Bad News.

Aghh! I just got a call from the contractor who is supposed to be helping us Friday and Saturday to put in our kitchen. Dan went to bed early tonight, so tomorrow moring I have to tell him that he will not be showing up until Sat. morning. Let's hope I have a kitchen before we move in. Enjoy some of the before pictures they may end up being better than the after pictures. I'll let you know how things turn out.

I must be crazy.

Those of you who know me know I love to shop, not only shop but get a good deal. For me that is part of the fun of fixing up houses. I get to shop for new paint colors and other necessary fixings for a house. In this house we are redoing our kitchen, and for the first time having a kitchen island. My desire is to have butcher block counter top. If anyone has looked at one of these they know they are expensive. Thanks to my untiring research I know that one of my favorite stores, Ikea, has butcher block counter tops for less than half the price of my "other favorites store". The only problem is that Ikea is 31/2 hrs. away (if you don't take the wrong exit). I probably could have looked into ordering the butcher block online and having it delivered, but really how much fun would that be. Instead, I went with the much more reasonable option of packing up my three children (ages 7, 5, and 2), my mother to join me on what I was sure would be a fun road trip, and making sure I had the car adapter for my portable dvd player . We loaded up and headed for Ikea Conshohocken.

I'm sure some of you have already thought about the gas prices and are wondering how much of a deal this butcher block really is. I did think about gas prices momentarily, and through some very creative math I managed to work out a significant amount of savings even with our bankrupting gas prices. So twenty minutes behind schedule we left our driveway for our little adventure. This is where I made my mistake. I decided against stopping to get some healthy treats at Wegman's (the world's best grocery store). If you read my previous entry you know how important snacks are to my children. I did bring a few things, but they were neither healthy nor filling. It took a full 1 1/2 to deplete our snack bin. This was not a good thing. Having to make this a money making trip there was not room in the budget for convenience store snacks.

After taking the wrong the exit we ended up getting to the store a little later than we first planned. My girls managed to make it without starving to death, but we did have to eat at the cafeteria as soon as we got there. The whole eating experience was so confusing and unsettling I don't remember much of it. I do remember trying to get Olivia to eat her food. Forget that she had been complaining about her tummy hurting her since breakfast that morning. I'm sure some of you already know where this story is going. Yes, she threw up right in the children's section of the store. Luckily, I moved quickly enough so she avoided all of our clothing and retail items in the store. If it had to happen it couldn't have happened in a better place.

I had planned on meeting my friend Shelby at the store. We have a long shopping history together, and she is also an interior decorator. I was happy to be able to bounce some design ideas off of her. We had such a good time looking around and going on a bit of a shopping blitz.

For those of you who have never been to Ikea it is definitely more of an experience than your normal shopping trip. If you want to buy a couch. You get a cart and put your couch on the cart and walk out of the store with it. It's not a store for everyone, but if your looking for fun affordable furniture it is a good place to check out.

We survived the experience and made it home in one piece. Olivia is doing much better and I'm so glad to have a "you threw up in a store" story to tell her when she gets a little bit older.

Trying to Help

"Can I help sand the floor Daddy?" "Can I ride on the sander?" "No, Daddy turn it off It too woud (loud)." These questions/comments were fired off as Dan attempted to start sanding the hardwood floor. When we were considering buying this house, my husband and I talked about how easy it would to do the work together while the kids played. I don't recall drinking or taking any drugs during this conversation, but my mind must have been somewhat altered to have had such absurd thoughts.

I have attempted on several occasions in the past few weeks to take the girls up and help Dan. some times have worked out better than others. Today was not one of the better times. There is something about this house that stirs up my daughters' voracious appetites. It doesn't matter that I fed them a snack and a meal before we left our house, as soon as we walked in the door my oldest immediately asked for a snack. She does this often and I tell myself not to get upset, she isn't doing it to annoy me. Maybe she really is hungry? Instead I yell "I just fed you 10 minutes ago, no you may not have a snack." I dropped out of the "Mother of the Year" competition last week, so I figured I had nothing to lose.

