time he had tiled a wall.  We had some issues with getting the spacers to stay in, but finally got in a groove.  We took a brief stop to answer the door for the pizza boy (seriously, he was like 12) and chow down on some pepperoni & bacon and ham & pineapple pizzas.  Then we jumped back in.  We finished somewhere around 12:30.  And here's what it looks like this morning...

 We haven't gotten to the grout stage yet.  We really want the thinset to be completely dry and solid.  Plus, we have a whole other wall to tile as well.  Yep.  We are only 1/2 done.  *sigh*  But it looks SO good!  And looking at it is only inspiring me to get back to work!

Insta-Friday

Happy Spring Break! 

We live in Kansas, so Spring Break means snow.  Seriously.  The high this week was 55.  We are supposed to get 4-8 inches of the white stuff tomorrow.  Ridiculous.  

But the dreary weather didn't keep us from having a fun week.  :)  We spent several days in Kansas City, staying with Adam's parents, going to the girls' doctor appointments and having some fun family time.  Here's what we did...

We began by going home to our old church.  The sanctuary is so incredibly impressive.  It's everything churches these days aren't.  The soaring ceilings, the stained glass, the wood pews.  There is something sacred about spaces like this.  Something you can't replicate in today's megachurchy sanctuary/gyms.  It was good stuff.  I wish I could be there every week.

 After church, we stopped at Waldo Pizza...

There is nothing in the world that compares.  As their motto states, "Corporate Pizza Sucks".  Yes.  Yes it does.  Especially when compared to chicken, spinach & Roma tomato pizza with alfredo sauce.  YUM.

The next morning, after a quick checkup at the girl's doctor, we made our way downtown for a family fun day.  First stop - the Crayola Store!  The girls spent a LONG time coloring at all the fun coloring stations around the store.  Meanwhile, I noticed Adam's doppelganger across the store...

The resemblance was uncanny!

After they were all colored out, we took the Link across the street to Union Station...

It's my most favorite building in the entire city.  It's hard to believe that it was neglected and decaying not that long ago.  

My favorite part of the building is the ceiling...

While there, we grabbed some lunch at Harvey's...

What a happy kiddo!  

Next up - Science City!!  The kids were really excited to go.  We hadn't been before, but found out that our family membership to the KU Natural History Museum gets us into Science City (and 300 other museums nationwide!) for free!  

The exhibits were very cool...and the whole family thought this thing was awesome!  We spent a lot of time in front of this screen dancing our little hearts out.  :) 

Of course, if you ask the girls what the best part of the weekend was, they will most definitely say seeing their Lolly.  They got to spend 3 nights there!  And I caught them whispering to each other and sweetly playing together in the mornings.  Maybe sharing a room wouldn't be the worst thing ever...??  Especially if they wake up this happy every day...

After our fun 4 day weekend, it was back to work for me.  For 2 days at least.  But our Spring Break was good family time.  And good Kansas City time too.

I'm linking up to Insta-Friday, click over to see what other bloggers have been up to this week.

Kitchen Progress...

Finally.  The cabinet doors and drawers are back in place.  I still have a gaping hole in the ceiling over the stove, super ugly vinyl flooring, mismatched appliances and a sheetrock backsplash.  But we are making progress!

Just a reminder of what the kitchen looked like the first time we saw the house...

Oh goodness.  How did we think this was a good idea?

In November, we prepped for new counters...

Then the counters were FINALLY installed...

In December, the gas line was ran for the new stove...

Then in February, we took off all the cabinet doors and drawers...

added trim to the doors and drawers...

and painted all the cabinetry Behr's Powdered Snow.

But now all the paint is dry!  So we added all the knobs and pulls purchased from Hobby Lobby and the (really nice, fairly new) hinges that I spray painted black.  And here's where we are at right now...

Hooray!

Tiling starts this week, so the backsplash won't be all sheetrock-y.  And I think it will really make everything look so much more finished.  So far, we have done all the work ourselves, except the countertops of course.  Overall, I am super happy with all the hard work that Adam has done!  He has spent countless hours sanding, trimming, painting, and generally working his booty off for this kitchen.  I really don't know what I would do without him!  And this house is finally starting to come together.  Every single thing we do is making the house look like we belong here!

Less Blogging, More Sawdust...

In the trend of not ever blogging...ever, I have been neglecting all things laptop related lately.  Seriously.  If I can't do it on my phone, it's not being done people.  And this time I have a REALLY good reason.  It's because my dining room looks like this...

While my kitchen cabinets hung out in the garage...

getting all Shaker-fied.  And currently, we are in the process of doing this...

And I seriously can't live like this much longer.  But the end of this phase is in sight.  We just have 1 or 2 more coats of Behr's Powdered Snow to go on the cabinets.  We scored a horde of white subway tile from ReStore last weekend for half of what we expected to spend at Lowe's!  So as soon as the cabinets are done, tiling will begin.  While I am going out of my mind at the sawdust and disorganization and general chaos that has seized my house, I am really happy we are moving forward and seeing progress.  :) 

So that's what we've been up to this week.  How about you?

Insta-Friday...

Hey look!  I have an Insta-Friday up!  Hell hath frozen.

Today is the end of a super intense 6 week training course at work.  That's 6 weeks of complete stress and freaking out.  So no time for blogging!  But I'm hoping to get back into things now that I'm almost done.

I'm starting with a pic from about 10 days ago.  It's too great to not include!

It's Haven's banana car for the Awana pine box derby!!  She came up with the idea all by herself.  Adam just had to figure out how to carve a rectangle of wood into a banana shape.  No big.  She even painted it herself AND made Adam take her to the store to get some real bananas so she could put banana stickers on it.  This thing didn't win any awards for speed (turns out a crescent shaped car may not be aerodynamic!), but she did win 2nd for design!

Haven's art skills are rad...

She had to draw a pic from (what else!) The Chronicles of Narnia, so she picked Aslan.  I think he's adorable!  I love his little paws.  :)

My friend Amanda spoiled the girls with some fun Valentine crafting kits.  They both got these fabulous bracelet and ring kits...

Obviously a HUGE hit with Mae.  

On the way out to dinner the other night, I realized how ridiculously high I had popped my hair, so of course, I had to document...

of course, Adam's hat kinda got in the way.  Oh and my hair is currently turquoise.  Having (almost) no dress code at work is AMAZING.

And 15 minutes later, while taking her first bite of her dinner at Planet Sub, this happened to Haven...

Lost tooth #2!!  So gross.  

Later that night, we were working on her spelling list when I had a very important realization...

A children's spelling list, when written on paper from a psychiatric center, looks very much like the ramblings of a crazy person.  Especially when there are words like "hiding", "disturb" and "survive" on that list.  Having a shrink for a hubby is sometimes very funny to realize what freebies we have around the house.  All the pens have the names of anti-depressants or anti-psychotic drugs.  Maybe I need to hit up an Office Max...

Valentines Day was super fun!  The girls got up early to get into their little chair backpacks...

Lots of stickers, crafty things and Target dollar bin goodies!  They were excited as always!

Breakfast was Valentine's donuts and strawberry milk.  You know, because we are all about nutritious, natural foods around here.

Another V Day success!  

Then last night, I took Maelie to get her hair cut...

She was really needing it.  I mean, she is almost 4.  (What???  Seriously??)  Yep almost.  Her hair is pretty thin and it was always falling out of ponytails and such.  So I'm hoping it will be easier to care for and make her look a little (GASP!) older.  I like it so far.  AND I DIDN'T CRY THIS TIME.  Success all around!

That's it for this week.  I'm linking to Life Rearranged's Insta-Friday.