Happy Halloween!!

Tomorrow starts NaBloPoMo - tune in for 30 days of posts!!

Getting There...

Last Tuesday our cabinets were delivered.

They were installed Wednesday and Thursday.

Our kitchen is looking functional again! Today they installed the knobs, and did some electrical work. TOMORROW THEY MEASURE FOR GRANITE!!! YAY!!!

Here's the color we chose, though this won't be the exact slab we get. We'll get to look at the slabs and supervise the layout of each big piece before they make any cuts.

Sometime next week (hopefully!) our appliances will arrive. Which means we will have ICE whenever we want it!!! (you totally miss the little things)

I had the BEST Dr. Pepper on Thursday!

Pete found some Heritage Dr. Peppers at a Kroger in Cincinnati. They were made with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. For you Texans, I don't think it tasted as good as a Dublin Dr. Pepper, but it was pretty good. Especially since I hadn't had one in a while.

Mmm, taste the sugary goodness.

It was almost as if I hadn't tasted a soda in 7 months. Oh wait. I hadn't. I wonder why?

Oh right, NOW I remember!!

Home Again!!

Thank goodness for friends like Matt and Jen Wheeler (well, mostly Jen since Matt is in South Carolina). Thank goodness for friends who welcome you into their home when you give them 15 minutes warning at 8:45pm on a weeknight that you need to come over....and spend the night....for the next three nights!!!

On Monday our kitchen was painted in the areas where the new cabinets won't cover and all our trim was touched up. Tuesday the floors were sanded down and the first layer of polyurethane was applied. A new layer was applied on Wednesday and again on Thursday. We had taken the dogs to the kennel for the week. We knew that they wouldn't be able to walk on the floors but we thought we could just use the front door, the dining room and kitchen have already been tarped off for some time.

What we didn't think of - nor were we warned about by our designer - was the toxic fumes. It smelled SO BAD!! Even upstairs where the all the doors had been closed. I was late getting home, and even later deciding I needed to get out of the house. I called Jen and drove straight over to her place. We watched Glee and chatted and then she put me up in her guest bedroom. Pete arrived around 11:30pm, long after Jen and I had both gone to bed.

We stayed at Jen's Tuesday through Thursday night, and had a really good time eating dinner and watching t.v. together. It felt like we were back in college! Thanks Jen for being such a good -spur of the moment- hostess!!

Friday night we drove to Louisville to stay at Audrey's before Race for the Cure in the morning. Another 5K success!
Yesterday afternoon we arrived home and thought the house STILL smelled pretty bad for habitation. So we gave it the rest of the afternoon - went to run errands, eat dinner, etc - and came home around 8pm. FINALLY it didn't smell so bad that we felt we couldn't stay. We got to sleep in our own bed!!

Here's the new floor - we definitely think it was worth the hassle - it looks GREAT!

So how are you EATING?!?

Thought y'all might like to know how we cobble together meals now that we have no kitchen. To be perfectly honest, we ate out quite a bit before the renovation began, so now it's even more of an excuse to go to Rincon or Oasis. But I do make breakfast every morning (egg on toast) and pack my lunch every day for school, so that's something. And we do manage to eat here about 3-4 times/week. We are very lucky to have tons of room for storage in our house. So we made some space and are trying to use all those little electric appliances we received from our wedding that don't get much regular use!

This is on the finished side of our basement - it's the cutting board and plates and things we use most often, and dry goods like crackers and chips.

Now we're in the unfinished side. Nestled in between the dog food and wrapping paper is our mini-fridge and roasting oven - which I have learned will bake chicken and roast potatoes.

Waaay back in the back of the basement is a random sawhorse table thing -- it now holds our crock pot and electric griddle. We're having chili tonight - thanks Crock Pot!

Not pictured are our full-size refrigerator and microwave. Those live out in the garage. I keep hoping we'll get the microwave down in the basement, but I think Pete might need help carrying it down - it's kinda big.

In other news, Audrey and Andrew ran their first 5K on Saturday!!! Yay! We're SO proud of them! Pete and I drove up to Louisville Saturday morning to run the race with them...well, I ran it with them... Pete, of course, had to go and WIN the race in 17:57. We took a little bit longer than that :)

We went to breakfast at Wild Eggs after - yum!

Big week coming up kitchen-wise: tomorrow the dining room and kitchen will be painted, Tuesday through Friday they'll be re-doing the floors!!

p.s. if you have any great crock pot recipes -- please share them!