It is Done

Hubs and I finished dinner Monday night and sat....

We sat on the couch and sort of looked at each other wondering what we were going to do next.  The kitchen is finished, no more projects to do, nothing good on TV, and no time for a movie before bed.... So we got ready for bed and read our books.

What will we do with all our new free time??  It seems like this project has taken much longer than 6 weeks, habits were formed...

But it's over now, we love our kitchen, and there's a source of pride from doing it our selves that we wouldn't get hiring all the work out.

I love this kitchen, it feels bigger, happier, more like a home I would live in.  Husband did an amazing job, the credit should really go to him.  I painted... but he was the one taking out and reinstalling stoves and sinks and faucets and anything else you can think of... He did the floors himself too... He's just so handy!

It's hawt...

Love,

Susie Q

So Whatless Wednesday

That's right folks!  You read correctly, I'm in too good of a mood to So what about anything

So What if I have no "So What's" today!

There are many reasons why I am happy today, but I can't really share them all with you (No mom(s), I am NOT pregnant)

I do have a super awesome Husband who is working very diligently to get our kitchen finished... including the sink that seems to have been "ghetto rigged" for 30-40 years... ah, the joys of living in a 50 year old condo!

It will look like this when it is done though... only smaller

and there won't be glass on our cabinets... and we don't have an island... but you know, close.

I have two very happy, healthy dogs who want nothing more than to be loved on by us.

I have two awesome jobs!

I have a car that runs ... well, it jogs.

I have weddings to plan and people to love...

Today is one of those days where my brain is going about a mile a minute and I can't quite come up with anything I want to tell you about *in-depth* so... That's all for today! 

In other news:

I saw this and thought of the hubs:

Did you notice the smile in the A?  #flippinawesome

Happenings

Surreal things are happening!

I signed up for a half marathon a while back...

The earth moved in Atlanta (apparently... I didn't feel it downtown)

I booked my first (on my own) wedding

I have another meeting for another wedding (on my own) tomorrow... no big deal

Our kitchen is getting closer to being done.  Maybe this week?

Life is good.  End of story...

For today. 

And now for a tour

of our doors.

Yes, that's right, our doors.

We decided with all these great kitchen changes the rest of our house deserved a small pick-me-up too! SO, we bought new door knobs that are a pretty silver color instead of the ugly gold ones that have paint all over them from the time when I tried to prime an entire condo by.myself...

Please note that when I show you these doors EVERYTHING in the room was painted that color, I mean the doors, walls, door frames, window sills, molding... and the crown molding was black in the rooms that had it...

Yep, it was fun but it looks beautiful now, and you'd never know!

The second bedroom -- that we made into a master

If this looks black it's because it is... this was the hall bath, with black based wall paper and a black door

This doesn't even do the color justice -- this was the living room, dining room, and hall way, with black crown molding

Black again you say? NOPE, this is royal purple, it was in the master bedroom, master bath, and master closet... including the shelves

 I think the white looks much better don't you?

It was pretty fun to look at all the doors and remind myself of how far this condo has come.  It was three years ago at the end of this month that I bought the place and I can say it's been the happiest three years of my life.  I get really caught up in getting out of this condo, it's small, and old, and the water pressure leaves things to be desired; but it has brought some of my happiest memories, I fell in love in this condo, putting furniture together with the hubs.  I'll cry when it's time to say goodbye for sure! 

Counters come today!!!!! Who's PUMPED?!?!?!?!

So What Wednesday -- and Happy Birthday to my Daddy!

First:

It's my Daddy's birthday today.  No matter how old I get I don't think I'll ever stop being Daddy's little girl!  He's the bestest!

He Walks me down the Aisle 

For practice and for realz... then we danced :-)

We take awesome pictures in the mountains ...

... and at NJ horse tracks

 He still loves his mama!

And he gives good toasts.  Pictures are proof

These are the only pics I could grab of FB today since my silly Mac is having some issues....

Second:

Side note, looking through all my FB picture albums made me chuckle at what I used to think was "cool" in college and such :-) 

Third:

You Guessed it!

