Current Kitchen- Super in Transition!

Caution, mostly amateur and terrible pictures ahead!  Some from my kindle which are super blurry, the rest from my camera with the sun at the height of the day and thus overexposed.  As bad as it all looks, it does look better in "real" life.

Here was the original kitchen from the previous homeowners.  Gotta love that border....

And then I ripped the fruit border off, and if you look carefully back by the sliding glass doors you can see under the windows where I ripped off the green wallpaper like on the right, only to discover they put the wallpaper on unfinished sheetrock. :(  Now we have to skim coat the walls to fix it...something we don't really know how to do.

We still haven't figured out how to get that tv platform thing off the wall in the upper right.  It's drying some herbs for me right now.

This is how it currently looks below.  I got desperate and painted the green wallpaper on the right.  You can see the difference in white shades.  The whole upstairs will be painted the white below the chair rail.  I decided to paint it because we still haven't fixed the other walls, and this paper is also adhered to unfinished sheetrock.  When we fix the other two walls I'll tear it off.  In the meantime I couldn't handle the green.  We also got new kitchen knobs which helps a lot, but not enough.  And we only got them on half the cupboards because it was too expensive to buy all of them at the same time.  Next month we'll finish that up.

So much orange my eyes are twitching!

Here's a shot where you can see straight on to the wallpaper.  From these pictures you can't tell at all, but in reality, the wallpaper is textured so it looks a little wonky and you can see the seams, but it is still loads better than the before.

Another view with the new knobs and the fruit border gone.  This shot also brings out that lovely green (please pick up my sarcasm here!) border around the countertops.  You can also see the wallpaper both below and above the chair rail in the mudroom.  And I kid you not, the upper border is scarecrows.  

One more before and after, although my after doesn't capture as much.

Here's the other side of the kitchen.  Original knobs, same on the island, gone next month thank goodness!  This side would be painted white as well.

My ultimate plans are to paint the bottom half of the cupboards black, the top white, although possibly have some open cupboards around the window, redo the countertops with Ardex cement finish- it's cheap and looks awesome.  And rip that ugly chair rail off the wall.  Plus new light fixtures for both kitchen areas.

All in good time.  But hopefully time that passes by really, really quick.

New Craze- Adult Coloring Books

Pictures of the kitchen are still coming. It's just that we got 2.5 inches of rain yesterday before 9 AM, so it was not working for pictures very well.  Florescent lights without some type of natural light just don't take well!

In lieu of that, I decided to post about what apparently is the new adult craze.

Coloring books.



Stress Relieving Patterns.  I wonder how that works.

 
I like this one.


What I need more of in my life- Balance.

And I'd use these markers, because they seem awesome, and Modern Mrs. Darcy loves them.



The only thing about these coloring books for adults is that they are going to cost you.  About $11 on average for one book, and $20 for the markers.  Kind of an expensive coloring book!  Still, I'm a little tempted.  I love coloring and I especially love buying school supply type things at this time of year!

New House- Kitchen

The kitchen.  So much oak.  And brass.  And weird, crazy green vinyl wallpaper.  All of the following pictures are from the previous homeowners.



Why yes, that is a cardtable in the kitchen dining space.  And also a box tv adhered to the wall.  And a fluorescent light above the island.  With a fruit wallpaper border just for fun.  Also, if you look closely, you can see that the countertop has a green border on the edge.  Someone actually picked that.  I guess that's 1997 for you.



A nice view from the sliding glass doors.  We have a formal dining room that you can kind of see in the way back of this shot.



Don't get me wrong.  I know this kitchen has a lot of potential.  And compared to our last kitchen, this one is amazingly awesome.  It just needs some slight updating.  Which normally isn't that big a deal, but there are 44 kitchen knobs here.  So just to replace them with modest dollar ones that I like will cost about $300.

And I kind of said I wouldn't paint cupboards again because it is so much work.  But I lied.  I can't handle the oak.  I don't mind it everywhere else because it's tempered with lots of white and space, but in the kitchen it is just full on too much.

I'll post the current kitchen later this week.  Slowly but surely!

Crockpot Bread

It's seems like a million degrees here with the humidity.  The last thing I want to do is use the oven. But I also don't want to eat bread with a bunch of preservatives in it.

Thank goodness for pinterest and crockpot bread.



Doesn't that look yummy?  It's from the blog Host The Toast.  And it was good, and it didn't heat up my house.

I didn't quite use the amount of Rosemary because my plant is not doing so great hiding behind massive amounts of mint.  Chris thought it was maybe a little oily.  It calls for 3T of olive oil, so maybe next time I will only use 2.  Make the olive oil dip, it's amazing.

Now my only issue is that I may need a second crockpot.  One for meals one for bread.

Ruggage

I've been contemplating putting a ginormous jute rug in our living room to help keep the white carpet from being destroyed.  Something like this.



Only bigger because our living room is huge.  The problem we have is that our living room is so big, I don't know if I can get a big enough rug.  I am thinking 9 X 12 but they do sell a 10 X 14.

The Maui loop rug by Rugs USA is what I am looking at (in the pic above from the blog Liz Marie).  They have a 70% off sale all the time.  But I hesitate to pull the trigger because even through shipping is free, return shipping isn't, and if you are buying a rug that big it is going to weigh a lot and I can't imagine the cost to send back a 75 pound rug.

Here's World Market's take on rug placements.

 

Homeschool- American Literature Program

Ava is doing American Literature for English this year.  We are using it as 9th grade English combined with a writing course as well as grammar.

Here is an awesome link that breaks down the periods in American Literature and gives you the highlights of what those were, along with book examples and what was happening in the States. We'll be using this to discuss the different books and give them some context. She'll also at some point have a test on describing the different periods and correctly place books there.

Here is her book list:

1. To Kill A Mockingbird
2. Rip Van Winkle
3. Call of the Wild
4. Bonfire of the Vanities
5. For Whom the Bell Tolls
6. The Catcher in the Rye
7. The Scarlet Letter
8. Of Mice and Men or Grapes of Wrath
9. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
10. The Great Gatsby
11. The Oz books
12. Cat's Cradle
13. Catch 22
14. Slaughterhouse 5
15.Fahrenheit 451
16. Poems by Emily Dickingson
17. Poems by Edgar Allan Poe
18. Little Women ( a fluffier one and the one we are starting with to ease into it all!)

It's pretty heavy.  So as long as she spends at least 20 minutes a day reading her current book for the time period, she can read anything else she wants.  We are aiming for two of the above books per month, along with a paper for each.

New House- Living Room

Here's a couple of shots of part of the living room with my kindle so you can see the white bird of paradise plant I showed before.

We have a strict socks on feet policy for the living room.  Socks or their indoor flip flops.  All the white carpet in this house....

The plant fills up what would have been an awkward corner quite nicely.  Not bad for $23 at Costco!