All the Christmasy Things

So our kitchen is done and Christmas is allowed to happen. I finished the unpacking and cleaning and decorating about twenty minutes before my parents and brother arrived last Friday which was approximately forty minutes before Claire's school holiday pageant was set to begin. She was SO excited to wear her Christmas dress and beloved "fancy shoes" that have been taunting her from her closet for weeks. I love her love of shoes.

The program was as earnest and adorable as a school program should be.

Christmas poems + hand motions are a very serious business.

She then basked in the post-performance glow with her Gigi, gave my family a tour of her classroom, before we headed home to eat dinner (in the new kitchen! nothing was microwaved!) and decorate the tree.

Normally I prefer to do the tree the weekend after Thanksgiving and enjoy it all season long, but the whole house was such a disaster and this corner was needed to stack up boxes of kitchen stuff (SO much stuff lives in your kitchen cabinets; I was shocked how many boxes it all required), so after my 24 straight hours of cleaning, it was finally time to pull out our new fake tree. JP vastly prefers live trees, but I knew this year any tree trimming would be last minute, so we've compromised on fake for this year and a fake AND a real one in the future. We're going to need more ornaments.

Cora was respectful of the tree and its traditions. She's an adorable little mimic and is always very interested in what the big kids are doing. She stood by the tree and seemed to concentrate very hard to figure out what kind of magic they were using to make the toys levitate in the air and stick on the branches. Then she gave up and went to make friends with the Julbock.

Christmas music was playing and cookies were eaten and snuggling and giggling happened. The loving laughing joyfully chaotic life of three kids is hard to put it in words, but every now and then there's a picture that gives you a sliver. I love this one.

On Saturday it was freezing and rainy, so we thought we should spend the whole day outdoors exploring the Arboretum. It certainly kept the crowds away.

The 12 Days of Christmas Exhibits were pretty amazing and of course the Children's Adventure Garden is always a hit.

we literally had to drag my parents out of there when JP and Eric were about to abandon the group in search of a much-delayed lunch.

In a final nod to Christmas tradition, we scarred the baby by putting her in the arms of a strange old man in a weird outfit.

I love how Cora's all, what are you doing? Why are your hands out like that? My daddy would never put me in the arms of a suspicious stranger.

Betrayed.

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Kitchen Completion!

It's finally (95%) done! My house is back! Out with the dust and microwave meals and in with the sanity and holiday decorations.

We need to find shorter screws to attach a few of the drawer pulls, a flat piece of wood needs to go under all the over-window cabinets, and the cabinet doors need to be leveled- and the bar stools arrive on Monday, but it's pretty much there. I took testimony on Thursday and came home, fed the kids their last round of Easy Mac, put them to bed, opened a bottle of my favorite champagne that a beloved coworker gave me to christen the new kitchen, and went to WORK.

At midnight it was nearly all unpacked and then I spent 8 hours Friday running errands, cleaning, unpacking, organizing and reorganizing, and finally FINISHING, and then running out to the garage to grab our Christmas decorations to make Christmas finally arrive in our house and got all THAT done about 20 minutes before my parents and brother were due to arrive from Houston and we needed to leave for Claire's holiday pageant. At 3:30 p.m. I realized all I'd had to eat was a chai tea latte I'd grabbed on my 8 a.m. Target run and the only sitting I'd done was in the car to buy more organizers. It was a crazy day.

But I love it. I love it so much.

Our old kitchen wasn't terrible. It was functional and perfectly fine looking, but it was a big space that couldn't have been more poorly designed (so much wasted space!) and was completely cut off from the rest of the house. Every night I would get home from work with the kids, they'd go to the playroom, and I'd go in the kitchen and I pretty much wouldn't see them again for an hour. The kitchen was too narrow to safely have them in there with me and I hated the separation.

Above: random peninsula jutting out 1/3 of the way into the room with a tiny dorm microwave hidden in a lower cabinet on the other side; big wall cutting off my view of anything except the wall while cooking. Below: counter top that inexplicably ended 4 inches past the sink with another huge amount of empty wasted space; and two small pantries on opposite ends of the rectangle.