I asked Dan what I could do to help and he suggested I go outside and use the weed wacker to subdue the jungle that we are calling our front yard. The girls wanted to watch me, but it's too lound for them. They asked me if I can weed wack with the weed wacker off? I tell them no and a few tears are shed. They are plied away from the excitement of the weed wacker with the promise that they can watch Dad sand the floor. This machine is also too loud for my youngest, so she is upstairs coloring with my mom who stopped by for a few hours to help. My middle daughter is excited because she gets to ride on the sander. My oldest daughter is a little upset because she doesn't get to "drive" it. The excitement of the sander lasts for about 10 minutes and then we all shut down work because grandma is leaving and they're all in a dire need of a snack (by now it's been almost 45 minutes since they've eaten.) I get them a snack and let them watch a DVD on our portable player. They argue and cry about what movie to watch. The youngest one wins out because she is yelling louder than the other two " I want to watch the Princess and the Pauper. NO, I want to watch the Princess and the Pauper!" (which brings me to my greatest parenting tip. Give in to the one who is yelling the loudest) --just joking, well kind of. The little one ends up watching the video while the other two go out and play Hide and Seek. I had to break up two fights, help find my middle one who was hiding in the drainage ditch, and locate the first aid kit for a bandaid and itching cream. We may have discovered poison ivy.

So needless to say I was not much of a help to my husband. He ended up having to come home early in order to help me put the kids to bed. I gotten really tired and hadn't gotten any snacksd and was having meltdown. Maybe tomorrow will be better. I'm going to try and go up first thing in the morning. They usually do much better in the morning.....

Where to begin?

It's hard to talk about our country house as "the new house" when we've only been in our current house for one year. The home we are in now is technically a "new" house. New is a relative term to my husband and I. The longest we've ever been in a home is 28 months. My oldest daughter is 7 and our country home will ber her 6th house. Yes, we've already started her therepy fund.

I guess my husband and I have found a passion for this house redo thing. It came about as an accident and It's slowly becoming more purposeful with each project.

In order to give you some perspective on what and accomplishment this is for us, I'll give you a little history on our fixer upper know how. I am the one who brought the tools into our relationship and those tools were a butter knife and a hammer. I don't know how I ended up with a hammer since my mom taught me how to pound nails in with her high heel shoes. (I am NOT joking). My mother is an extremely resourceful woman. Our first real project was building a shelf to put a computer printer on in our 1 bdrm condo. It took my hubby 3 hours (again I am NOT joking) to screw 2 brackets on a piece of plywood and then place said bracket and plywood into the wall. When the project was finished we called it done, but we did not call it good!. We have found ourselves getting into bigger and bigger projects ever since. My husband, being very diligent, has poured himself into learning the tricks of the trade. It also hasn't hurt that he has a brother who is an incredible contractor and has talked Dan through many projects.

When we looked at our country home (maybe I'll start referring to it as an estate, it does have a run down out building in the back yard) we thought oh, we'll put down some flooring and paint the walls. It will look great! The kitchen had only been put in 5 years ago and was solid even if it wasn't our style. My husband has a thing about opening up walls and creating an open space. He's done it in our last two houses and he was determined to do it in this one even if it wasn't really in the budget. After all won't we really be saving money after we put in all of those energy efficient appliances.

So tonight instead of just freshening up the paint in the kitchen he is finishing installing the new lighting with friend who is graciously helping us out. I'm posting some before and during pics. I look forward to showing you the after ones .

My First Story

So this is my first story on my first blog. I'm writing mostly to keep my family and friends (you are out there aren't you?) informed on our newest adventure. We have now moved so many times that we've actually lost count. Seriously we are on our 7th house, (6th that we've lived in). I will be posting pictures and writing about our adventure. In all honesty my husband is doing most of the work and I'm picking out the colors.

For those of you who don't know we have bought a house in the country. Dan is at this very moment trying to make the walls square in order to place the electrical, in order to put in the drywall, in order to hang the kitchen cabinetry before next friday. Making the walls square is not really the big story. The big story is the 1100 square feet that Dan and I (and two of our girls) laid down over the period of 3 weeks. " 3 weeks, that's not too bad" you may be saying to yourselves. Most likely it's probably not bad, except for the fact that we scheduled 1 week to have the entire floor installed, sanded, stained, and polyurethaned. Being two weeks behind schedule is really, really bad. The really, really good thing is that we now know how to put down a hardwood floor. My husband now really thinks that shag carpet and paneling are actually really smart and efficient decorating solutions. Pleas enjoy the pictures and come back for the full story of how we ended up here.