Kitchen!

The kitchen is coming along... I'm in the stage of cabinet painting where I've got to get the doors done.  Those are taking FOREVER.  Clean, degloss, prime, paint, paint, paint (that's three coats).  Then, I get to wait 3 days, flip them over, and do it again!

My painting area isn't very big--so I'm stuck doing just a few doors at a time.

I'll be done with the doors sometime in January, at which point I will tackle the counter top.

Today, though, I found something awesome.  See, my backsplash is pink (for some reason) and I don't really care for it.  I mean, seriously.  I'm a big girl.  I don't want a pink kitchen.

I was going to paint the tiles gray...but then I got to thinking about all the grout lines and that just seemed overwhelming.

Enter: faux tile sheets.

Doesn't it look like it took ages?

Nope, 23 minutes.

Yay!

Brother-in-law!

I have the best brother-in-law.

This afternoon, Mike came over and helped me with some manual labor.

Of course, I managed to lock myself out of the house on the way to Lowe's...luckily I had my phone with me and convinced my darling friend, Jess, to come by on her way home from work and let me back in.

Mike wasn't phased--he kept working and built a fantastic paver area for our new grill.

I'm so happy.  Now I can grill close to my side door!

Before he left, I somehow managed to con him into cleaning my gutters.

He's so much braver than me.

Thank you, Mike!!

Also, just for the record...while Mike and I were doing this... David was golfing.  

Primer!

First things first: the heat broke!  I went on a run this morning...planning to do 10 miles.  At the end, I wasn't worried that I would die of heat exhaustion (if that's even possible), so I decided to tack on another 2 miles.

Why?  Mostly so I could post 12 instead of 10 miles on Facebook.

Not really, but that's as good a reason as any.

Anycrap, when I got home, I launched right into my kitchen project.  A couple hours later...the upper cabinets are primed!!!  The first coat will go on later today-yay! 

*Note: Maggie is not pooping.  Just so you know.

I decided to paint the upper and lower cabinets separately.  I couldn't imagine emptying ALL of my cabinets at once--mostly because the table looks like this with just half of them emptied.

Yikes!

Kitchen.... progress of some sort.

As I leave for work today, my kitchen looks like this...

Yikes!

Hopefully, tonight I'll get the cabinet's cleaned out and the contents put... somewhere.

Tomorrow: priming and painting!!

Lucky Lady

I am a lucky lady!  

You see, I've been working hard at fancifying our kitchen (pictures to follow).  After a lovely lunch with David's family, I spent the rest of my Sunday painting the kitchen.  David noticed piles of kitchen debris on the dining room table and volunteered to be in charge of dinner.  

I assumed this meant he would run to Subway for me.

Silly me.  I was finishing up the trim work in the kitchen when I heard some honking outside.

Turns out, the love of my life bought a grill!

I'm so happy!

We had been wanting a grill for a while...and David found an awesome sale.

What a wonderful surprise...but, even better was seeing David cook dinner.

I think Maggie enjoyed watching him too.

Also, check out the email I got from David today...

Softball game is at 7:30 this evening.  What can I cook for us on the grill before the game??  What about some chicken breasts of some kind??  Let me know and I’ll figure out the perfect way to cook it!  If you can think of something that I can also cook on the side burner, that would be even better!

I love that man.

Green Seats!

Last night, Dan and Debra took David, Danna, Mike, and me to the Cardinal's game...where we got to sit in the amazing, wonderful, heartwarming, fantastic GREEN SEATS!

I love the green seats.

The meal starts off with a buffet dinner.  The meal portion is lackluster; however, the desserts are fantastic.

Here, Debra shows off her dessert "sampler."

Yum-o!

Also included... open bar.  As soon as you finish your dinner, they're more than happy to package up your drink in a sippy cup.

Nothing like beer out of a sippy cup.

Our seats were fantastic.  I got so close to my crush, Holliday.

He's so cute.

Even Pujols thinks he's cute.

I'm not sure what David's doing here, but right after the couple to our left offered to take our picture.

Awww.

I think this should be Dan and Debra's Christmas card.

After the game, we had some shameless posing.

It was a great Saturday night!

Beer Fest

I totally spaced on writing about this amazing event!

Last Saturday, my friend Jess and I went to the St. Louis Heritage Brewer's Fest... we scored free (!) tickets, so we showed up fashionably late to this event.  I think if we had paid the face value (something like $30) we would have been there for every second of our included beer.   However, with free tickets, we were much more likely to be appropriate with our tasting.

You know me... always going for appropriate.

It's a skill.

Skilled or not, we looked darling for the event.

Anyway...the tent was super crowded...

