We were Limin, Mon!

We are back from our awesome vacation. I highly highly recommend visiting the British Virgin Islands. Here is a top 10 on why we liked them so much:

10. The way people talk down there is just fun to listen to
9. We didn't see a McDonalds, Wendy's, Walmart, or Home Depot all week
8. The villas we stayed in at Virgin Gorda didn't even give us a key for our place b/c it is so safe there.
7. No one is in a hurry or seems to have anxiety about much
6. Never really a traffic back-up and fairly patient drivers. And ferries that get you to another island are pretty cheap and only take about 1/2 hour.
5. The yummy drinks, these people know how to make a mixed drink and I don't even drink that much but we had a drink almost every night with dinner
4. Being able to walk 70 feet to the beach and swim another 50 and be snorkeling in beautiful reefs. The snorkeling was amazing!
3. The food - BBQ's, seafood, rotis, jerk seasoning, everything was so good.
2. Amazing views no matter where you looked and to see the way God sprinkled all the islands in the sea. Crystal clear water and white sand beaches, with amazing colors of teal and blues when looking out over the water.
1. Getting to enjoy a week with my husband without any stresses (most anxiety was deciding where we eating and that wasn't even hard due to all the awesome restaurants).

I'll try to remember to bring my pics tomorrow to download and post some. I wish we could have stayed longer!!

Happy Mothers Day.....and Kaboom

So I hope any mothers that read this blog had a lovely day, of course that non-stop rain was not helping the lovely part. We had my parents and my brother over for lunch, I can now do this with very close family members and friends since I have a functional kitchen but know they won't judge Adam and I for the way we live in or remodeling mess :) We had a nice time and after they left Adam and I took some wonderful rainy Sunday afternoon naps.



My parents left around 5:00 and when Adam went in the kitchen a bit before 8:30 to get an after-the-nap-snack he exclaimed "What the heck!" At that little exclamation I of course needed to see what was going on in the kitchen. I thought perhaps our beloved little puppy had left some kind of bodily function gift for us, but nope that wasn't it at all, she was still in her crate taking her Sunday afternoon/night/all day nap too and hadn't awoken yet. He was standing at the back patio door and when I finally got there to look out it brought back some bad memories of a the lovely January storm. The big tree in our backyard had another large portion, probably at least 15 to 20 feet in length, had fallen over. Luckily missing our house once again but this time much closer. I don't know how we didn't hear something when it came down, guess we are hard sleepers. It is still attached, but barely and all the leafy area is now laying on our newly planted and growing grass. Adam turned in disgust as he knew this meant more time outside and more delay on getting things finished inside. He also knew this meant nicely begging one of our neighbors to borrow their chains saw again. Since we are leaving for Vacation on Friday he also knew that Monday and Tuesday were going to be his only chance to get this off our newly planted grass and at least dragged to the back of the yard.



One thing was decided for sure, this tree is now so fugly that it will have to come down at some point in the future. I didn't tell Adam this but I'm kind of glad that he made this decision because I thought it looked ridiculous after the storm when it really was only half a tree and I have ever really liked having that big of tree that close to our house, especially give our luck!

Above is picture from the last storm and the tree on the right is the one that was affected. You can't tell how full of a tree it was in this picture but even with half of it gone it was still pretty big and full. Below is a picture we we first planted the grass in the big dirt circle around the tree, it had just really started to look plush this last week. Hopefully Adam can get the tree out of the way before it ruins a section.

Holy Hostas, Batman!

So now that spring has sprung we are discovering all of the vegetation we have around our place. We had some daffodils that bloomed but have since wilted. We think we have a bunch of day lilies that just haven't bloomed yet. This week we had a bush type thing bloom and I think the flowerings were gardenias. I'm sure there is more to discover that maybe haven't come up or bloomed yet.

We knew when we moved in that there were quite a few hostas, but due to the magnitude of overgrowth everywhere I don't think we knew what exactly we were going to get especially the number of hostas and how big some of them are. The pictures I have posted are actually when they were first starting to come in they are all much bigger now.

All the things that look like tall stalks in the picture above are hostas as well, as I mentioned before they have all opened up and are pretty big.

The picture below is of just a portion of the wood that we cut from our lovely January storm. There is a ton more piled behind this nicely stacked pile and then some over the side that you can't see.

Pretty!

So one half of our kitchen is pretty much done, except for a few little details (which include the floors, toe kicks, shoe mouldings, crown molding, knob and/or pulls, caulking between the counters and wall, window mouldings, and a whole bunch of touch-ups). Once again for memory sake this is the kitchen before our little remodel.