So we saved and I planned and pinned and drew 1,000 sketches of my dream floor plan. I solicited contractors in January to get bids and see if what I wanted to do was architecturally and financially possible. I googled and pinned and houzzed all spring. We picked our contractor and got to work in earnest in the summer. We had the cabinet maker over in the fall. He stalled on giving us a quote and we had to give up on him in October and move on to another company. Everything was delayed. The appliances we'd excitedly purchased in September sat in the warehouse at the store forever.

The cabinets were finally ready to go in mid-November and we had our contractor get going with demo even though he was going to be gone for a week at Thanksgiving, and while it was miserable to have an extra 10 days of no progress on the project (we were gone for half of them, but still, it messed with my mind to have the chaos so unchanging), I'm so glad to have the project done before Christmas. The granite was a saga. I obsessed over the same four shades of grey paint. I hated the first set of cabinet hardware I'd ordered online. The cabinet install was wrong and we had to pay more and wait two weeks to get a bunch of the boxes re-done. I took a half-day off work to stand behind our contractor's shoulder to free flow design our built-in cubbies. Everything was worth it.

In all of my kitchen design research it would drive me crazy to see a picture I loved that had no details on how to get anything in it, so I'll link to a bunch of things below. I was also starving for details, so I've included lots of those. Apologies to the non-HGTV addicted in advance.

So, let's take a tour- begone giant wall!

(Ignore the now-hung wreath and entry hutch that has now been sold. Three bar stools coming Monday.)

We used to only have a doors-width opening between the two rooms.

New view while cooking on the stove.

Trash/recycle bin drawer to the right of the sink, another stack of drawers for all the plastic cups and lids and lunch box storage containers, and a little silver button above the sink that turns on the disposal. I still get a little thrill every time I push it. I also love the over window line of cabinets; no one liked that idea, including JP, but it totally completes that wall and they're storing all our serving dishes and other rarely used items.

Looking left:

My new big pantry and beloved cubbies.

The original plan was for that to be all pantry, but I wanted to save the window and a big pantry wasn't going to fix our overflowing backpack/jacket rack problem, plus I didn't like the idea of walking into a big long wall and narrow hallway (that side door is the one we use to come in from the driveway), so I redrew the plans and cut into the pantry for some cubbies that would face the door. Our contractor was skeptical, but they are probably my favorite thing about the whole redesign.

Peninsula with my beverage fridge, drawers for all the things (including pot and pan drawers that I've wanted forever), and so much counter space.

We "built-in" our old fridge and the big cabinets on top are awesome for all our Costco paper products we used to stuff in Cora's closet and then we'd inevitably run out of paper towels or toilet paper after she went to bed and have to sneak in to get more. And no more peeling vinyl tiles in the entry! And I finally got to unpack all our glasses!

Another fave: I wanted a shelf and wine storage built into the end cap of the lower cabinets to hide the lunch boxes (and my wine). I didn't want to do too much custom cabinet work because needs change, and the contractor was not too sure about it, but I already love that tucked away space.

And now that the dust and debris are all gone, Christmas finally got to come to our house!

Links to everything I could link to:

Dish washer: GE Stainless Built-In Dishwasher (the appliance that started it all; our old one was clunky and made a non-stop clicking noise that drove me crazy. We found this one in the scratch 'n dent section of our awesome and charming local appliance store and got $400 off to make this much higher end one suddenly affordable. It's amazing and COMPLETELY silent. We keep trying to open it when it's running because you can't tell. The microwave also has a hidden dent on the side for 50% off, our appliance guy found a coordinating beverage fridge by Frigidaire for half the price of the GE one, and then we were able to order the range of our dreams and still come in under budget. If you're in Fort Worth, I can't recommend Bruce at Oliver Dyer highly enough.)

Range/Oven: GE Profile Gas Range with Double Convection Oven (j'adore. I wanted two ovens but they couldn't fit in the design; this is a perfect use of space and I get five burners, including a griddle and a "double" burner that got a giant pot of water to boiling in minutes on Friday, and the two ovens are great- the larger one will fit a turkey and the top one heats up so fast and is perfect for 90% of my cooking which used to require me heating the whole oven to cook one flat tray of something.)

Microwave: GE Over the Range Microwave (the over-the-range aspect was a design necessity and this one is about 2x bigger than our old hidden one; it is lovely to be able to nuke my big tea cups when the tea gets cold)

Beverage Fridge: Frigidaire Wine Fridge (We'll never have room for two fridges, but getting the beverages out of our big one freed up about 33% more space so now we won't have to run out of food on Thursday instead of Saturday morning when I can go to the store again.)

