Cabinets

The appliances are here, but since they aren't actually installed yet they are just halfway sitting out in the middle of the kitchen or still in boxes on the plywood counter. So I figured I'd post pictures of the cabinets as they looked BEFORE the appliances arrived.

Don't these white cabinets just look fantastic!

 Here is the space where the stove will be.  It's now very much a focal point - you see it when you look into the kitchen from the dining room.

 Where the sink will be.  Dishwasher is already here because we kept the one we had since it was only a couple years old.

Where the refrigerator goes.  Much of the remaining work will be done when we are on vacation, so we will walk in to a nearly finished kitchen when we return!

A little more done

We have drywall!  And floors! And lights!

Actually the drywall and lights we've had for a while, but I haven't posted the pics yet. The floor is just finished.

 Drywall on one side of the kitchen.

 And the other.  The wall to the right of the door will have a brand new set of cabinets - we will end up with a U-shaped counter vs. the L-shaped one we previously had.

 

 Our new tile floor that I love love love!  Looks like slate but is actually porcelain ceramic tiles.

 

The newly tiled bathroom.  The floor ended up looking a little more "wow" than we thought.  I figure it will just keep people from hanging out in there too long.

 

 Close up of the bathroom tile.  Now that we see it, we wish we'd actually gone with a light gray grout. The individual tiles would have been better defined.

And a shot of some of our new can lights in the ceiling (plus the new duct for the stove vent on the right).  We are going from having just four weird non-matching pendant lights to seven can lights, plus two mini one that will be over the window, plus awesome under-cabinet lighting.  I'll actually be able to see what I'm doing!

Trying my patience

So I think the secret with kitchen remodelers (or any sort of house remodeling contractors), is that you get so sick of living in weird, convoluted living spaces that you end up being happy with whatever the end result is, as long as it is finished!

Yes, we are remodeling the kitchen (and the little first floor bathroom and the pantry area).  Here are some pics of what we started out with.

Hard to see the non-matching pendant lights because of the glare from the window. You can see the big cement slab on the floor, probably due to a wood-burning stove there at some point (the house is over 100 years old). The dishwasher is the only thing we are keeping from our appliances.

While the cabinets didn't look all that bad, they were REALLY cheap - you could hear the panels in the doors rattle when you shut them.  And you can just barely see over our paper towel holder the self-applied (by a self other than us) undercabinet lighting.  Halogen lights that got really hot and that were held up by little skinny nails with all the extension cords stuck to the cabinets with double sticky foam tape, which obviously didn't stick too well since you can see that bit falling down.

More non-matching pendant lights. I guess they matched in that they were all brass (non-matching) hardware and antique (I guess) shades.  The refrigerator butted up against the wall, so I couldn't completely open the right hand side.  And the red paint wasn't made to use in a kitchen - if I tried to wipe something off of it my paper towel came away all pink.

Our pantry area.  A weird empty space between the kitchen and the bathroom.  We found an Ikea shelf to use there, but we are getting a real pantry put there now.  Not sure where we are going to store the brooms, etc., in the new configuration though.

The old bathroom.  You can't see the horrible plumbing job under the pedestal sink, but it was very obvious and very much NOT a professionally done job.

 

Gutted kitchen (with the cement slab).  Also the new plywood subfloor.  We tore out the hardwood floors and are putting in tile. As much as we would have liked to keep wood, we have one finish in the dining room and another finish in the family room, and didn't think we would be able to match either one and we didn't think three different types of wood next to each other would look good.

Other side of gutted kitchen.  Interesting when we pulled the walls off to see what was underneath. Looks like a framed door area above behind where the cabinets were.

Gutted bathroom. This was really interesting. Once again found what appeared to be a door frame that was covered up by what looked like an old tabletop or something like that.  And a window-shaped area over where the sink was.  But since the stairs go along that wall to the left and turn and continue up the wall you can't see, I have no idea what a door there would have led to.  I'd love to get my hands on blueprints of earlier incarnations of our house.

Here's our temporary kitchen. Microwave and toaster oven from friends. Coffee pot behind. Lack of counter space (and water on the first floor) is killing me.

Our temporary pantry.  Yep, right near the TV.

Enough pics for today.  Tomorrow I can show off some of our drywall and tile work.