So What If:

• Our kitchen is in our dining room -- I know I've been saying that for a month, but I'm for real this time!  Hubs took out part of the door frame and moved the stove, dishwasher, and refrigerator into the dining room yesterday.  Today, he has removed the sink, counters, and most likely the floors.

• Daisy looks like her eyes might pop out after playing in the yard for 15 minutes

•  I miss college a little bit right now.  It's the first week of class at my Alma Mater and I've been thinking today about all the great times we had, the happy moments, the next to zero responsibility... you know, college.
• I put this little number on the chalk board at Menchies last week... 

• That's all I have for today :-)

A short and sweet "So What" but it was still fun!

Link up with Shannon at Life After I Dew and enjoy your own "So What"!

Tata for now!

Susie Q

OH SNAP! -- and a guessing game

Guess who just discovered the convenience of Picasa Web Albums...

I'll wait a moment...

You're RIGHT! ME!

Yay me, late, but at least I'm there!

 So now that I have that down, GUESS WHAT I HAVE TO SHARE WITH YOU! -- Yes, I'm yelling

That's right!  Progress Pictures!

But first, I must vent tell ya'll about the project that is our kitchen.  We started this little galley kitchen thinking a few coats of paint, a few weeks, and we'll be DONE.  Awesome.

NOT.the.case.

Every project we start seems to add another project to it.  

1) We started painting, but starting with black, we had to do 4+ coats on everything.  This meant that there was so much paint we were scared that our belongings would stick to the paint and pull it up, so we bought contact paper and put it on all the surfaces.

2) We changed the light fixture, except that created 3 more holes in the ceiling from taking the old two fixtures down (not to mention the ghetto-rigging that was present to run power from the original source to the new source -- it's a wonder there was not a fire!)

3)   When we changed the lighting we also exposed the original ceiling color.  I'm not kidding ya'll, when I bought the place I thought the ceilings were white because everything else was so dark!

The counters should come on Thursday, Hubs is working on the floors today and tomorrow -- then we'll just need to cover them for Thursday.  *Fingers Crossed* We'll have our kitchen back together by next week!!!

 These pictures are actually a week old, the walls in this photo are now painted, and the doors are back on the cabinets

Again, the doors are on the cabinets now

The air vent is back on the wall in this photo, and all the tape is off -- looks GREAT!

This wall is painted now -- I'll take more pictures tonight and get them up -- faster this time

OK... This is the ceiling.  Please note the brown color that looked white in the original house.  Also note the hole next to the actual electrical hole.  This is where they ghetto rigged some wiring and fed it through the ceiling too....

That hole to your left -- that had a plastic casing for the electrical box

Sense these pictures, all the upper cabinet doors have been attached, the tape has been removed from the walls, the ceiling is patched and painted, and we have a new light fixture.  I'll show you more soon! 

Happy Tuesday Folks!

Love,

Susie Q

PS:  I finally added the picture here... I know, I need to get faster!

Thoughts from a 25-34 year old

I've gotten this email a number of times and I still think it's funny.  So I thought I would share with you.  I thought about highlighting all the ones that I think are soooo totally me, but then I realized it would be much easier to just highlight the ones that don't apply to me (which would only be the ones that apply to just men)... so I scratched the idea and thought I would just let you read for reading enjoyment's sake.

Happy Friday everyone!  If you need me, I'll be home, painting... for hopefully, the last weekend.  It will be a really sick joke on Mother Nature's part if it starts raining every weekend after this!  I miss the pool like a new mom misses naps...

Without further ado....

-I wish Google Maps had an "Avoid Ghetto" routing option.

-More often than not, when someone is telling me a story all I can
think about is that I can't wait for them to finish so that I can tell my own story that's not only better, but also more directly involves me.

-Nothing sucks more than that moment during an argument when you
realize you're wrong.

-Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that you're
going in the complete opposite direction of where you are supposed to be going? But instead of just turning a 180 and walking back in the direction from which you came, you have to first do something like check your watch or phone or make a grand arm gesture and mutter to yourself to ensure that no one in the surrounding area thinks you're crazy by randomly switching directions on the sidewalk.

-That's enough, Nickelback.

-I totally take back all those times I didn't want to nap when I was younger.