Sink: Undermount Double Bowl Sink with Low Divider (LOVE this; I wanted a double, but liked the farmhouse style for cleaning big pans; this solves both problems and it looks great.)

Faucet: Ultra Faucets Pull Down Faucet in chrome (I liked the modern style but wanted a touch of the classic with the curvier handle.)

Pendants: Quoizel Emery Mini Pendant in chrome (I love these so much; set the tone in keeping the kitchen from getting too modern and far away from its classic roots.)

Bar stools: CB2 Phoenix Ivory 30" Bar Stool (I picture much homework and breakfast eating being done on these).

Cabinet color: Benjamin Moore Chantilly Lace (uppers and trim); Benjamin Moore Shaker Grey (lowers and peninsula)
Wall color: Kelly Moore Bird Bath Blue

Cabinet bars: Allen + Roth Polished Cabinet Pulls (I started with more simple metal bars, but decided they were too cold; the extra bit of design on these is perfect.)
Drawer pulls: Polished Chrome Cup Drawer Pull (Love the longer length!)

Baskets: Scoop Wire Basket

After one million design decisions and internet bookmarks and microwave dinners (and SO MUCH DUST), I am SO glad it's done and that we love it so much. I've never looked forward to making dinner more!

Not Tuesday Things

1. I have spent all day thinking it's Tuesday, so now having a Tuesday tomorrow is going to seem like a bonus. Normally you don't want a longer week, but I'm taking formal testimony on Thursday and my kitchen isn't done and my parents and brother arrive on Friday. An extra day will be GREAT.

2. My kitchen is supposed to be done tomorrow! I'm expecting Wednesday to avoid disappointment, but regardless, there is an end in sight and that end looks BEAUTIFUL and full of homemade Christmas cookies.

3. I got a new yoga mat in the mail (an early Christmas present to myself after hours of research and over 200 hours logged on my old cheap mat) and it finally motivated me to take a break from evening wine drinking to get back to the barre and my legs feel shaky and amazing. And also nicely supported thanks to the new yoga mat that is already clearly worth 5x my old one. Such support and cushion and down dog hand stickiness! Getting back to the studio was like reuniting with a friend and it had only been a week away. Barre is in my blood.

4. This song played in class and it is WONDERFUL. It also won't get out of my hand. JP already hates it.

5. Cora looked adorable and festive this morning so I tried to get a picture in the chair I always seem to stick her in when I want a picture and she was having NONE OF IT. She stood up immediately, yelled in joy for being awake and alive on this lovely Tuesday Monday morning and then made lots of Cora faces and then Claire asked for a picture of them together and Cora was like NO, I have SO much to do, you have no idea and toddled off in the direction of her duplo bin to dump it all out and bang two pieces together.

SO busy.

6. My hair has decided to grow two tiny curly devil horns on both sides of my head and they are making me crazy. Like all caps crazy, except I used a lot of caps in the last bullet. They stick up and curl and will not be contained with any combination of chemical, hair product, or hot iron. So I'm tamping them down with sparkly headbands. Loft had their hair accessories 50% off today and if you've grown horns lately, you should go get some. They're super cute and feel very festive, and no one has to know you're only wearing them because of the horn situation.

7. This my kitchen color scheme: walls (same as living room; Bird Bath Blue), trim/upper cabinets (Chantilly Lace, which looks much brighter than the screen cap below), and lower cabinets (Shaker Grey). The floor is chocolate brown tile with grey tones.

It's going to be great. And I'm not even saying that sarcastically anymore.

8. I don't have a single Christmas decoration in the house because they would only get covered in dust and paint spray, but it's making my soul sad to be so unfestive. Luckily the Christmas cards have begun arriving and they make me so happy. The stack we have growing next to the door is literally our only nod to the holiday season in the whole house, but I've already taken off work on Friday and I am going to whip this house into shape. I will unpack ALL the kitchen things and organize the drawers and pantry and unleash the Christmas decorations and tree. This house will be FULL of holiday spirit when the kids get home from school on Friday and it will be glorious. And then I need to figure out how I can make sugar cookies happen before the 24th. It's going to be a tight squeeze, but cookies and sugar (and tradition!) are excellent motivators!