Art show

One thing I love about our town is that it is SMALL.  There are about 30,000 total people in the town (there were more than that at each of the two universities I attended!), and about 6,300 total students in the school district - one high school, two middle schools, six elementary schools and one kindergarten school.

So when the district-wide art show rolls around each year, there is a good chance if one of my kids isn't featured in it then definitely many others we know are.  It's very fun to see - they hold it in the high school gym over a couple of days.  Most classes (at least on our side of town) take quick field trips of walking to the school to see it, and everyone is welcome to stop by and look at the art.

This year Alex had a piece in it and Grace had one that she did as a group project.

Alex posing in front of his picture (it's the one up high above his head). He was reluctant to originally have his photo taken because he said people wouldn't know which was his.

Closer view of Alex's artwork.

The 4th Grace classes at the kids' school made plaster people.  This is the one that Grace did with three other classmates.  She was quick to point out that whoever got to take it home also got Maggie's stuffed dog that is on the leash. I then began to try to talk her OUT of getting custody of the piece (where in the world would we store it?), but she told me they are going to flip a coin to see who gets it.

Alex almost always finds a piece displayed that he thinks is really cool.  This year it was a robot created by a high school student.  I know he would like for it to be shown off a little more here too.

A post about the first one we attended can be seen here.  Like Alex, Grace got a picture in it when she was in 1st Grade.  My talented kiddos!

Tanorexia

I was going to do a blog posting about volunteering, because that's what has just about worn me down over the past few weeks, but I'll do that another time (though after that Daddy/Daughter Dance I must admit I've gotten REALLY good about saying no to stuff).

What I really want to address is this:

Yes, the lady from New Jersey charged with bringing her 6-year-old daughter into the tanning room with her.  Now honestly I don't know if she actually did it or not - it's not for me to figure out.  But I think everyone agrees that the woman needs a wake up call to the fact that her skin is SCARY.  And I even picked one of the least-cringe-inducing photos floating around the Internet right now.  I'm assuming when she looks in the mirror her mind plays the same tricks on her that mine does when I think "Oh, I haven't gained that much weight."  Of course once I see a photo of myself someone has taken I start to rethink that idea right away, and there are certainly enough photos of her out there that maybe she will have the same change of heart.

But once again I tried to use a sensational media event as a teaching tool for my kids.  I showed this woman to Grace and pointed out how she and I are the SAME AGE (at least until tomorrow!).  Grace couldn't believe it, so I then read her the couple of facts about using tanning beds that were in the accompanying story - that tanning beds can transmit 12 to 15 times the ultraviolet radiation that the sun does and that some indoor tanners are more than four times likelier to develop melanoma than non-tanners. 

While I certainly didn't as a teenager (baby oil while tanning, anyone?), I very much embrace my pale skin.  And luckily genetics have given me a good enough color base that I never fall under the ghostly category.  So if you come to the town pool looking for me, be sure and look either underneath the trees or in the part of the pool shaded by the tarps, because that's where I'll be these days.  And maybe my daughter will too.

My own personal Grouch

Yep, that would be my youngest.

Conversation in the car:
Me - "Let's go to the Bronx Zoo by ourselves on Wednesday." (friends can't make it with us)
Alex - "No, I don't want to do that."
Jim - "Well, we are going to a Broadway show next weekend. That will be fun, right?"
Alex - "No"
Jim - "What would you want to see? Blue Man Group? Spiderman? Mary Poppins?"
Alex - "None of them"
Me - "Well, what about going to Central Park?"
Alex - "No"
Me - "Liberty Science Center?"
Grace - "YES!"
Alex - "No"
Me - "Well, what do you want to do? We have a whole week off from school for Spring Break."
Alex - "I don't know."
Jim - (trying to get some sort of positive response) "Well, what about Legoland? Would you be happy if we went to Legoland?"
Alex - "DAD - we are going there this summer."

And so it went on and on. I think we may have sparked a little interest in going to Six Flags Great America one day this week. But that boy is why we are hesitant of doing big, fun vacations. A lot of friends have been to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, to the all-inclusive resorts down there. While we would love to go, we can't imagine the boy having fun on the beach five days in a row. I'd be taking full advantage of free alcoholic beverages because his complaining would drive me absolutely insane.

