It's Come and Gone

Well Christmas that is. Another whirl-wind holiday has past and annual zoo light pictures are all that I have to remember it. I really am a bad picture-taker

Cozy on the zoo lights train

It always amazes me how many lights they put up

 The Giraffe putting the heart on the tree and the hippos are always my favorite

And of course you can't leave without a picture at the Gingerbread house :)

 Son like Father..... Cheez balls

 How did the baby polar bear get in here. Just kidding its Amelia all bundled up.

Well luckily Colton had Tuesday off, cause he stayed up pretty late fussing with the new TV and blue ray player. I had to coaxs him out of bed to start projects with a cup of coffee but afterwards we got the grout finished on the tile and we even did a little side project..........

 Yep the old front door got replaced

I think we picked the most windy, rainy day we've had in a few weeks

 She's in; just need a little spray foam

Hope everyone had a good Christmas. We definitely made out like band-its eating our whole way through :) Now I'm sprucing up the house again for our first New Year's Eve party at the house. I have a lot of good food planned as always and some cute decoration ideas. I'm sure will have lots of silly pictures to share, I just hope it doesn't rain for our bonfire. It was weird sending out invites for our party since two of favorite friends decided to be Eskimos in Alaska this winter.

We sure miss hanging out with you little Eskimos :( Move home soon

Getting Closer......

As we are getting closer to Christmas my kitchen is getting closer to being finished. Saturday we got the tiled all laid except for a few finish pieces. There's a few spots, like above the sink, where we needed finished edge pieces (where the tile is bull nosed and colored instead of white and rough). Those should be in sometime this week though. Once those are up we'll grout everything and another tiling project will be complete!



Tis the season for sugar cookies. We even decorated them too :)

Before we get into the showcase I want everyone to take a look at where we began  @ 8' wide and 9' long..........

The tile; color: Cypress - a greenish grey 

Looking SPIIICCCCYY!!

After we grout the tile, all we have left is putting the edging around the upper cabinets and the floor, painting the shelf brackets and putting the shelf's up.  I can't believe there's only four steps to completion. I never thought this was going to be done by Christmas. This is probably the biggest project we've done so far and I must toot our whistles cause it looks pretty darn good.

Colton made realize the other day that there's an end in sight. Once the kitchen is done we only have two more major projects: 1) the 2nd bath which includes the laundry room; 2) the den. Then we will be pretty much done with the inside of the house. Leaving next summer open for the OUTSIDE........ whoa! Painting the house, re-roofing and planning a wedding; I guess we'll see how everything goes :-/

Kitchen Update

Well after 6 months of washing dishes by hand every morning and hosting parties trying not to think about the clean up..........I finally hired a dish washer! HAHAHA Just kidding



Clean dishes; what a magical thing :)

The new sink, faucet, and dish washer installed. but wait theres something else hiding...... Yes a garbage disposal too!

Well since Colton & Jim where a little nervous about the sink we hired Brian & Libby's old Longview handy man. I must say he did a pretty good job

Well things are moving on schedule. Were thinking about starting the tile back-splash this weekend since its our last weekend home for the month. I'll keep ya posted though but until then here are some old pictures that I found while cleaning out my email.

Ripping out carpet tack strips and as always Kimber thinking she needs to be in the middle of it

A baby robin we found while cutting down the arborvitaes. This little thing stopped cutting for about 2 weeks

Are huge mass of smokey carpet we took to the dump!

Our camping step up we had in the den (lasted a couple months). Can you spot Kimber? Hint: She doesn't stay on her dog bed very good :)

Pocket door install

Colton dreaming

Christmas is just around the corner so I thought I put this little bug in your ear:

* My families Christmas is only 10 days away so get your shopping done fast

* Cooley family gathering 15 days away

* And if you're having your own family fun you got 17 days

I don't know how Christmas got here so fast

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas!!

But first....... Our Turkey Day always starts a week early at my Mum & Jim's. My family gathers early since we have so many little families trying to travel all over the state. So we choose to relax and be entertained by the kids. There's 4 little tike's now and when each one was asked this year about going to grandmas they all said " I'm going to get crazy at grandma's" and that's exactly what they do. On Thanksgiving we headed south to Sweet Home for the Cooley gathering. We stayed the rest of the weekend there and then before heading north again Colton dropped me off at Libby's . I got to spend three days with the cutest girls ever. Evelyn is a rowdy rascal lately and testing all limits. But its hard to get mad at her when she flashs a cute grin that says "don't you just luv me look how cute I am". Amelia, though only 2 months, she already has the melt your heart smile and is definitely learning a thing or two from her big sis.

Turkey Day has come and gone so it was time to do a little tree hunting and bring out the Christmas tote. But before that, Friday night we headed to Salty's for Colton's Christmas party.  Where Colton one 1st place ($200) in the ugly sweater contest. I found the sweater at the Brownsville thrift shop, knew it was perfect when I saw the tag inside that said CABELAS women's medium. Yes Cabelas made the 1st place ugly sweater and at some point a lady bought and wore it!! Though Colton says it wasn't the sweater that won but the presentation of the guy wearing it. Geez a little hot headed?

Saturday we headed to Cathlamet to meet up with the Johnson's and a few other friends to go tree hunting. Its was super fun and I'll post pictures later.