And then the peninsula broke off

So when talked last, I was lamenting my kitchen-less state and drinking a lot of wine to compensate. Well, a lot has changed, I've now kind of forgotten what it was like to have a kitchen and a house not covered in piles of stuff covered in piles of dust and while I'm still drinking a lot of wine, I've added some Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Peppermint Joe Joe's to my diet to soak it up. So big things! They're happening around here.

This past weekend was kind of terrible. Not having a kitchen is always terrible but not having school and work and the pool to escape to makes it so much worse. There's just dust and dirt and tarps and construction equipment and DUST everywhere. So for the first time ever I assisted with the yard work, raking and picking up leaves alongside our child workers. When I came outside and started picking up leaves in my lulu leggings and suede low heel booties, Landon exclaimed, "Mommy! I didn't know you could pick up leaves too!!" He was genuinely so excited for me to have figured it out. We spent about 8 hours raking and scooping and had 32 lawn bags to show for it. Giant oak trees, almost as awesome as kitchen renovations.

The primer was sprayed on the cabinets that day and it was the most terrible step of all. It smelled so unbelievably toxicly bad that when we got back from dinner we could smell the primer from the driveway while still inside the car with the windows rolled up. Should any of you ever redo a kitchen, I really highly recommend you just move the F out until it's done.

On Sunday, as we sat down to another dinner of microwave food (the congo line of items to be microwaved each night makes my soul wither a little more: Landon's meal, Claire's meal, Cora's meal, my meal, JP's two meals, steam veggie in a bag; it's like 25 solid minutes of microwaving)- the big kids in the play room because the kitchen table is now lost under the dust pile and they can't be trusted on the couches in the TV room, Landon joyfully exclaimed, "Mom, redoing out kitchen is great because we get to eat in such neat places!" Yep. SO GREAT.

There has been an enormous amount of counter top drama that I have spared you, gentle readers. We picked one and it was sold. We picked another that we knew was sold but they were getting more in from the same lot in a week. JP went to approve it before it was cut and sent me a picture that I thought was a joke. The only similarity to the one we saw before was that it was also made of stone. So, with visions of being countertop-less until 2015 threatening to make my mind unravel, I raced off to a different granite yard and found one I liked almost as much but it was 20% more expensive. But then the original place got another shipment in at 8 a.m. on Saturday that looked like the one we liked and they matched their original quote but THEN they couldn't install them until after Christmas and apparently the face I made at that news was so terrible and terrifying that without my ever saying words, he started flipping back through his book and fitting us in at 8 a.m. today. JP said it was nothing he's ever seen my face do before. I kind of wish he'd taken a picture.

So we have countertops! Our floors need to be grouted and we need a backsplash and the walls and ceiling and trim needs to be painted. And we need appliances and plugs and light switches and lights. But it LOOKS like we kind of have a kitchen and I'm starting to believe that one day we will and that little flicker of hope is giving me the will to start unearthing my living room from under the construction dust. JP kind of had a mental breakdown last night where he just sort of froze and asked for a dust cloth and then dusted for a solid hour. It's harder for him because he works from home all morning and the amount of dust and paint fumes in his lungs is probably equivalent to a short term chain smoker.

I did take a break from drinking and eating dark chocolate covered Oreo's to wrap all our presents last night, so that's something. And Christmas cards are going out tomorrow. And work is super busy. But mostly I'm drinking wine and reading a trashy new paranormal romance series in the bathtub. I haven't even been to barre all week because I've been so busy with the reading about fallen angels while drinking. So remodeling the kitchen has been super good for my health.

On Saturday night, after all the raking and coughing up primer fumes, we stopped at Kroger on the way back from dinner. JP stayed in the car with the kids and I ran in to buy a bottle of screw top wine, a set of four plastic wine glasses to keep it classy, and a pint of dark chocolate chunk ice cream. And that was it. If I'd had the energy after all that raking I would have judged myself.

On the upside, now that JP is on the other side of his breakdown, he's having a great time messing with me about the renovation process while I'm at work.

Our text convos today:

Me: How does the granite look? Send pics!

JP: Awful. Makes me want to puke.

Me: JP.
My heart can only take so much.
JP!

JP: No seriously.
It's like Mother Earth emptied the ugliest contents of her bowels.

Me: JP!

