Hi Friends! I hope everyone had an enjoyable week! We just got back to Oregon after a really nice visit with hubs family in Iowa. It was great to get out of town for a while and see everyone. It's been about 4 years since we've been back there, so it was nice having a chance to visit with his grandma, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces and nephews. He has a really big family, which I think is pretty great!

In my last post, I talked a little about a small vintage tent sale we went to. Well, that event just happened to be less than a mile from my families old farmstead. My brother and his amazing girlfriend live there. We stopped by for a quick chat and decided to take a look at the old barn. My mom has been working hard to get rid of the blackberry vines that had grown up around the structure and managed to get it knocked back enough to get a peek inside.  To say I was excited to stick my head in there and get a look would be a major understatement!! Anyone who knows me, knows I love old sh*t, ha!  The barn isn't exactly what I would call safe, so we had to stay out for now, but I did manage to get a few shots of the inside with my cell. 

Happy day, Friends! I hope you all had a great week. It flew by for me!  I'm back this week with a post about a little country vintage sale we went to yesterday.  It was small, but we had so much fun! Wonderful vendors, a pretty setting and some great deals!  It's just down the road from our family farm where my brother lives, so we stopped by there on the way home for a visit.

Happy day, my friends! It's time for the kitchen reveal - yaaaayyyy!! If you've been on this journey with me, you know it's been a while. Of course, most renovations take at least twice as long as you expect them to and this one was no different. However, the wait was worth it. We LOVE how it's turned out. It is so much brighter and airier now. It really feels like a completely different kitchen, even though the footprint didn't change at all.  When I look at the before pictures now, I can' hardly remember it being like this. In case you are new to the blog or would like a refresher, here is a photo of how it looked before we started.

Not a bad kitchen, by any stretch of the imagination, just a very dark one that really  wasn't my style at all. So grab your cup of coffee or tea (or margarita if you're so inclined) and enjoy the picture show! As I go through the post, I will put in information on vendors, contractors, paint color, etc. I have not been paid in any way, so no bias here! 

Good Morning Friends! I had anticipated I would be posting my kitchen reveal today, but alas, it's not quite done yet. 1% to go and then it will be completed. That last step happens on Monday and then I can show you! I will say, I am in love with the transformation. It's so bright and airy now, much better than the cave it felt like before!

Besides DIY, hubs and I really love to work in the yard. Every year we plant and bark. We're working in more perennials than ever before. We have a smallish yard, but even so, annuals every year get pretty spendy.  I LOVE Hostas and Hydrangeas, we have quite a few of each in the shadier parts of the yard. Hubs favorite are Canna's  and Coleus . The funny thing is, we have a REALLY hard time remembering any plant names, so we do a lot of "that plant over there in that square planter thingy". Luminosity is a girls best friend! 
Ok, so on to today's pictorial, lot of pictures! I hope you enjoy!

Hey Guys! It's been kind of a strange week here at AP. The kitchen project is truckin' along, we just have the top cabinets to finish up and the backsplash.  There aren't a whole lot of pictures to show you because I want to save them for the reveal, so I thought I'd share a little story about a furry creature and a link to one of my favorite posts in the past. 

Ok, so on to this weeks oddity. Thursday night I am heading home from work and I get a frantic call from my daughter. She told me that our dogs found a baby opossum and attacked it. She got it away from them and was nursing his wounds.  Now, anyone that knows me, knows that I am a complete sucker for animals. In fact, I think animals are better than a lot of humans.  If you've seen past posts. you've seen the menagerie of hairballs that live in our house.  They outnumber us humans!  They are a very big part of our family.   Anyway, my mind is racing on the way home: How on earth do I help a opossum, is it going to live, will I have to take it to the vet to be put down. Oh the awful possibilities!!  I was feeling fairly queasy by the time I pulled in to the driveway. The thought of living with a wounded opossum wouldn't have freaked me out so much if I knew how to take care of one, ha!