...but they had about 7589 different beer options, so I never ended up waiting in line for a drink.

My favorite ended up being an ESB from the GBA.

What's that? You thought acronyms were only for work?  Nope, they're for beer too.

ESB--Extra Special Brew

GBA--Garage Brewer's Association.

Basically, my favorite beer ended up being a "special" brew from some guy's garage.

Class all the way.

I lack patience

Since part of our tax return arrived, I felt free reign to go out and start spending money in order to re-do my kitchen.

Lowes is like crack to me.  I go inside and think of all the things I could do and create and and and and and and

I'm getting excited just thinking about it.

Moving on.  I went ahead and purchased GALLONS of paint.  GALLONS.  I have all the paint I need to prime & paint the cabinets, paint the walls, and paint my baker's rack.

I also have paint to do my office at work.  You know, cause that seemed smart.

I seriously intended to wait until next Thursday (after I finished with my conference) before starting the painting.

But I have a hard time waiting for anything.

So...last night, I primed the baker's rack.

Lord help me.   I have no idea what I'm doing.

Rocks in the Yard

I want to do a lot of things around the house.  It's crippling.  I can't go outside or inside or anywhere without thinking of things I should be doing.

And then I blog.  It's not really an appropriate antidote to my issues.

Anyway, when you go out our side door, the ground looks like this...

Which makes me think there was a rock pathway at some point.

The problem was that these suckers are buried.  I guess years of rain and grass growth has hidden my path.

So I took a shovel and a spade and dug.  I'm good at jumping in to physical labor without much thought.

So now I have this.  Dug up rocks.  What should I do with them?  Should I scatter them and make them a real pathway or just get rid of them?

Here's what it looks like when I arrange them in a path.  Would it be horrible for David to mow over/around?

Taxes

So.... our tax return came on Monday.

I was ecstatic, until I opened it.  It was, oh, $8000 less than I was expected.

What's that you say?  That's the same amount as the homebuyer's credit?

Yeah, I had a bit of a panic attack.

I googled like you wouldn't believe and called...but after a few hours of frustration, I headed downtown to the IRS office.  There, the nicest lady in the world, Dorothy, assured me that we did, in fact qualify and the error was on the part of the government.  Apparently, they didn't wait to see the results from one of the letters they sent us before denying.  Sigh.

But, Dorothy gave me a plan to fix it and said she would help.

Panic attack over.  Tax return eventually coming... probably in time to buy Christmas presents.

Marathon!

I registered!!

Full Marathon...November 7th...Raleigh!!!!!!

http://cityofoaksmarathon.com/

Yay!!!

Now...here's the training schedule.

Week	Date	Tuesday (Speed)	Thursday (Tempo)	Saturday (Long)
1	7/19	8x400m (7:30-7:45 min/mi)	3 miles (8:30 min/mi)	10 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
2	7/26	4x1200m (7:45-7:50 min/mi)	5 miles (8:45-8:50 min/mi)	12 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
3	8/2	6x800m (7:40-7:45 min/mi)	7 miles (8:45-8:50 min/mi)	13 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
4	8/9	3x1600m (7:50-7:55 min/mi)	3 miles (8:30 min/mi)	10 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
5	8/16	10x400m (7:30-7:45 min/mi)	5 miles (8:45-8:50 min/mi)	14 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
6	8/23	5x1200m (7:45-7:50 min/mi)	5 miles (8:45-8:50 min/mi)	15 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
7	8/30	7x800m (7:40-7:45 min/mi)	8 miles (9:00-9:05 min/mi)	17 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
8	9/6	3x1600m (7:50-7:55 min/mi)	10 miles (9:00-9:05 min/mi)	13 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
9	9/13	12x400m (7:30-7:45 min/mi)	3 miles (8:30 min/mi)	18 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
10	9/20	8x800m (7:40-7:45 min/mi)	5 miles (8:45-8:50 min/mi)	15 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
11	9/27	4x1600m (7:50-7:55 min/mi)	8 miles (9:00-9:05 min/mi)	20 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
12	10/4	12x400m (7:30-7:45 min/mi)	5 miles (8:45-8:50 min/mi)	15 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
13	10/11	6x1200m (7:45-7:50 min/mi)	5 miles (8:45-8:50 min/mi)	20 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
14	10/18	7x800m (7:40-7:45 min/mi)	4 miles (8:30 min/mi)	15 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
15	10/25	3x1600m (7:50-7:55 min/mi)	8 miles (9:00-9:05 min/mi)	10 miles (9:30-9:45 min/mi)
16	11/1	30 min easy w  5x60s	20 min easy w 3 or 4 pickups	Marathon