~ ~ ~

Later in the afternoon I was in a meeting, interviewing a potential witness, when I saw I missed his call. Since he never calls me during the day I was concerned and texted him with:

Me: In a mtg. What's up?

JP: The peninsula broke off.

Me: WTF

JP: Tried to get back to Mother Earth from whence it came.
Contractor is using the kids glue as we speak to reassemble it.
Gonna look great.

~ ~ ~

Nothing shows my fragile mental state right now than the fact that I kind of initially fell for that second one.

Dirty Dances and Kitchen Renovations

Dirty Dancing is on TV right now. JP has never seen it and he is not as caught up in the magic of "will she do the jump or won't she?" as I expected him to be. Or at least as I was when I saw this in my tween years and declared it the greatest movie ever. Who knew it was entirely premised on a dance partner getting a botched pre-Roe v. Wade abortion and not being able to dance at the neighboring resort. That went RIGHT over my head on my first 100 viewings. Apparently the magic of the finale went right over JP's head too. He needs to watch it again.

~ ~ ~

So not having a kitchen is completely terrible.

I can't muster a single positive word about the situation, but I also feel like I can't complain because I have a lovely home and what is going to (SOMEDAY) be a beautiful kitchen. But OMG the interim is so so terrible. It's more terrible than Cora thinks of cake and snow and leaves combined. SO TERRIBLE.

Coming home at the end of the day makes me stressed and sad and dusty. I hate walking in the door with hungry kids and not knowing if the fridge will be accessible that day or not. I'm tired of paying to eat at restaurants when we'd rather be at home and very tired of judging myself when I check out at the grocery store with a stack of microwave meals. I'm tired of dust on everything and everything being everywhere; I'm staring at a turkey roaster on the TV stand while I type. There are currently no uncluttered surfaces of my house. It'll be worth it, but it's been 3.5 weeks and I feel like maybe having a wall between the living room and kitchen wasn't so bad after all. SO MUCH DUST AND SO MUCH CLUTTER. My heart rate actually increases when I walk in the door.

This is not my life.

~ ~ ~

I finished my Christmas shopping today and I'm so excited about everything I picked out. I was very careful this year and thought a lot about my list of ideas (started via iPhone Note back in February) for each family member and kid and I even have a few things I'm really excited to give to JP and he is SO hard to shop for. I love gift giving- finding that perfect thing gives me more excitement than opening up anything for myself. One of JP's gifts involves fire and there is no one who likes making fire more than JP. He's going to love it and I'm totally going to regret giving it to him, but such is the cycle of perfect gift giving.

(A co-worker gifted Cora with a set of musical instruments for her birthday; I barely even notice the extra bit of chaos.)

~ ~ ~

Cora got sick back in Steamboat and finally decided to be better yesterday. She became so quiet and sleepy and snuggly that I'd almost forgotten how happy-screamy and joyful she normally is. She woke up a little early this morning (a sure sign she was feeling better; she's been sleeping in like a teenager) and when I brought her back to my bed to cuddle she clawed at my face and screamed in my ear and clapped and crawled and basically had a party in my bed. There was a lot of joy contained in a tiny little body and though I was tired (I got sick on Tuesday night) it was lovely to see.

So thanks to Cora being sick and doctor appointments and being sent home from daycare and my throat swelling up all red and angry, I only worked one full day this week. It's been a long transition back from Thanksgiving with a lot of extra time spent in my construction site of a house. If not for the bonus Cora snuggles, I honestly would have rather been at work.

~ ~ ~

We got home from Colorado to a sea of leaves in the front yard. After JP and the kids spent a few hours raking (Landon doesn't complain, but has noted that we are maybe the family in the world who makes our kids do yard work. Just noting.), they promptly destroyed all their work by leaping into it from a great height. Chores and giant Red Oak trees can be fun.

We even tried to recreate one of my favorite pictures from last year, but Cora has opinions now and hating leaves is one of them.

Leaves are the worst. And she didn't even have to rake them.

~ ~ ~

I think I'm drinking more wine, but I can't tell because the plastic cup I'm using is so big that any amount I pour seems small in comparison.

Kitchen ETA is late next week. I'm afraid to hope, but I really can't wait to be able to show you the finished results. And make my Christmas cookies, drink out of a real wine glass, and never eat out again until midway through 2015. Seriously, can't wait.