Greetings from the Nearly Finished Mad House!

*This pose took zero prompting on my part. Seriously! This is why I don't let him use my chair often. ;)

Wow has it been a crazy tornado of life since we last visited! Let's see... 

First off, Happy 4th Birthday to my youngest niece Erin! When asked how she's like to celebrate she said "get shoes at the store, have a rainbow cake, and go to Cracker Barrell". Sounds awesome to me! Who doesn't need Yankee Candles, stick candy, and sock monkeys!

Erin & Jenna! Lucky ducks went to an awesome amusement park this weekend!

The Spencer children have opted out of their families farming traditions in leu of dinosaur wrangling. ;)

1.) I finally had my nerve ablation procedure one week ago. I'm doing so much better post-op THIS time. But, that's not to say things still aren't rough! Pretty much my inner thigh and hip gripped with shooting nerve pains, like hot needles and stabbing knives. 

But! I know this is just temporary. :) I need to be off my leg more, but with the remodel it's so hard not to try to put your daily routine back in place and contain my excitement & impatients to get things done N-O-W!!! :)

*The house is nearly finished, but instead of posting hundreds of photos I'm going to make a full video tour of the house when it's 100% done! Until then, enjoy the teasers. ;)

2.) I covered the painting progress in my last post, but here are some additional photos! I'm deeply pleased by the outcome!

Kitchen Color- New Bamboo. That yellow thing is the kitchen mat laid upside down for some reason. :-/ ....

Great Room Color- Scandia (think "French Blue". You'll see better soon!). Sets of my mother-in-law's beautiful watercolor still life perfectly. Deann you're so talented! It's such a blessing to be able to hand your work in our home. :)

Baths- Blissful Blue. This photo is pretty washed out. Think pale blue periwinkle. And again a beautiful watercolor by Deann. :)

Hallway color- Sea Salt. Again, true color never comes out in photos! This is a subtle grey with a touch of very pale blue.

3.)Contractors totally demo'd our bath and it sat there for over two weeks. No toilet, no sink, no flooring!

[INSERT PHOTO OF NOTHING HERE!]

4.)Finally the flooring arrives and goes down beautifully! Love it! 

Bamboo! :D

Pile o' flooring. Tigger refuses to give up carpet. ;) 

Hunter inspecting the installation :)

5.) Newly installed toilet is leaking and it took three different attempts to fix it.So they finished our gorgeous bathroom!

Small sneak peek!

6.) They demo'd the entire hall bath down to the studs!!  Then they could remove our old "egg seat" tub and get all the new plumbing and electrical systems hooked up. Also installing a wonderful tub/shower wall surround.

7.) As of right now, the tub is fully functional and fabulously relaxing! The workers need to sand the walls, re-texture the ceiling, lay the flooring, and install the toilet and the sink.

Well, that WAS a bathroom...

Die tub DIE!!!

Swanky ;p. That large opening is actually pretty sweet. It's a side access panel- that allows easy access to critical components without having to remove the tub! And oh is it gloriously relaxing! And I've always been a shower girl! 

8.) During the period of time between the carpet being removed & the new flooring going down, we had just the concrete subfloor under our paws -err-feet. The pets HATED it! 

Hunter is on the right and Tigger is in the far left on the up turned table. Both avoiding the slab... ;)

PS: The den -the green color- will be painted to match as time, energy, and interest comes around. :)

The pet bed has been relocated to under the front window aka "bird tv". They all LOVE IT! It says a lot that all three pets are willing to share it! Don't get me wrong, they'd rather have it all to themselves, but they're not willing to move and the other pet isn't willing to wait for a vacancy. Lol. :)

We celebrated the floor installation by tossing out all cat toys the workers found under and behind furniture & appliances. :) They had a blast!

9.) "New" kitchen table! :) My parents (Hi Mom!! :D) are in the same home repair/remodel boat as us. So, they generously gave us their farmhouse style table + four chairs. It fits the atmosphere of the room so well!!