Even discussing our upcoming summer trip to a cabin in the Adirondacks didn't get much excitement out of him. Orlando at the end of the summer better be the ticket. Otherwise I may just see if Barker Lounge will board him along with Lucy (though he'd complain about the doggy smell the entire time).

One more flower

Alex and I were looking at all the forsythia blooming around town the other day (and they are blooming EVERYWHERE - beautiful big yellow bushes everywhere). I commented how yellow they were, that they looked like highlighters. Alex's response was "Yeah, NEW highlighters!"

He's right!

Spring's a-bloomin' (early)

We've had such a crazy warm winter this year. Aside from our freak October snowfall, we only had one small snowstorm (and it was all contained in one weekend). So I'm posting my "look what's blooming now!" notice almost three weeks earlier than usual.


Snowdrops are the first to show. They have been up for a while so are starting to look a little puny.


Crocuses are the next ones to bloom. I love these white ones with the purple stripes.


There are clumps of them that have popped up everywhere in my beds. Blue, white and purple, but also yellow ones all over the place too. I get so many compliments on them, but I always fess up that they are from all the work put in by the previous homeowner.


The daffodils are my newest bloomers. I can't bring myself to cut them, so even though I have lots in the flower beds I still treat myself to a bouquet of them from the supermarket.


These last two photos don't look very impressive, but they show all the other bulbs starting to poke up on either side of the front door. If I remember correctly they are lots of hyacinths and tulips. But as you can see until the hostas and tiger lilies decide to show up (which there are a LOT of) the ugly foundation of our basement walls stick out like a sore thumb. So one of my big projects this spring is planting some evergreen shrubs to keep that bare concrete covered year round. But what is going to make that tough is ALL those bulbs planted pretty much every square inch of the plots. I foresee hand digging them all out with a trowel before even sticking a shovel in the ground. And then I'll still have to replant them, because I just can't bring myself to get rid of them!

I'm itching to get started in the yard, but have to keep reminding myself that gardening starts an entire month later up here than it did in Texas. I know if I were to actually get those shrubs planted now we'd be hit with one more hard freeze in the next couple weeks (which of course won't happen since I'm going to be good and wait).

Ikea

Well, I discovered yesterday that the time to go to Ikea is solo on a Thursday at about 10:30 am, versus with the entire family on a Saturday afternoon. Except of course when it was time to load up the car - I could have used my husband's helping hands (and muscles) with that one.

But the store was wonderful to shop in. One or two other sets of people (singles/couples/families) in a section with me at any given time. And I could take all the short cuts I wanted to avoid entire sections all together since I was there for three specific items.

Have you shopped at Ikea? Especially with the family? No surprise 30 Rock called it "relationship kryptonite". The trip starts off all fun with meandering around looking at all the room displays, but by the time you've hit the end of the trip (2 or 3 hours later) everyone is tired, crabby and just all around sick of each other.

But we love Ikea stuff at this point in our lives. We have kids. Youngish kids. So very rarely do we want to invest in heirloom-grade furniture, knowing that it will most likely get destroyed by grimy hands. Ikea is awesome for items that look great but cost very little. And I must admit I pretty much rock the assembly of Ikea items. Jim doesn't have the patience for it, but the left-brain side of me loves having the step-by-step instructions to follow (though I have to wonder where all the Allen wrenches end up - there must be a large stash of them by now someplace in my house).

And I'm passing that love on to my son. He helped me assemble two wooden dining chairs yesterday (Stefan - brown-black) and came to realize assembling Ikea furniture is quite like following his Lego instructions. And that boy could wield the Allen wrench. I kept asking if he needed me to finish (they get pretty hard to twist right at the end). Nope - he kept at it with the determined look on his face and got it all the way down.

Now I'm off to the basement to finish assembling the chest of drawers (Hemnes 3-drawer - gray-brown). And our new Salong vase (red) looks fantastic on the mantle!

Whitney

How can I NOT do a post about Whitney Houston?

I wasn't ever a huge Whitney fan. It's not that I disliked her - I'd watch a video if it popped up on MTV, but I never bought any of her records. But there is no denying she was one of the top selling pop singers of all time, which translated into MANY fans. And little did I know until she passed away that she was from New Jersey. Newark, NJ, in fact. Which is about 15 miles from where I now live. And little did I know that her father was laid to rest in the cemetery in the town I now reside (population of about 30K - more people went to the universities I attended than live in my town).

