catch up

We've had my lovely parents, aunt, and cousins from Mexico in town visiting us for the past week and a half.

I took a break from the world to enjoy every moment with them. It's been an awesome 1 1/2 weeks full of love, laughing, playing, partying, dancing and lots of eating. Now that they're off, I've got lots of cleaning, blogging, working out, and catching up to do.

the joys of renovating...

It's Friday. I'm sitting at my dining table with Leila sitting next to me; she's eating lunch and watching Dora while 2 men are behind me working in my kitchen. Many men have been in our kitchen lately and this visit wasn't planned. It's pretty much 3 weeks to the day since we tore out our kitchen. I thought we'd be out 2 weeks instead of 3 but things don't always go as planned.

Our countertops were installed on Wednesday (instead of Monday) and they look beautiful (minus a few hiccups). I'm absolutely in love with our kitchen, I'm just dying to use it! Yesterday, I was able to start the fun stuff...I vacuumed every cupboard and wiped them down with clorox wipes to get them ready to be filled. We needed to wait 12 hours to use the sink that was just installed so we planned on installing the dishwasher/faucet/disposal yesterday. Like I've mentioned, Eric is handy and planned on doing it himself...but it didn't go as easy as we thought.

We had troubles with the pipes connecting to the disposal. After a late night run to Lowes, we still couldn't figure it out so Eric called a plumber first thing this morning to do what we thought was a simple job. Well, it's turned out to be more complicated than we thought, I won't go into details but it's a headache, and headaches always cost $$$...so do old homes. We're pretty much out of $$$ for the renovation so the house decorating and back splash will come later...much later. Oh, the problems you inherit when you buy a house.

Yes, I understand everything you are telling me. Look at all the holes in my new cabinet!

I'm so happy with our kitchen, but it hasn't been the smoothest process. Can you believe the headache we'd be in if we did it ourselves? No thanks! I'm so over men being in our kitchen and cars being in our driveway. And the kitchen I cleaned out yesterday is full of dust again. I'm not complaining, I just want to remember the next time we buy a house (we're never moving after all we've been through now) that a home/kitchen renovation is HARD! I love that we've been able to add our touch to our home, and I don't think the next home we buy will be new, we'll probably still want to customize our next home and go through this all over again. It really isn't that bad, it just feels lame in moment. It'll be so worth it in the end and we won't even remember it!

I'm just starting to stress out about the kitchen because we're on a time crunch now. My parents are arriving in town tomorrow from California to stay with us for a week  (they're moving to Utah in the summer and my dad is going to start looking for jobs). My Tia Meri and her grandchildren (my cousins kids) came to visit my parents from Mexico for 2 weeks so they'll be coming along too. I love my Tia Meri and Johan and Nadja and am so so excited to see everyone and have them stay in our new home, I just hope our house will be in order by tomorrow (with a functioning sink and dishwasher). Our basement is still a mess too...I'll get around to that later tonight.

But for now I think Leila and I will go for a walk around the block, we can't go too far.

last day of gymnastics

Leila successfully completed her first semester of gymnastics! I've always wanted to put my daughter in gymnastics so this was a fun experience. I'm happy to say that I think she gained something from it too. She learned how to "swing" (as Leila calls it - pretty much where you hang from a bar), follow directions-ish and mimic what the teacher was doing. She also learned to run and jump on the long trampoline, crawl through tunnels, and kinda walk along the beam (if she wasn't fighting me to do so). 

I enjoyed taking Leila to gymnastics but I also looked forward to the end of class because that's when they blew bubbles and handed out stickers...the only time she sat still and stayed with the rest of the group. She did well for her age and I'm proud of the things Leila learned. We'll probably wait until the Fall semester to sign up for another class, when she's a little older and can better understand and follow directions.

Upon completing the class Leila received a ribbon that says, "Star Gymnast". 20 months old and she already has a ribbon? So exciting, I'm a very proud mother. Now we just have to find the perfect spot to hang it.

Oh, and anytime she sees a bar to hang from, she runs towards it and yells, "swing". At first she hated the bar so I'm happy to see she's learned to love it. This happens at restaurants, stores, anywhere with a bar - the kind that usually forms a line. 

6

Last week we celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary! Woot woot!

These past 6 years have honestly been the sweetest and most fun years of my life. Eric is my partner in crime and best friend...I can't imagine what life would be like without him. I miss him every time he walks out the door for work and get excited when I hear the garage door open because then it's our time. All around he is just the most amazing person I know (supportive, honest, loving, funny, forgiving, dependable, smart, hard working, etc. etc. etc.). I always wanted to marry someone like my dad and Eric and my dad share a lot of the same qualities. I lucked out big time.

We had plans of going to California for my nieces wedding and luckily our anniversary was going to land during our stay. Unfortunately, that didn't end up working out. With our minds on the kitchen renovation we didn't really think about how we were going celebrate our anniversary until the day of. So we played it by ear, kept it chill. We went to the gym together (we love working out together though it doesn't happen very often), had street tacos from the best taco cart in town, drove around Sugarhouse looking for inspiration colors to paint our front door while Leila napped, enjoyed shamrock shakes at Sugarhouse Park while Leila chased the birds, and just went where the wind blew us (literally, it was a windy and gloomy day). It doesn't take much to keep us happy and entertained.

 

The weather wasn't cooperating too much and Leila almost got blown away by the wind so we packed up and got ready to drop Leila off at Grandma's so we can go to dinner.