-Is it just me, or are 80% of the people in the "people you may know" feature on Facebook people that I do know, but I deliberately choose not to be friends with?

-Do you remember when you were a kid, playing Nintendo and it wouldn't work? You take the cartridge out, blow in it and that would magically fix the problem. Every kid in America did that, but how did we all know how to fix the problem? There was no internet or message boards or FAQ's. We just figured it out. Today's kids are soft.

-There is a great need for sarcasm font.

-Sometimes, I'll watch a movie that I watched when I was younger and
suddenly realize I had no idea what the hell was going on when I first saw it.

-I think everyone has a movie that they love so much, it actually
becomes stressful to watch it with other people. I'll end up wasting
90 minutes shiftily glancing around to confirm that everyone's
laughing at the right parts, then making sure I laugh just a little
bit harder (and a millisecond earlier) to prove that I'm still the
only one who really, really gets it.

-How the hell are you supposed to fold a fitted sheet?

-I would rather try to carry 10 plastic grocery bags in each hand than take 2 trips to bring my groceries in.

- I think part of a best friend's job should be to immediately clear
your computer history if you die.

-The only time I look forward to a red light is when I’m trying to
finish a text.

- A recent study has shown that playing beer pong contributes to the
spread of mono and the flu. Yeah, if you suck at it.

- LOL has gone from meaning, "laugh out loud" to "I have nothing else to say".

- I have a hard time deciphering the fine line between boredom and hunger.

- Answering the same letter three times or more in a row on a Scantron test is absolutely petrifying.

- Whenever someone says "I'm not book smart, but I'm street smart",
all I hear is "I'm not real smart, but I'm imaginary smart".

- How many times is it appropriate to say "What?" before you just nod and smile because you still didn't hear what they said?

- I love the sense of camaraderie when an entire line of cars teams up to prevent a d from cutting in at the front. Stay strong, brothers!

-What would happen if I hired two private investigators to follow each other?

- While driving yesterday I saw a banana peel in the road and
instinctively swerved to avoid it...thanks Mario Kart.

- MapQuest really needs to start their directions on #5. Pretty sure I know how to get out of my neighborhood.

- Obituaries would be a lot more interesting if they told you how the person died.

- I find it hard to believe there are actually people who get in the
shower first and THEN turn on the water.

-Shirts get dirty. Underwear gets dirty. Pants? Pants never get dirty,and you can wear them forever.

-I can't remember the last time I wasn't at least kind of tired.

-Whenever I'm Facebook stalking someone and I find out that their
profile is public I feel like a kid on Christmas morning who just got the Red Ryder BB gun that I always wanted. 546 pictures? Don't mind if I do!

-If Carmen San Diego and Waldo ever got together, their offspring
would probably just be completely invisible.

-Why is it that during an ice-breaker, when the whole room has to go
around and say their name and where they are from, I get so incredibly nervous? Like I know my name, I know where I'm from, this shouldn't be a problem....

-You never know when it will strike, but there comes a moment at work when you've made up your mind that you just aren't doing anything productive for the rest of the day.

-Can we all just agree to ignore whatever comes after DVDs? I don't
want to have to restart my collection.

-There's no worse feeling than that millisecond you're sure you are
going to die after leaning your chair back a little too far.

-I'm always slightly terrified when I exit out of Word and it asks me if I want to save any changes to my ten page research paper that I swear I did not make any changes to.

- "Do not machine wash or tumble dry" means I will never wash this ever.

-I hate being the one with the remote in a room full of people
watching TV. There's so much pressure. 'I love this show, but will
they judge me if I keep it on? I bet everyone is wishing we weren't
watching this. It's only a matter of time before they all get up and
leave the room. Will we still be friends after this?'

-I hate when I just miss a call by the last ring (Hello? Hello? Dang it!!!),but when I immediately call back, it rings nine times and goes to voicemail. What'd you do after I didn't answer? Drop the phone and run away?

- I hate leaving my house confident and looking good and then not
seeing anyone of importance the entire day. What a waste.

-When I meet a new girl, I'm terrified of mentioning something she
hasn't already told me but that I have learned from some light
internet stalking.