But with the coverage her death received here (and I'm sure it was a lot elsewhere on national news, but we got it in all the local news too), there is no way I'll ever forget where she was from.

I don't begrudge her the press her death has received. In fact, I've become somewhat appalled by some of the comments I've seen on coverage of it. Lots of people decrying the fact that so much airtime and press is being given to a "druggie" and "crackhead". But what it comes down to is that she DID sell all those records and she DID have many, many fans. And she let her demons get the better of her.

There were two very good things I read recently about her. One was the writeup in People Magazine about her life. Not that People is usually hard-hitting journalism, but this article did a great job in pointing out the two sides to Whitney's life. She grew up on the mean streets of Newark. Yes, she was big in her church, but she certainly wasn't from some white-bread suburb. She grew up on the streets, liked to party, and liked to be herself with those that knew her best. She was also a product of the music industry, packaged up and sold as this great crossover star - a sweet pop princess all the way. And that the stress of having to hold up that sweet pop facade was hard on her when it wasn't who she actually was inside. Everyone was surprised when she married Bobby Brown, but apparently people that knew her well say it wasn't that big a surprise for who she really was.

The other interesting thing I read was a column in the Newark newspaper (which is my local paper). It pointed out how the story of Whitney (and Michael Jackson, and Elvis, etc.) should really drive home the point that drug addiction is VERY hard to beat. Everybody knows how bad it is for you, and knows rehab and such is how to kick the habit, but when people who have the means to try every route can't seem to break their addictions you know it must be a hard thing to achieve.

So I feel very sorry for Whitney. I feel sorry for her mother and her daughter. I feel sorry for her fans who I'm sure all hoped she would eventually be able to clean herself and her life up. Rather than complain about the media spending so much time on a fallen star, I'd rather use this as a lesson for my children on how drug abuse can ruin your life, and how sad it makes everyone that gets left behind.

Duty calls

I swear I'm not trying to get out of my weekly-minimum blog posting vow, but right now I'm knee-deep in inputting ad copy for the Variety Show playbill for the PTA. So I'll be back soon...

It's gonna be a LONG night

So tonight I (along with two other moms) are taking 14 girls to overnight at the Liberty Science Center. Not so bad, you think? Well, when you combine that with the fact that there will be a total of 345 fourth- and fifth-grade girls and 142 adults, it looks to be quite an experience.

I know the museum does these overnights for quite a few groups, so I'm hoping that they have it down for keeping things moving. We don't get our schedule until we check in tonight, but the sample one provided looks like events are pretty well stacked one after another. My concern is sleeping. Luckily adults are allowed to bring a blow-up air mattress, but I've been fighting a head cold all week. Nyquil has helped me sleep through the night, but I'm pretty sure it's not a good idea for the troop leader to drug herself up when in charge of other people's children.

I guess the saving grace may be that they don't have the day ending until 11pm ("quiet hours" don't actually start until midnight), and lights begin coming on at 6:30 the next morning. I'll pack a bag of cough drops so that even if I have to stay awake sucking on them for a few hours at least the night will pass quickly.

We have the option of sticking around the next day and exploring the museum some more, but I can tell you at least my car of girls will be heading home after breakfast. I'm going to have a nice soft BED waiting for me to nap in.

Groundhog's Day

So according to Punxsutawney Phil, there will be 6 more weeks of winter. Not surprising, since we have really had no winter to speak of so far.

There was a little article in the paper today about the movie "Groundhog Day". Which, by the way, is always one of those movies I can stop and watch when I run across it on TV. One item the article ended on was something that I have to admit I'd never thought of before, but now it's stuck in my head. Easier for me to just copy what was written than try to paraphrase:

For fans, of course, the biggest conjecture is just how long was Phil Connors condemned to this purgatory. Co-star Stephen Tobolowsky has said (Harold) Ramis told him "that in Buddhism, they say that it takes 10,000 years for a soul to evolve to the next level. So he said that he felt that the entire progress of 'Groundhog Day' covered 10,000 years..."

Ramis himself later told a magazine, "It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and, allotting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years."