But before dinner we made a pit stop at Home Depot (our favorite store) to pick up a few things for the house sans Leila - though we're huge fans of the good ol' HP, Leila isn't. We thought we were going to beat the crowds for dinner at 5:30 but we took longer than expected at our favorite store. By the time we got to The Cheesecake Factory it was 1:20 min wait. Whomp whomp whomp...we turned the corner and decided to check out the new restaurant Brio. But it was a 55 minute wait. 

What were we thinking trying to get dinner at 7pm on a Saturday night without a reservation for our anniversary? Laughing at our lack of planning, we waited the 55 minutes at Brio. But luck was on our side because it was the shortest 55 minutes ever. 5 minutes after we checked in our buzzer went off. What? It was a packed house. Guess they buzzed 5 peeps before us and no one showed.

The service was impeccable, food was great, and it was a very comfortable/elegant ambiance. Whatever the occasion, we usually do gifts in the morning right when we get up (birthdays, anniversaries). This time we waited to swap gifts over dinner because it made it that much more special and gave us something to look forward to. Eric gave me this beautiful necklace that says "California" in the shape of the state. I'll always be a California girl at heart. He picked it out all by himself and it was a winner. You know in movies when the guy buys the girl a necklace and puts it on for her, well that's what Eric did for me and that little moment was so romantic. Well, the whole evening was romantic. I just cuddled into Eric's arms while we talked and reminisced about our 6 years. 

We'll probably start rounding up to 7 years soon, we always round up. Ah, 6 years sounds old but as I just typed the number seven, it sounds waaay long. It's weird to not be newlyweds anymore because it's always felt like we have been. 

My gift to Eric wasn't as romantic. He's a sucker for nice sunglasses and would have 20 pair if he could (I just like cheap ones from Target) so I got him some sexy Oakley sunglasses. I wasn't sure they were the ones he wanted but I must say I did well and he kept them (I'm known for exchanging gifts from Eric for a different color or style, I'm horrible right?!). Without any help from each other, we did well in the gift section.

 

 

It was the most perfect dinner and the server kept calling us lovebirds...he too could sense that love was in the air. Ha ha. We didn't have time for much else so after dinner we picked up our little girl, who we missed, and headed home. To be honest, I didn't want to do anything else. Just wanted to cuddle on the couch and watch a movie that we picked up from the RedBox on the way home (In Time with Justin Timberlake - good film) with my husband of 6 years. 

The day was perfect in its imperfectness because it wasn't planned. But that's what I love about our marriage, it's easy. 

in with the new

The Artisan installers arrived bright and early last Tuesday morning. Bryan and Juan got to work right away. Leila and I hung around for a bit but we tried to get out of their hair, as our house isn't very big and their stuff was every where. Luckily, the weather was nice so we were out and about trying not to be home. 

Did I ever mention how hard it is to be out of a kitchen with a toddler? I think washing dishes out of the tub is disgusting. So we've been using paper and plastic everything. I'm so looking forward to 1. not having to use the bathroom sink for everything and 2. making a home cooked meal. It will be a dream cooking in our new kitchen.

Day one:

 

This was our kitchen at the end of day 1. The plumbing was an issue and got in the way of the placement of the dishwasher because it stuck out so far. Artisan had to hire a plumber to re-position the plumbing but fortunately, Artisan took care of the bill since they didn't realize it was a problem when designing the kitchen. Now we have some copper from our old pipes to go cash in. 

Day two:

At the end of day two it actually looks like a kitchen. I'm in love so far...and it's only going to get better.

Day three:

Bryan stopped by for a couple hours on Monday to finish installing the second open shelf box and the flip-down tray under the sink (to keep the sink area tidy). 

Since our kitchen is so small, we decided to optimize the space by adding the tip-down tray and message center. These cupboards were in our kitchen design from Lowes and we thought they were so cool we had Artisan custom make them for our kitchen even though IKEA doesn't. It wasn't a problem for them at all and they whipped 'em out. The message center is a place for our keys, mail, etc. I hope it will replace our junk drawer...or make our junk drawer less cluttered. I'm so looking forward to using these cupboards on the daily!

We had an existing outlet behind the cabinet next to the fridge, now it's the perfect spot to store our toaster and keep it off the counter.

Our kitchen is almost complete and we're LOVING it so far. I love how the open wood shelf boxes break up the white cabinets. On Monday we'll have our countertops! No more eating out/off of paper plates.

out with the old

Here's a reminder of what we did to the house before we moved in:

• tore down a wall
• replaced the floors in the kitchen
• sanded/statined the rest of the hardwood floors throughout the house
• got rid of all the popcorn ceiling/drop down ceiling
• re-textured the ceiling
• added can lighting
• removed all the wallpaper in the bedrooms
• painted almost every nook and crany in the house
• tore down the upper kitchen cabinets and painted them white
• sanded and painted the hideous wood paneling

Eric and I wanted to move in when the house was "complete" but we quickly learned that the house will never be perfect, it's a constant work in progress. We know what we want to do in each room of the house and I wish we could just afford to do it all at once. But I'm pretty sure we'll appreciate it more as we do each room in time.

Though the kitchen was only half a kitchen, we finally decided to move in at the end of December (much later than we'd hoped). People usually consider the kitchen to be the heart of the home and in our home it's been the eyesore of our home! We've only been able to unload some of the kitchen boxes due to the lack of storage. This is the kitchen we've been living with since we moved in:

The time has finally come for us to get rid of this eyesore. Istallation of our new kitchen started last Tuesday and Wednesday so to prep for that, we had a demo party the Saturday before. Eric gathered his buddies, Ray and Trevor, to come over and let out some aggression (if they had any).

Before:

During:

After:

Goodbye old kitchen, we're not sad to see you go.