Renovations in the kitchen

  I've been crazy this week doing kitchen renos.  On Tuesday I decided to change the color of the cabinets that I had already stained to a darker color, I sanded everything down to the bare wood, AGAIN.  It took all day, I had really sore thumbs, and I was almost finished. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday it rained so I thought of something else I could do... I started hammering down the plaster off the kitchen walls.  It is super messy work, I tried to tape and plastic the kitchen off so I didn't have dust everywhere, it's working so far.

This is my kitchen before I started hammering, it was actually fun to take out the upper cabinets.  But I can see a lot of work for me in the immediate future since I hope to have the kitchen finished before the end of June.

                            

This was taken on Wednesday morning after I tore down the upper cabinets, I've been trying to clean as I go so that my house doesn't feel so much like a construction zone.   

                            

This was taken Thursday morning.  All the plaster is gone, and underneath was this 1/2 inch thick paper, it was almost as hard to remove as the plaster. I have fun doing this type of work, Spencer was completely surprised that I was this ambitious.  But when I get an idea in my head, I can't help myself. 

So currently, the paper is all off that wall, and just the lath is still on.  I'm a little nervous about taking it off because there are wood shavings as insulation underneath.  My next tasks are to take off the lath, clean up the wood shavings, add another electrical plug-in, insulate with itchy pink batting, vapor barrier, totally remove the wall to the left, remove lower cabinets, add a sanitary vent, remove the cast iron pipe running up the ceiling, and drywall.  Then I get to install the cabinets and add a dishwasher, which I am very excited about.  I am also excited to have my back porch empty again, right now it's full of almost re-finished cabinets.  I have a side project too, I am painting my basement floor, but I have to do it in phases cause we have to much junk down there.  I have one phase done and it looks really good, it's clean and much brighter, I think it looks bigger too.  Well, I have a few busy weeks ahead of me, with lots of renovating and something to do every weekend.

We attended stake conference today, it was a Canada wide broadcast.  It was really good, I like what Pres. Uchtdorf said, "is everything I want to do what the Lord wants me to do?"  I took some good things from this conference, I hope I can evaluate my life and make a lot of corrections.

I made a cake for my friend Jinnie she turned 50 today. I copied the idea from a friend who made me a cake like this on my birthday.  We had Jinnie and her husband, the Bishop, over for dinner on Friday night, it was so fun.  The cake was amazingly delicious.  I now love homemade cake over a store bought cake, I know, sounds crazy, but it's true.  It has to be a nice thick, rich chocolate cake, and I do have a great recipe.  I have to put in a plug for Erin, she does makes the best chocolate cake.

These are some pictures I took last week or the week before, from Grassy Lake.  I realized I haven't put pictures up in  a while.

Kali riding a pony, she loved it and was kind of a pony hog.  I think this would fit in our backyard...

My niece, Brooklyn, on a tree swing, with her twin brother Colby in the tree.  She looks so cute in this picture.

Kali and Colby posing for a picture in a tree, can you tell they are cousins?  Little cuties.

We're looking forward to going camping this weekend, I hope the weather co-operates.  We're going to the farm to camp near the river in our secret family camping spot, we have a few friends coming, should be really fun.

My Blog Chair

I love sitting in my blog chair.  It is also my reading chair.  I don't think its even my chair, but I love to sit in it and put my feet up.  It was a gift from Spencer's Grandma, I just love her, she is such an example to me.  She's written a few family history books in our personal library, she has lived and is continuing to live such an amazing life.  So this chair that I sit in was Grandpa's, I believe, it's a green recliner, in great shape.  I think there is a story behind the purchase of this chair but I don't know if I have all the facts in order to tell it.  Maybe someone can comment and tell the story.  The point of my post isn't about the chair, but as I sat in it getting ready to write, I felt grateful for this wonderful chair.

Had a great Mother's Day, Spence made breakfast and dinner.  We had bacon, english muffins and omelettes for breakfast, with Turkey, funeral potatoes, grilled pineapple, salad and Chocolate cake for dinner.  He did a wonderful job, I am so happy that I have the best husband in the world.  I bought myself some Gold Canyon candles for Mother's day, the best one is the Birthday Cake one, it really smells like birthday cake, it rocks!!  Back to the chocolate cake, I made it on Friday, it was chocolate zucchini with a ganache frosting, I decorated it with melted chocolate pieces that said "MOM ROCKS", I really do. And I think I like cake too much.
So Spence wrote me a poem and he's lining up a massage and a haircut for me.  Kali gave me a little craft she made at school with a card that you fold up, it says "My Love for you grows... and grows... and grows" (into a really tall flower).  She was so excited to give it to me in bed.  In primary she made another craft and was "supposed" to give me some Hershey Kisses... I never received them.

We've been having fun working on the yard and the house, we have lots of projects to finish, and I keep starting more.  I sure love being at home and being able to renovate my house, I'm becoming pretty handy.

Well, this week Kali's school was hosting Sean Covey and trying to display the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, I was able to help out and take a few of the visitors around the school.  I talked to another Mom, we were chatting about catholic schools, I told her that I went through the Catholic system as a kid.  I told her that I am LDS and she asked how I would ever change religions, it was nice to bear my testimony to her.  She subs at the school a lot and knows that a lot of the staff and students are LDS too, she seems impressed by the community we have and how nice everyone is.  What a miracle it was to have a gospel conversation, actually that was our ward goal for the week, the Lord works in mysterious ways.  I wasn't even expecting it to happen since I didn't think I talked to non-church goers very often. 
So, I had a very embarrassing moment today at church.  I was asked to say the closing prayer in Sunday School, I did so and maybe I wasn't loud enough.  I had said something like being thankful for the Savior, Jesus Christ, someone in the front row said "Amen" right after that... I was so thrown off that I just said "Amen" too and sat down.  My face was so red, I'm sure.  I wanted to run away and never come back.  Spencer was sympathetic but said he'd never heard anything like that before, and one guy thought it was so funny that he was going to start a journal and write about it.  Great, I wish I were never born, jk.