Somewhere Along The Way

The Week Ahead

Spring arrived early. Not sure how happy I am about it. I'm a winter lover. Sometimes when it gets this warm and there are this many blooms I feel Mother Nature is making a big mistake. Anyhow the Magnolias are stunning and they are super fragrant.

This week:

Finish and submit Julian's gorilla project!
( have to say I was super excited when we were able to use MY pics of gorillas from the Bronx Zoo. )

Exercise, exercise, exercise and swim swim swim

Register T for Kindergarten

Have a teacher conf with Mrs Orr, Julian's 2nd gr. teacher.

Get ready for girl's scrapbook weekend in
Jackson, NH.

Make sure Julian gets in two swim sessions.

And I think we have an eye dr appt for both boys!

Lastly, Stormy could really use a bath at the groomers.

Whew, and that's just a snapshot of the week to come!

It's been a year. Really?

Well I guess I abandoned the blog in November 2009.  I know why.  I started focusing more on my photography, website and business and something had to give.  So it's time to start writing again. Feature more photography.  Capture memories and recall the little things.

Thought I would start with our kitchen makeover photos.  Our poor kitchen.  We never really disliked the room.  It had a few things going for it.  Good working space I suppose.  It was bigger than the kitchen in our old house.  Plenty of storage, and oh, junk drawers.

We started the research process back in September/October 2010, and started the demo in early December:

 

(aaaah that wavey overhang...uuugh)

 
(the tall cupboard/pantry to the left was nice, lots of room, but falling apart)

 
(mmmm, the tile floor.  Again, it wasn't totally dreadful but the original builders of the home had never put the sub-floor in correctly so there were quite a few broken tiles.)

We orginally thought we'd keep the floor, but then it doesn't make sense to put in a ton of new cabinetry and granite on an old floor.  So we decided to replace the floor too.

Poor Tyler he was so confused.  "What happened to our kitchen Momma?"  Well Tyler this is our new kitchen, the dining room.  eeeeeek! 

 

For seven weeks we lived out of the dining room and washing dishes in the bathroom.  Living off of paper plates, frozen food and takeout.  Boy did we need a vacation!

Luckily we found an amazing contractor from Waterford.  Always arrived in the morning on time, always answered his phone, and worked pretty darn fast.  We decided on a hardwood floor.  Demo of tile took two days, install of new floor took two days.  Cabinet install was about five days.  Granite leadtime was about two weeks.

We decided that since the kitchen was so dark, and didn't get much light that we would go for cream color cabinetry.  Inspired by these two books:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and several UK issues of House Beautiful we decided we wanted to keep the whole scheme in light creamy colors.  We wanted to mix a little modern with a little bit of an antique look.  Still wanted great functionality and robustness.

The result:

 
Since our first visit with our contractor we knew we wanted the corner tower cupboard.  It's super deep, and we love the way the two steps of crown moulding draw your eye upward.

 
Some might find an all vanilla kitchen boring, but for us it's refreshing, easy on the eyes and simple.  The cocoa creamy granite complements the new mocha hardwood floor.

 
Chose an extra large stainless steel farmers sink.  So happy we did.  We used to have a double sink and I never really used one side.  It was small and sort of useless.  I love that we can now put cookie sheets, deep pasta pans and all the evening dishes in the sink ! 

 

 
Opted for a side mount swan neck faucet with pull down nozzle! Works great.  One handle for water temperature.  Opted out of having soap dispenser installed into granite. That would be more little places to clean.  The beautiful little boxwood topiaries are from Restoration Hardware.  I could just go and live in the RH showroom at Providence Place Mall.  Gorgeous!

Hello sexy french door fridge!  Goodbye ugly useless side by side fridge.  No more unboxing all of the frozen groceries to fit in the freezer.  No reorganizing the entire fridge after every grocery shopping!  It all fits!  It's wonderful, well lit,  and has a great water filter that only needs to be changed once a year. 

 

 

New food pantry, new desk !  Now the goal is to keep everything organized and clutter free!

 
These little scallop shell door knobs might just be my favorite thing in the whole kitchen. They really tell the story.  We love the sea and everything ocean themed. Incorporating these into the design was the icing on the cake.  The antique bronze look goes great with the cupboard glaze.

After searching high and low I found the knobs at Lowes, and so inexpensive too.  Funny how it's the details at the end of a big project that bring the biggest smile to our faces.  Bill loves them too!

 
Breakfast bar for the kiddos.  Julian and Tyler are having a ball enjoying breakfast here every morning and I like reading the newspaper and having a mid-day coffee on the countertop. 

 
 
Retired the old oblong kitchen table for a round one! I've been wanting a round kitchen table forever.  Again, I found this one online.  Tabletop matches the floors and can be expanded.  The base and chairs match the color of the cabinetry.  In the corner near the clock, a beautiful dog themed watercolor that Katherine and Jim gave us for Christmas.  They found the artist in Key West.

 

    Details.

Candle hurricanes, my moo cow creamers, M for Mileski and new soap holder.  Treated us to Restoratation Hardware dishsoap and handcream.  The fragrance is called "Shore" and it smells delightful ! 

So there you have it.  A new year.  A new blog post.  A new kitchen!

Stay tuned for BVI vacation photos!

High Rise Snake Condos

This is what took up the majority of our weekend.  Stacking 5 cords of wood or should I say building high rise snake condos.  With oil hitting $87 a barrel yesterday I don't feel so bad about how hard it was to move - I don't know how many tons of logs, and I certainly can't take all the credit.  Bill did most of it.

We had to laugh.  We found lots of shedded snake skins in some of the wood from last year.  So when the snakes see this they should be pretty excited.  I don't know if this picture does it justice.  This is a massive amount of wood.  We're thinking it might last two years at least.

Stacking wood is such a zen activity for me.  (don't think Bill would agree).  Lining it up, finding pieces to fit like a big puzzle takes your mind off all of your worries.   Don't you agree?