Jan. 22-23, 2011

This weekend Mike made some amazing progress on the plans to remodel our kitchen.  He and I have had discussion upon discussion about how to make our kitchen as efficient and functional as possible. He took lots and lots of measurements and first created a sketch of what we want:

And then he installed a free program called Sweet Home 3D to create these renderings:

 View of the current state of our kitchen for reference:

So it's not the color of the cabinets and counter tops or flooring that we want, but we know that it all fits and it makes sense! Someday soon I will be able to reach my sink without breaking my back and we will be able to store our food in a pantry in the kitchen and not the basement! Ahhh, life's simple pleasures...

Jan. 8-9 and 15-16, 2011

We have been doing a lot of talking and thinking about our "2011 House To-Do List" the past few weekends. Now that we have a baby on the way, there are some projects that need to be pushed forward, some that need to be pushed back, and some are projects we thought we wouldn't have to tackle for another year or so.  BUT THAT'S OKAY BECAUSE BABIES ARE AWESOME! 


Here are the things that we hope to complete by the time Baby P is born:

• Replace the rest of the old windows in the front of the house
• Put up new siding so that the house stops falling down/it doesn't look so homely/we will gain some insulation from legit siding
• Remodel the kitchen so that it is *actually* functional
• Remove the drop tile ceiling throughout the house
• Convert the office into a nursery
• Convert the guest bedroom into an office
• Replace the stairs going to the basement
• Create a guest bedroom in the basement
• Remove the completely unsafe stairs to the backyard and add on a deck
• Move the wall and reconfigure closet space between the master bedroom and TV/music room
• Put a garden in our backyard

You know, just a small list... keeping our goals realistic... no big deal...

Jan. 1-2, 2011

Mike and I purchased a dishwasher on Black Friday weekend, and it was finally delivered on the 28th, yayyyy!!!!!!

Our pretty and shiny new friend.

We could have had it delivered earlier, but we don't have a place for it in the kitchen yet...so why rush, right?  This little fella will have to sit in the living room for awhile until we rip out a cabinet and install some plumbing (and by "we" I mean Mike and hopefully his brother Dave.)

Happy New Year! We are so excited about 2011 that we can barely stand it!

Dec. 18-26, 2010

Even though we were away from home, we couldn't help but build another house in Missouri!

Mike and Grace gluing together the walls

Grace and Sophie making Jolly Rancher windows

Mike's window!

Mmmm, pretty/glowy/tasty windows.

Starburst chimney bricks and Cinnamon Toast Crunch roof shingles.

Tada! Can we live in this house instead?

Nov. 27-Dec. 11, 2010

We've had a lot of big news and big events in the last couple of weekends, so we've been laying low to prepare ourselves for December 17th, the day we start our 3,000 mile roundtrip to Missouri. We will be visiting my family to celebrate my 25th birthday, the announcement of Baby P (official ETA now July 22, 2010!) and Christmas. Fingers crossed we don't run into any big storms along the way!

Nov. 20-21, 2010

Our wedding was truly the best day of our lives! Although the amount and intensity of our projects at home have decreased since summer ended, we have not treated ourselves to a special night/day/minute since 2009 (every spare nickel and dime from 2010 was saved for a downpayment on our house.) Being able to spend two days completely alone together in a cutesy town and cutesy bed and breakfast was probably the most romantic thing we have done in our three years of being together.


Mike and I drove up to North Conway, NH and stayed at The 1785 Inn, where we also had our ceremony. Our room was cute and cozy, the food at the restaurant was EXCEPTIONAL, and the staff was extremely friendly. Here's a couple of photos from our weekend:

A chilly 34 degrees on Saturday, November 20, 2010 at 3:45pm

Michael reading the vows he wrote that morning.

Reading the vows I wrote that morning.

I get a ring!

Mike gets a ring!

It's officially official!

Our first photo as husband and wife (and technically, our first family photo!)

Once the clouds cleared behind us, you could see the summit of Mount Washington.

The 1785 lounge where we had celebratory wedding drinks (a martini for Mike and the best hot choocolate I've ever had in my liiiiiiiiiife!)

This cute little room is where we nursed our food coma after an AMAZING dinner.

Mike and I doing a crossword puzzle the morning after our wedding (already trying to reach that "old married couple" status in under 24 hours!)

A super cute coffee shop full of art in North Conway

We can't wait to go back next year and do it all over again on our first anniversary!

Nov. 13-14, 2010

The bathroom is finished! Well, phase 1 of 50 is finished. Yesterday morning I spackled the walls with the only tool I had available:

Do I have to pay a co-pay for this use?

Thankfully I wasn't doing some sort of "super pro" spackling job in the bathroom.  I mean, I wanted to, but in turn that would have made every other area of the wall look even dumpier than the holes and cracks I was trying to cover up. Not worth going all OCD on walls that need to come down sooner versus later.

So here's the mis-tint paint I purchased a couple of weekends ago.  Note that even though this is a temporary fix, I still had to figure out a color that looked somewhat okay with those snappy yellow and brown tiles, yellow sink, yellow tub, and yellow toilet (barf barf barf!) So with those restrictions, light beige seemed to be the winner.

What says "high class" better than a white lid on a yellow toilet?

In other news, today Mike and I found out that someone else will be joining us at our wedding in the mountains next weekend. Although we didn't exactly send out a formal invitation to Baby Peterson, we certainly are thrilled and equally surprised with his/her RSVP! It looks like my help in our house projects will come to a screeching halt and our priorities will be shifting to prepare for our new arrival in July 2011.