-I like all of the music in my iTunes, except when it's on shuffle,
then I like about one in every fifteen songs in my iTunes.

-Why is a school zone 20 mph? That seems like the optimal cruising
speed for pedophiles...

-Sometimes I'll look down at my watch 3 consecutive times and still
not know what time it is.

-It should probably be called Unplanned Parenthood.

-I keep some people's phone numbers in my phone just so I know not to answer when they call.

-Even if I knew your social security number, I wouldn't know what to do with it.

-Even under ideal conditions people have trouble locating their car
keys in a purse and Pinning the Tail on the Donkey - but I’d bet everyone can find and push the Snooze button from 3 feet away, in about 1.7 seconds, eyes closed, first time every time.

-I wonder if cops ever get ticked off at the fact that everyone they
drive behind obeys the speed limit.

-I think the freezer deserves a light as well.

-I disagree with Kay Jewelers. I would bet on any given Friday or
Saturday night more kisses begin with Miller Lites than Kay.

-The other night I ordered takeout, and when I looked in the bag, saw they had included four sets of plastic silverware. In other words, someone at the restaurant packed my order, took a second to think about it, and then estimated that there must be at least four people eating to require such a large amount of food. Too bad I was eating by myself. There's nothing like being made to feel like a fat
before dinner.

Pre-Makeover ... Kitchen

Hello Everyone!

As promised, am going to share with you the plans we have/the work we've been doing.

Husband and I have been talking about re-doing the kitchen in our condo for a LOOOOONG time, but it's always been a thought, like, "Maybe when you get bored over the winter and I'm working weddings I might come home to a wall torn down" ... but we never really spoke seriously about it until about 3 weeks ago.

Then the Hubs really got serious.  He was doing measurements and diagrams and pricing cabinets and brainstorming all sorts of ideas.  Some of which made me have heart palpitations just thinking of the cost... So we talked and decided on a reasonable solution for our home, that we intend to be a rental property in the near-ish future.

We are going to use the existing layout and existing cabinets (because it's the only layout that will work for the space without re-doing the cabinets, and spending money on cabinets for a rental property seems kind of absurd to me when they work just fine).  We're replacing the counters, sink, faucet, and floors.

It all really started about 2.5 weeks ago.  The linoleum got another crack in it, Husband was brainstorming again, and I was feeling very uneasy about the whole project and the budget for it.

*Which if you know us, is VERY strange... I generally pick the most expensive choice without even knowing the price and have no problem buying it because that's the one I like... while Husband just looks at me all flabbergasted that I could even have the desire to spend so much money...

So Husband and I went to Home Depot to just price things for the kitchen renovation we kept talking about, "just to see"...We walked out with a plan, well sort of.

You see, we found these AWESOME granite counters for a SUPER good deal and from there I was ready to pick out everything else, but I still wanted to go to Ikea, thinking surely, they'd be even less expensive... So we went, walked around for an hour or two, and found that NOTHING we wanted was less expensive at Ikea.  But we did find some great storage solutions that we will incorporate.  So we went back to Home Depot again, got a quote (that expired yesterday) for the counters, bought some paint and primer and headed home. 

To prime these:

Don't mind the cabinets on the left, Hubs was already removing doors at this point, and it seems that the supplies are on the counter...

I have no idea what's in the sink... please ignore it

Again, the doors are already gone -- which will help you to notice that the crazy woman who painted the cabinets painted every stinking inch!

Look at how dark it was!!  

So we set off on a priming adventure, two coats -- and Hubs doing most of the work while I had to work my real jobs all weekend -- later and we have a very white kitchen!

Looking back on these pictures the cabinets already look amazingly better!  I am so excited for when we finish!

Hubs ran into Home Depot last night to order the counters before our quote expired so now we really have a deadline!  Although I think we're both so sick of living with our kitchen in a large heap on the dining room table and floor that we'll be done by the end of this weekend.  I'll take some pictures when we finish this weekend for an update post.

PS -- you like that counter color??  Yeah, the woman who owned the place before me painted the walls of the living room and dining room that color... with black base boards and crown molding... and mustard yellow ceilings... It's a wonder I ever bought the place...