So now I'm wanting to watch the movie again with the context in my brain that Bill Murray's character actually relived that day for 40 YEARS (or 10,000 if you want to go to the extreme). Should make his exasperation even more interesting to watch.

Happy Groundhog's Day, everyone!

Funny kids

I'm totally going to cheat on this post and just direct everyone to a funnier post about "shit kids say" over on the People I Want to Punch in the Throat blog. The comments are just about better than the actual post.

To which I can add the following:

- My kids were seeing so many infomercials on TV for a while (before they discovered both the DVR and video on demand) that they tried to convince me to buy the Pancake Puff pan by telling me in all seriousness "But it's pan-tastic, Mom".

- Alex told me a couple years ago "Mommy, I know the "S" word." (whispering) "It's 'stupid'."

- If Grace now walks into the room where I am doing something that causes me to be bent over, she responds to the view of my rear end with "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!"

Ah, kids.

Friends

So my friend Dijea over at Me, Myself & I has thrown the gauntlet for us to try to post on our blogs at least once a week. I'm game for that.

Which has made my mind turn to thinking about friends, specifically online friends. I've probably posted about this before, but my memory is so bad that obviously I'm ready to do it again. Dijea and I knew each other well enough back when I lived in Dallas, but we didn't seem (in my mind) to really become friends until I moved away and we connected via Facebook. I feel like if we lived in the same town we would definitely be getting together for some girls' nights out. And there are a few other people who I now feel this way about, that I really didn't know well before Facebook but now realize they are someone who shouldn't have fallen off the radar after high school/college/whatever as quickly as they did (or should have been more on my radar than they originally were).

But I also think about a quote regarding FB that I once read that said it was not good for us because it's like reliving high school all over again. Relationships that were supposed to die a natural death - acquaintances, ex-boyfriends, etc. - no longer do. And in a way I can see this. I have 500+ "friends" on Facebook, but I can honestly tell you that many of these people are not actually friends of mine. They were people I knew at one time - I'm not one for friending strangers online - but I don't really care much about what is going on in their lives. And I've heard the statistic that we can only truly have meaningful relationships with about 150 people at any given time. But I just can't seem to bring myself to drop people from my friend list - not that I want to keep the number big but because I just feel BAD about doing it.

Plus some of those "acquaintances" are the ones that have turned into really interesting people for me. And I actually like (most) of my ex-boyfriends and am interested in hearing how they are doing. And it's exciting to connect with someone that you haven't heard from in 20+ years.

So what to do? Is it really that bad to have that many "friends"? Most of the ones I don't care about I have blocked, so I'm not really seeing their posts anyway. But I probably could go through and get rid of a handful right away - people I get requests from that were a year or two older or younger than me in high school. I sit on those request sometimes trying to decide whether to friend or not, then end up doing it when I am having a "why not?" day. But maybe this will be the day I answer "Because I really don't remember you at all, not even 25+ years ago when we were in school together."

I don't think I can get down to 150, but I bet I can get rid of at least a few of them. Will it be liberating or guilt-inducing?

Can we have a boring year?

Does anyone ever have a boring year? One where there are no extreme upheavals in either your physical or mental well-being? One where you don't tick off at least one of the items on the "most stressful things in life" list. I think we may have had one in 2007, but we were still adjusting to life in New Jersey for at least the beginning of the year.

So maybe it doesn't happen very often. But maybe we will get lucky and this will be one for us.

Too long away

So ONCE AGAIN I will attempt at blogging on a more frequent basis. First post for the new year is just a tiny thing from my paper.

I love the TV critic for the NJ Star-Ledger. Sometimes just some very funny items are slipped in - I often wonder if they do it to see if anyone is paying attention.

Today my morning started with a smile when I was reading the "Primescan" section, which are the little blurbs next to the television listings about shows on that night. This is the one that I liked:

NBC's horrid sitcom "Whitney" moves to Wednesdays, where it forms a terrible new comedy bloc with "Are You There, Chelsea?"

It's those little things in life that can start your day right!

History repeats itself

So Grace, while attempting to stall going to bed last night, came in to say she had something to tell me when I tucked her in. Jim of course wants to hear what the secret is, so he convinces her to tell us both right then.

