Vacation!

Well, the kids finally wore us down and this summer we took them to Orlando ("But M-O-M, ALL our friends have been to Orlando").  In order to be economical, we drove down rather than fly, which was a beating in itself (thought we could do it in one straight shot by taking turns driving and sleeping, but realized that we needed that extra hotel night on the way home).  Of course a hurricane hit while we were there, but it largely bypassed us.  It was a blessing in disguise - for dealing with one full day of rain we were given lower crowds (people scared away because of the storm) and lower temperatures (from the cloud cover).

 

 Even though we were driving to Orlando, we had to make a pit stop at the first Florida beach we could once we hit the state before heading west.

  

All we did was walk out onto the sand for 5 or 10 minutes, but it was a nice refresher after being in the car so long.

 Since we were doing Legoland in addition to Disney and Universal Studios, we found a townhouse in Kissimmee to rent to be somewhat centrally located.  It was very nice and very affordable. Grace was in love with it because she got her own bedroom with television and her own attached bathroom.  We had a tiny pool just for ourselves, but the better bet was the pool at the main club.

  

 

It was very Paradise-esque.  And there were never more than a couple other families there at any given time - possibly because of the off-season, or the hurricane, or because the development was only about halfway finished.  No matter - it was very nice to virtually have the pool to ourselves.

 

Legoland was the first park we visited.  I think was the best one of the trip for us.  The kids were just the right age for the rides; the rides and shows weren't too much for Alex but were still entertaining for Grace. Plus Alex is so Lego-crazy you couldn't help but enjoy it. 

  

 Characters from our favorite Lego game.

 Alex loves the Hero Factory line of Legos and was very excited to see this lifesize guy.  Until he saw him from the back and realized it was just a guy in a Hero Factory suit.

 

 The kids did a little driving school.  Alex was very nervous and very serious about his driving, and got angry at me when I tried to break his concentration to have him look at me for a photo ("Mom, I'm DRIVING.")

One of my favorite areas was Miniland USA, which were these incredible recreations of various US areas done in Lego bricks.  You could see Daytona International Speedway, many areas of Florida from across the state, Kennedy Space Center, a pirate area, Northern and Southern California, New York City, Washington DC and Las Vegas. I just thought it was fascinating the detail they had.

 

30 Rock!

 

 

I tried to get a few shots showing many of the areas and to get some actual people in it for perspective. 

Need to come back

So Jim and I realized how nice it is to have the blog to look back and remember things from. So I told him I'd really try to get back in the swing of posting again.  And I'm going to try to post a lot of things that got missed while I've been lazy. So fingers are crossed that I'll get at least one up tomorrow!

Pin pin pin

I think I've said it before, but I love Pinterest.  Maybe I just like the idea of Pinterest, because I realized I haven't actually tried many of the items I've found there.  So I've resolved to start making myself actually attempt things from it, hopefully at least once a week. 


First thing I tried (quite a while back) were the mini cinnamon rolls.

These were pretty good, though I seemed to be the only one in my family that liked them much.  Made with crescent rolls, I think my family just prefers the regular out-of-a-can rolls.  So not to be made again since the last thing I need is to eat an entire mini muffin pan worth of cinnamon rolls by myself.


Next recipe (that I tried last week) was Lemon Parmesan Chicken with Peas.

VERY tasty - and very easy.  It is now part of our dinner recipe rotation - I highly recommend it.


Last night I tried Chicken and Asparagus Penne.

The description said "quick and easy - yum!".  Well, it was quick and easy, but not quite "yum."  More like "meh."  Very, very bland, which I somewhat expected when I saw the recipe included no seasonings.  It was a slight variation on a recipe the blogger had seen in a book, so I added the parsley the original recipe had, plus salt and pepper to the chicken when cooking, but it still didn't merit much of a response from my family.  So this one is NOT part of the dinner rotation.


I've pinned a lot of craft ideas, some for me to try, some to do with my kids and some for my Girl Scout troop.  Of course I've only tried one, but it was a resounding success.  Balloon bracelets.

Grace had bought one of these from one of the boutiques downtown, and when I saw the website on how to make them yourself I was struck by how easy it would be.  So I purchased a bunch of balloons and some elastic and the girls at Grace's birthday sleepover went to town, each making multiple bracelets.  I need to remember to look back over the craft ideas periodically, because I tend to forget about things I've pinned and when I see them again I think "Wow, what a great idea!"


For what it's worth, I've found websites that have debunked the "make glowing paint out of Mountain Dew" idea.

Which is too bad because it would have been pretty cool if it actually worked.  But it doesn't, so the pin is getting deleted.


So that's my Pinterest update for now.  Hopefully blogging about Pinterest ideas will actually make me do them.  I feel very creative when I pin things, but I've realized I'm not more creative if they only sit on a website waiting on me.

Vacation!

I've got to get some good photos taken of the new kitchen, but in the meantime I'm going to post a bunch of vacation pics.  We went up to Lake George in the Adirondacks for a week, and other than the two power outages, yellowjacket stings and extremely hot temps for the first half of the week, it was an absolutely wonderful vacation.

 

Our cute little one-room cabin.  It had a screened in porch with the table for eating.  And it had a loft for the kids to sleep in.  No TV and very weak wi-fi.

 The view from the door of our cabin.  The cabin seen on the right is the other one owned by the guys whose grandfather built them both.  A very nice couple were staying in this cabin - they'd been coming to this spot to vacation for the past 25 years.

 

Lake George had some of the clearest water I've ever seen in my whole life.  This area where you can see the rocks was probably at least 3 feet deep.  

 

 We rented a boat and a tube for four days.  The kids loved it.

Alex liked going fast.

 The kids loved it when we dropped anchor so they could jump off the boat and swim.  The water was cold, but not uncomfortably so.  Very nice on the days when we had 90+ degree weather.

 The beautiful view from behind the boat.  Unfortunately these photos don't do justice to how beautiful the scenery was.

 Grace very much enjoyed the front of the boat.

 

 There was a little island across from where our cabin was on the lake that we boated over to.

 

We ventured into Lake George Town to check it out.  A nice diversion for the kids, but definitely not some place we'd ever actually want to stay in.  Very touristy, but we hit a family-friendly restaurant, some gift shops and an arcade.  And found where the mini golf places were to come back to later in the week.

 This was our first time to play mini golf as a family, which was lots of fun.

We also spent a morning exploring Fort Ticonderoga, which was about 30 minutes up the road from us.  Sight of the first Revolutionary War victory, you can look out over Lake Champlain (seen in the background here) and see Vermont.

They had people dressed up like Revolutionary era people - we followed the drum and fife band in a little parade down to the garden area. 

 Alex plays with his wooden musket he got a the fort.

 Our final goodbye to the cabin.  Do you see a well-rested, vacation-filled family??  I sure do.

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.