I'm still not sure if we should put a rug under it... Pros- easy on the floor, generally quiet pretty. Cons- Spillage & staining! Harder to vacuume under the table vs a hardwood swiffer mop. Ehh.

10.a) Area Rugs! We now face the dilemna of now having a large expanse of gorgeous hard flooring. We needed a few rugs to help soften the echos, be cozy under foot in casual areas, and break up the space visually. We picked up a large area rug and one runner- at Wal-Mart no less! Aren't the cute?

Love :)

10.b) Bath Mats! :D

We also picked up two unique bath mats- bamboo! I'd LOVE super fluffy fuzzy bath mats, but... Well, so does Hunter. :-/ For some crazy reason he LOVES to go potty on any style or type of bath mat!! Yuck! 

So, these sweet bamboo bath mats from Target are a godsend! They are comfortable under foot, work just like fluffy mats, no floor yellowing rubber backing, and dry even faster without holding moisture against the flooring. :)

11.) I can't remember, but did I show off our new lamp set? After a certain husband -who will remain nameless ;) *cough *chris *cough*- broke a lamp, we took the chance to pick up a lamp set. It's a Better Home & Garden's set -again from Wal-Mart actually!- with one 3 way bulb floor lamp, two side tables, and an accent lamp. :)

 All this while trying to keep the pets happy and not becoming a runaway after a worker left the door ajar, trying to take it easy on my back, try not to be deafened by screeching saws and pounding hammers, and just the self-consciousness that comes with have people in your home.

Fun huh? Well, in the immortal words of Dory the fish, "Just keep swimmin' , just keep swim in'!" So! Chris & I better go paint the last thing- the hall bath! The shrine to the whirlpool tub! :) And THAT will be the very last project the two of are responsible for in this project! Yay! *Muppet noodley arms!* Hopefully my next post will be the big reveal! Adios! 

And now for your daily dose of cat cute:

I <3 Pokey & Tardar Sauce "Grumpy Cat". Did you know she has a brother? Did you even know Tardar was a girl? Or named Tardar? She was named by her owner's little girl who misspelled tartar sauce. :) Tehe. Cuties. :)

Still Painting: Saturday, Day Two :)

Phew! Thanks to Chris, we've gotten SO much done today! Nearly all of the Great Room is painted, the kitchen has been touched up & is totally finished, and Chris even moved the refridgerator to paint the appropriate color(s) behind it! (There is an imaginary transition between hallway and kitchen wall behind there.)

Here's the overhead area I couldn't reach on Thursday. Yay Chris! :)

The kitchen has these wall transitions in place of tradition doorways and they required a unique plan in my opinion. So, here's what we did! We painted the "in between" part of the wall in the Sea Salt color from the hallway. A nice neutral color, but an actual color, to make each bold color -Scandia in Great Room and New Bamboo in Kitchen- work together. :)

The vertical wall. To the right of the clock.

A bit washed out, but the contrast entryway 

Like the name implied, the Great Room, has lots of wall space! But, what slowed ME down was all the windows & doors- most very close together. No space for quick mini rollers or handy edging tools. 

For Chris, he had to spent most of the day perched at the top of the ladder painting the very highest sections of the walls. Even on a ladder and using a roller extension, there are areas too high! Tomorrow, when today's paint is dry, he'll be able to lean the tallest ladder on the wall and finish the job.

Ok! Here's photos from today! :)

Mess!

The start of my work- edging doors & windows.

More mess! Chris working on the kitchen.

Tippy Top!

Great Room is almost finished! I had a little fun putting up a splash of blue in the Den. :) We'll get to painting the Den soon, because the flooring isn't being updated in there- good ol' comfy carpet :)- we don't have to rush. :)

Brave Guy!! :)

Crazy Guy!

The hallway is all dry and put back together! Love it!

You can view a small slice of the hallway from the kitchen.

Same photo I know, but good example of the kitchen onto the dining area & bay window. It's in lower light.

More Great Room against the Kitchen. In full artificial light. See the big pile of out new flooring? ;)

Yay, yay! Oh I hope my back will allow me to get out of bed tomorrow!