Colton picked a pretty good one

I've been trying to get inspired to make some new stockings but haven't yet. These are from our first Christmas together 4 1/2 years ago

Our first Christmas frame!

Sunday Mum & Jim came up to help us put in the sink and the rest of the counter tops, but the boys got the sink out of the box and got a little nervous about it. So right now I have the counter tops in but not attached and no sink............ we have a guy coming to look at it tonight though so hopefully he can do it.

new handles

our tile for the backsplash

something is definitely missing

Slowly coming together



I told Colton all I want for Christmas is for the kitchen to be finished. He's trying really hard but of course the Ikea sink is giving us trouble.

I hope everyone is enjoying the coco and peppermint Schnapps :) Happy holidays and don't forget to check your mail for a special something!

A Little Reality............

I know its been over a month since I last posted anything but, seriously, nothing that exciting is really happening around here. I knew I needed to post something and it took me all day to think of what to do. So I decided to dive-in to a little reality.

As the rainy weather approached I was tired of not having a place to hang our wet clothes so...... I put together a cheesy coat rack. Colton couldn't believe I just got a board, nailed it to the wall and nailed some more nails in it for hooks. Yeah I may be a little picky about how things look sometimes but this has been super useful, plus I don't really care since we'll eventually redo the den.



With hunting season this is a pretty normal scene. Yes I know the picture is super high on the wall but there was already a nail and I just hung it up :)

My crazy kitchen still pieced togther

I realized that the pictures of the kitchen weren't very good on the last post so here's some close up shots

 Temporary sink. We have a "country" sink in the garage waiting to be put in

Mouth watering yet?

 Our cute living room even though its a bunch of random pieces

My dresser collage reminds me everyday of my favorite people and the cutest kids ever. I love those rascals

Well the holidays are here again. Its not very often my siblings and I are all together; I think that's why I love this time of year. Our holidays start on Sunday with dinner at my mums then Thursday we head south for the Cooley gathering. I feel really grateful that Colton and I are able to share the holidays each year with no crazy driving....... we get to spend time with each of our families sharing super good food, unbuttoning our pants and laying on the couch usually in some sort of food coma :) Happy Holidays!!!

AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!

AAAAAHHHH OH MY GOSH!!!!

I can't believe there finally here........

On Friday I got a call the our kitchen cabinets were finally in Portland. Though I was hoping they would deliver the cabinets to my parents house (to beat sales tax :) on Friday I got a delivery call instead. So I asked if we could pick them up from them instead as I was super antsy to start installing. They said "WHY OF COURSE" but we had to be able to pick them all up. I was a little nervous about this part as we had no idea how big our order really was or how much space for hauling we needed; I just new we had 12 cabinets.

So I called my brother to see if he could get a large trailer from work, but he had headed to the Ranch already. Then I called Colton not knowing what to do. He said he had a covered trailer from work he could use and told me to call my mom too. My mom of course was willing to meet us with their trailer though Jim was nervous about us not getting things strapped done good enough (their trailer doesn't have any sides). I told mom I grew up with a professional strapper and had a pretty good idea on tying stuff down ;)

Anyway we all met at the delivery place and not only did we fit everything into the covered trailer but we had lots of room. So we decided to head to my moms and pick-up the counter tops and a few other things we had been storing there. I then stayed with mom and we headed to the Portland Bridal show and Colton headed home. Though I was kind of jealous he didn't have to go as I didn't want to put him through the show....I wasn't really wanting to go either.

It of course was over whelming and not very helpful but I know my mom enjoyed having some bonding time LOL. Colton met us back at Ikea to pick me up and we got our sink and faucet. Yes we are doing another faucet from Ikea.....I think we have a handle on installing them now. When I got home Colton had installed our new dining light and we started unloading.

We just couldn't wait for mom and Jim to come up and help so Colton and I started putting the upper cabinets in. Staying up till 10:30 (that's late for us) we got all but one in.

First one up

 Really concentrating on drilling holes

 We put the last upper cabinet up before they arrived!

Is that hole really big enough for the microwave?

When we opened the microwave box we all thought noooo way....

But it fit 

Well we probably could of finished installing all the cabinets but when we got to the last screw of the sink cabinet. The boys drilled a screw through the stud and through a copper water line!! Everything was just going toooo easy. So we had to make a trip to old HD and get some supplies. Mom and Jim headed home since we had to meet with the cabinet lady about out counter tops.

We are having all our counter tops remade. Something funky is going on with the finish on the top and it looks like dirty towel residue that won't come off. Also on the bar that sticks past the wall they didn't do a finished edge. Here's a sneak peek of the color though and we should have the new ones in about 2 weeks :(

Though Jim thinks he can fly he's just explaining something

Our friend Garrett popped by on his way back home and ended up staying for dinner. I thought this picture was pretty funny of the boys trying out the new bar. They of course had to have whisky & 7-up with dinner "since they were eating at the bar":)

The new dining light

We should have the sink and dishwasher installed tonight just in time for Logan, Jess and their kid-lings to come up. It will be fun having them up for the weekend I just wish the counter tops would have worked out.

Oh well I can't have everything the way I want (as some tell me).