Alright, enough opossum talk. On to the furniture stuff. I am sharing a link to an oldie, but goodie! This is one of my favorite pieces.  I hope you'll take a gander! 
If you click this link, it will take you to the post: Happy Accident Hutch

Until next time, my friends! Have a wonderful week!!

Hello again, Friends! We just finished up week 6 of the kitchen renovation and things are starting to come together. There is light at the end of the tunnel!  This week has been all about painting! What a difference it has made. I LOVE the cabinet color.  We decided on Sherwin Williams Tidewater for the base cabinet color. The uppers are a Benjamin Moore Cloud White.  We aren't done yet, the uppers in the photos just have primer and 1 coat. I am really loving the blue, it is so pretty! Our goal was to lighten up the space and man, this has definitely done the trick! 

Hi Friends! I hope everyone is having an enjoyable holiday weekend so far! We have been busy around here trying to finish up a bunch of projects. Why is it always a never-ending list? Ha! Well, at least it keeps us busy.  

The kitchen renovation is chugging along. This week we had Samuel with Restoration Counseling in to fix-up our peninsula. He did a wonderful job on the sink surround so we decided we would have him take care of this project, as well.  This is probably a task that hubs and I could have tackled, but we wanted a real craftsman to work on this since it's one of the focal points of the kitchen.  I really wanted this area to be better defined and stand out on its own.  I showed him a picture on Houzz that was exactly what I wanted and he did it perfectly! Here are a few photos.

Hey Guys! I hope you all had a great week!  We've been pretty busy, running here and there and trying to work our schedules around workers coming in and out of the house.  This past week was both exhausting and exciting. The counters are in! WooHoooo!  They look SO good. I have to tell you, I was really nervous. I picked them out from a 5" square sample and I didn't see the slab. Probably not the smartest way to go, but I lucked out! Not before I frantically searched the web to find pictures of full slabs of what I picked, haha! 
So here is where we started the week:

Here is the slab for the peninsula coming in:

I chose this Quartz product after doing a lot of research on different options. Hubs is the cook in the family and an amazing chef he is. However, he is pretty tough on things, so I knew we needed a stain/heat/cut/hubs resistant product.  I LOVE the look of marble, but I knew I would go crazy living with the marble patina. Etching and staining is just not something I wanted to deal with. There are multiple quartz products out there with a marble look. This one is from Cosmos Granite & Marble and is called Venato Extra CQ 3cm.

Hi Friends! We just finished up week 3 of the kitchen renovation. We had highs and lows, but overall, we're still hanging in there! Things don't look a ton different than they did last week, so this will be a short post.  So let's start out with the highs of the week. Samuel, our amazing cabinet guy, came in and finished up the apron farm sink surround and he did a fabulous job. You'll notice from the photo above that they wood is a bit different. I decided I REALLY wanted to paint the cabinets, so we told him to use whatever wood was the most affordable.  I am super happy with how it looks.  Here is a before and after shot of Samuel's handiwork! I can hardly wait to get this project completed so I can see the end result!

Hi Again Friends! Wow, what a week it has been. We have been trying to survive without a sink and dishwasher and it's been quite the challenge! If we ever have a zombie apocalypse, I am pretty sure it will be the little things that do me in, ha! We've been using paper plates and plastic-ware as much as possible, but you just can't do everything that way.  It's just inconvenient and I'll leave it at that. 1st world problems, I know. 

Ok, so on to demo week 2. Progress has been a little slow, but a few things have happened. A really great guy, Samuel, came in and prepped the cabinet for the farm sink.  This is a task that hubs and I were not up for. This job requires cabinetry work and we wanted to be doubly sure the sink foundation was nice and solid, so we have a pro handling it.  We were hoping to have the counter template done this last week, but that didn't work out, so we have them coming in on Wednesday. Then Thursday, Samuel will be back out to build out the cabinet doors and I believe the sink surround, but am not 100% sure on that. He will be coming back for a 3rd time, after the counter is installed to do the last bit of finishing work.