And Now:

Check out this faucet and sink, are you sick of hearing that I love them? I don't know if you can tell by the picture but it is so deep. I seriously think it is double as deep as any sink I have previously used. The only issue this has caused so far is that you get a little extra sprayage since the water has a lot of room to fall and then redirect, but since the sink is so deep it doesn't usually get all over things. The pump over to the far right is for soap. It is so nice to have this little pump so I don't get have a dish soap bottle that is all nasty and it's nice when you just want something to soak and can just spray in a little soap while you are running the water.

Dish Pan Hands...

I can officially say I will no longer have to wash my dishes in the bathroom!!!!!! This weekend while I was at a church retreat out of town, Adam finished most of the work for getting the sink in and dishwasher hooked up. When I got home Saturday he just had some finishing things to complete. Last night he was able to get everything hooked up and we were able to put our dishes from dinner (and probably a few dinners before that) in the dishwasher. Even with the few items I needed to handwash, I have to say I have never been so excited to stand at a kitchen sink and wash something.

I really like my sink and faucet. Our sink is much deeper than our previous one and the faucet is one that has a high arch so you could put a pot like 2 feet deep in there and not have to finagle it out. I put my 8 quart stock pot in the sink to fill it up last night and you could hardly see it above the rim of the sink. I know that is probably not the most exciting thing for most people, it is just a fun little convenience I like :)

I am going to take some pictures but I want to get the counter top cleaned off and the cabinet doors back on so it can actually look like it is supposed to and not half done. I think I can finally say I have fully operational house, done.....not yet, but operational...absolutely. Now we can start on all the other projects we have hanging out there that need to be finished. We should also have some contractors coming out soon to finish up the bricking on the back of the house around a window and possibly some other things I have requested we get a quote on (i.e. Husband,.... please let some of this get done by someone besides us so that we can enjoy our summer and maybe even be able to have people over to our house!!!)

Yard work deserves a Vacation

This weekend we about did ourselves in trying to clean up our mess of a yard. We did get rid of all the brush from the storm (yes I know that was 2 months ago), well actually we have a mountain of mulch in our driveway, and finally got all of the leaves raked and in bags. We also cleaned out our flower beds and cleaned up our porch. I have some pics but no time to post these days (if you are a CPA and reading this, sorry, but you all are a pain this time of year!).

In other news Adam and I have decided to take a vacation in May. We are going to be going to the Britich Virgin Islands, we will actually fly into St Thomas (USVI) but then spend our trip between Tortola and Virgin Gorda. Due to the proximtiy a lot of the BVIs are to one another we will be able to make some day trips to places like Jost Van Dyke and Peter's Island. I'm super excited, we haven't done a lazy vacation in awhile and I'm ready for that more than I ever knew. Plus as much as I want this house to just get done, taking a week off isn't going to wreck our plans to get finished considering we have been doing this for over 6 months now.

Here are some pics of the places we will be going, I can't wait!

A beach in Tortola

The famous "Bath" in Virgin Gorda

Schweet we have a Stove!

So the stove has moved out of its temporary home in the 3rd bedroom and into its proper place in the kitchen. It is the no-fingerprints stainless steel, and might be a little different than the micro but in this picture it doesn't even look like SS, must be the flash or something. The funny thing is that even though this got moved in here on Friday night we have yet to use the stove top due to our schedule since then. Guess I wasn't as excited as I though to have a stove to cook on?

Here is the 18 inch cabinet that replaced the too big 24 inch cabinet that was in this spot. We are starting to get the shelves reinstalled and cabinet doors back on. I even unloaded 1 whole box of spices and sauces/oils into the cabinets around the stove.

One can now actually walk through the dining room without fear of tripping over a cord or falling over a box. I resituated everything and even got the table closer to its proper place. This validated my though that we need to order a new dining room set b/c this table looks like doll-house furniture in this big of a space. Obviously the fridge will not be there and actually this one will be making its way to the garage as soon as we get a dolly to get it exchanged for our new SS fridge that is currently just sitting out in the garage.
On a change of plans we are going to use the extra 24 inch cabinet to put up above the "L" shaped bar thing on the left wall. We also ordered another 18 inch cabinet to fill up the space a bit. So we will have 42 inches of additional cabinet space which will be nice and kind of balance the kitchen, is what Adam and I decided. The cabinet Lady has to think we are the most unorganized kitchen remodelers ever since we seem to be calling once a month to order something else we decided we need.