Ready, Set, Make a Mess!! :)

Welcome to the weekend! This weekend, me and dutiful Chris are slapping all our beautiful new paint up on the wall in a race before our new flooring hits the perverbial deck Monday morning. :) 

Let's see some photos! So far we've tackled the kitchen & hallway. The kitchen I knocked out myself -less cutting in & where I'm simply too short!- Thursday night (9pm ish!) because Chris had a little bit of a virus. :( 

Our flooring was delivered today (Friday)! It's it awesome!

Looots of boxes. There's another pile too!

Ooh! PREETY! :)

On to the hall! Friday we knocked out the hall! It's called Sea Salt -a white with a soft grey blue touch- and it's WONDERFUL! When it's dry & in natural light, the color isn't as blue like in these photos. I used a weird little tool for edging & cutting and Chris weilded the roller brush. :)

Workin' hard!

My plans are coming together! Here's where my schemes hatching. :)

Master Bedroom against Hallway

Master Bath against Master Bed

New kitchen color against the new -still wet!- hall color! :) 

How cool? Saturday I hope to cover as much of our giant Great Room with our last color. :) We will see how much Chris will put up with. ;)

Nite Nite.

Color Experiments!

After driving myself batty over color choices, I finally threw up my hands! I stormed over to Home Depot, bought some of those awesome sample sized paint jars. At home I wasted no time slapping up some test swatches. My mind is now at peace! Except now I'm not sure I can wait for it all to be finished!!

First, Scandia. Great Room & Den. This will be the color for most of the house in actuality. I love how beautiful my mother-in-law's watercolor oranges painting is against the blue. :) *You'll notice a pale color, Sea Salt, painted on the wall transition. More below.

Next, New Bamboo. For the Kitchen. Yes, crazy bold! But, the space can handle it. The kitchen has very little in "true" unbroken wall space. Plus, I've always planned on & love a bright apple or lime green.

And finally, my not so neutral neutral-Sea Salt- to tie everything together. :) For the hallway and kitchen entry transitions. The contrast against our existing shows off the blue undertones perfectly.

So? Cool huh?

Tastes of Summer: Tomatoes! Tomato & Caper Salad

I  love tomatoes- good tomatoes- tomatoes that TASTE like tomatoes! It's a bit of a passion/pet peeve of mine. Any way to get more tomatoes in my diet, I'm on it! My good friend Dixie E. gave me this recipes recently and I may be addicted! 

One cool part of this salad is the use of cherry tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes are generally your best bet to get good tomato flavor out of season. Also, the rest of the ingredients are either pantry or long life refridgerator staples. For me at least. :) 

The original recipe calls for fresh basil, but I use Gourmet Garden Basil Paste. Actually, I use all their herb pastes a lot. I love being able to have "fresh" herbs on hand- very versital, easy to utilize, and longer shelf life. :) You can pick them up at just about any grocery store. Yum. :) 

I worked this it suit my liking and used a 10 oz pkg of cherry tomatoes. But, this would be fun and pretty to mix up using those containers of mixed variety tomatoes. Sometimes their called "jewel box" tomato mixes.

I like mine to have a lot of "juice", but if you find you enjoy less just cut down the oil & vinegar. Plus, depending on your affinity for capers you can dial it up or down. I seriously LOVE capers. :) No shock there as I'm also obsessed with any form of olive or pickles. :) I omited the black pepper, but sprinkled the salad lightly with cracked black pepper at the end.

Cherry Tomato Caper Salad

2 Tbs Drained small capers

2 Tbs balsamic vinegar

4 tsp. olive oil (1 Tbs & 1 tsp)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

10 oz  cherry tomatoes,halved

3 fresh basil leaves, shredded

*or 1 Tbs Basil paste

Stir together all ingredients, less tomatoes.  Add tomatoes and toss to coat.  Chill at least 15 minutes or up to 1 hour. Best if serving within a day. (Tomatoes begin to wilt.)

This is so yummy I ate about 2/3 of it myself with supper last night! :) 

Enjoy! Please share how you enjoyed it & especially how you made it your own! :)