"At our last Girl Scout meeting (aside from Julie - meetings are held at the school), Anna, Elie and I, when no one was looking, went into the BOYS bathroom!"

Look on her face was priceless - all big eyes, proud that she'd gotten away with it.

So we talked about how different boys bathrooms are from girls bathrooms, with urinals and all that. Grace loved to point out how weird they are.

And then I got to surprise Grace (and Jim too) by pointing out when I was her age I did the SAME EXACT THING at my Girl Scout meetings. I'd almost forgotten about it, but we would dare each other to run into the boys bathroom at the church our troop met at. Wonder if my mother did the same thing at her Girl Scout meetings...

Sunday paper tidbits

I felt the urge to share a couple of the interesting things from my paper today. Haven't done this in a while and I don't know if I will start doing it regularly or not. But here goes.

A woman was able to catch the thief who stole her iPhone because of an app she had installed. iGotYa will snap a photo if someone enters the incorrect password to unlock a phone. She was able to take this picture to the police department who recognized the man from a warrant poster and made an arrest. Makes me think I should get this one. Of course that means I'd have to password-protect my phone again. And I'd probably end up with a lot of photos of myself from trying to enter my number in too quickly.

A new book out called "Is Marriage for White People?" states that more than 70% of black children are born to unwed parents. The author says that this is not due to differing sexual mores between whites and blacks, but because black women are living what he describes as a "segregated existence." Asians, Latinos and even black men are much more likely to marry outside their race, but black women are socially pressured to marry within their race - encouraged to marry "down" before they marry "out." Black men aren't held to such standards. The article states "Their problem isn't so much frequent pregnancy as a dearth of appropriate partners." Interesting theory.

The Star-Ledger has a "Knucklehead of the Week" area in the editorial section. So many this week that they had five listed, but the one I liked was about Martha Stewart's daughter's new tell-all book: "Martha Stewart's daughter, Alexis, has written a book to let people know just how tough her privileged multimillion-dollar childhood was. Exhibit A: Martha often left the bathroom door open when she peed. Unbearable." To me that just sounds like every other mom I know, due to habits formed when you have toddlers who don't want you out of their sight!

Texas trip

So, so far behind in posting...

We followed up Cousin Camp this year with an extended visit in Texas. Jim was with us for a weekend and the kids and I stayed a little longer.


With Jim we hit our old Dallas haunts, which of course means hot dogs and custard at Harry's.


And a visit to Northpark Mall (which is what we HAD to do to kill our afternoon hours while staying away from the Texas heat). The kids are so big now they can just about get to the top of the planters in two steps. Go look in my July 2006 archives to see what the kids USED to look like climbing this planter (in fact most of the photos are of the same exact side of the same exact planter).


Alex imitates one of the Hammermen.


Jim wanted to visit with an old buddy. Alex stayed in Ft. Worth with the grandparents and Grace and I dropped Jim off then went to have a lovely afternoon at the Nasher Sculpture Museum. This was an exhibit where an entire room was filled up with balloons. You were allowed to go in, and all you could see around yourself was balloons. Bit too claustrophobia-inducing for me, but Grace loved it.


Grace next to the Spoon Woman sculpture that we have a shot of her next to from the first visit we ever made to the Nasher (that picture is found in my May 2008 archives).


Headless men with a silly girl.


Once Jim headed back to New Jersey the kids and I did a little more visiting with people, including a side trip to see the cousins in Austin. So I finally got to see the bats flying out from the Congress Avenue bridge.


We went to Barton Springs. No matter how hot the Texas weather is, this water is always almost too cold to swim in! But I'm glad we got to let the kids experience it. It's just totally cool swimming someplace with natural stone ledges all around it.


Thanks to Kathy and David graciously watching the kids, I got a fun night out with old college friends. So much laughter to catch up on when you haven't seen someone in 20+ years.


And when we made it back to D/FW, Grace got to catch up with her old friends too.


Made it to a Ranger game this year. The kids lasted the entire game, which was a BIG surprise.


And we managed once again to take a quick trip to the Water Gardens after a breakfast at Paris Coffee shop. I just love pictures like this one where my kids are being sweet and walking hand-in-hand.


Now my sweet kids are being goofy and wanting me to take their picture looking like they are falling into the pool.


Always a wonderful trip.