Alorah Layout

Papers
Vinnie Pearce ~ Romance me kit (Red) Safari Street (white) CATSCRAP.COM


Flowers
Vinnie Pearce & Kitty Chen ~ wishes and dreams kit CATSCRAP.COM


Stitches
Julia Makotinsky ~ Happy Kit LITTLEDREAMERDESIGNS.COM
Scarletheels ~ She's so sophisticated kit CATSCRAP.COM
Jen WIlson ~ Canada Eh


Staples
Anna Aspnes ~ Mama kit DESIGNERDIGITALS.COM


Frame
Creashens ~ Afternoon Cha kit CATSCRAP.COM


Background
Vinnie Pearce ~ Romance me kit CATSCRAP.COM

A kitchen update

Sorry I haven't updated in a while. I've been too busy living life to blog about it :)

Here's a bit about where we are on the kitchen. We made all of our decisions and I picked out everything I wanted in a kitchen with no ideas on what the pricing was. When the pricing finally came back from Matt our builder ~ it was a little high (chuckle, chuckle no it was ah . . . way out of the budget.) So we had to make some modifications! I sacrificed a few things (the granite I REALLY wanted) we made a few adjustments and tweaks and picked out some new materials. That process took a bit. But all the decisions were made and I'm THRILLED with all our choices.

This week a lot of progress was made.

Ev tore out the old linoleum flooring to make way for our new tile:


Before he could tear it out we let the kids have a marker party on the floor:


Ev tore it out this past weekend 1/7 & 1/8
Then they came in this week Mon - Wed and redid the electrical. They put in the recessed lighting (one of the things I was praying would fit in the budget ~ and it DID!) and rewired & positioned all the switches and brought everything up to code. The inspector came on Wed and all was well!

My new switches are GFI (don't know what that means) and have cool lights on them :)

Recessed lighting and the ceiling all ripped out:

The whole kitchen is sealed off with plastic and then zippers at all the doors so we can zip it open when there's no construction and then they can zip it closed while they're working. We were getting sick of the plastic look so the kids and I took a whole afternoon to die cut snowflakes and decorate one of the sheets of plastic:

We continued on with the marker party and decorated another doorway :)

the A-1 asbestos guys chipped in when we weren't looking and left us a smiley!

With the open ceiling and no walls it got pretty cold in the house. They just came out today and put in insulation ~ it's much warmer now! I'll post those pics later.

Goofy Girl LO

Paper:
Creashens Rewind kit (catscrap.com)
Anna Aspnes ~ weathered neutrals (designer digitals.com)

Stitches:
Natalie Braxton ~ ice cream sundae toppers (the-lilypad.com)
Jackie Eckles ~ Quirky Stitches V1 (littledreamerdesigns.com)

Flowers
Vinnie Pearce ~ purple phase (catscrap.com)

Leaves
Vinnie Pearce ~ my pet elephant (catscrap.com)

Buttons:
Vinnie Pearce ~ pieces of me kit (catscrap.com)

Alpha
Vinnie Pearce ~ purple phase (catscrap.com)

Journaling:
What a goofball you are. Always joking, always giggling your goofy giggle. All who meet you fall in love with you. You just capture hearts with the way you are. I love you my angel girl, goofy and all

New LO ~ Sweet

Here's the latest:


Everything from the-lilypad.com
Almost everything from BYOC Jan

Papers:
Checks & Dots Paper Pack by Jenna Desai
Just some Papers Pack by Kasia Designs

Embellishments:
Stitched scraps ~ Anne DeJong

Alpha:
Sock Hop Alpha ~ Cd Muckosky

Swirls:
Wax Werx ~ CD Muckosky

Flowers:
Paper Daisies by Kaye Winiecki

RicRac:
Celebrate the Everyday kit by Emily Merritt & Natalie Braxton

Journaling:
What a wonderful day
this was. I was trying to enter t
he CK Hall of Fame and I needed
some amazing pictures
what better subjects than you.
You were playful and totally
got into the shoot.
I loved every moment
of working with
you guys and it did
turn out that I got
some amazing pictures,
even though I didn’t end
up submitting that year

The kitchen scoop

Well a lot's changed since that initial kitchen photo. We first thought we wouldn't even put in a claim as we have a pretty high deductible. Our insurance broker recommended a collegue (sp?) of his that specializes in fire construction come over and give us his thoughts before we made our decisions. Matt from Regional Builders came over the next day at 8pm after a long day in court (not his court case but as an expert witness) He impressed us right away and had some really good recommendations. Basically whatt it all boiled down to was that nothing could be patched ~ we had to replace flooring, tile and cabinets. Add into that aspestos & smoke cleaning and a call to our insurance was a no brainer.

We still had a working oven and decided that we would still like to have a partial kitchen for Christmas morning so we held off on the demo. The smoke cleaning went ahead as planned before the holidays and yesterday (1/5/09) the demo started. A-1 remediation came out today and finished the demo ~ taking the kitchen down to the studs in some areas. It's barren in there. I was able to post some before & during pictures. I will keep you updated throughout this process. We still have some big decisions to make and hopefully no strife will occur between myself and Ev because we're such opinionated people :)

Gotta say one of the things I'm happiest about so far is how pleasant all of the contractors have been ~ i haven't had to deal with a typical rude, brash contractor attitude. Everyone has been great! Can you tell I didn't have pleasant contractor experiences during our house flip???


BEFORE DEMO
AFTER DEMO
BEFORE DEMO
AFTER DEMO

Micah's dressing himself

Well actually he's been dressing himself for quite a while now, but occassionaly he just can't get it right. He came in so frustrated the other day and "Needed Help Mom, NOW!" I just had to giggle and before I could fix him up I had to tacke a picture and giggle.

The latest adventure

So the latest thing to happen was a kitchen fire. I put on a teapot for tea and went outside to play with Micah for a few. without going into all the details because I don't feel like typing it all out :) The house was filled with smoke and there were flames in the kitchen. The smoke was too thick that after a minute of trying I had to go out and call the fire department.

We spent six hours last night cleaning. There was a layer of soot on EVERYTHING and the whole house reeks of smoke ~ Giving me a headache. So these are the pictures after we scrubbed it. The tile is burned, the cupboards are burned and the floor is burned. Then the walls & cabinets above are blackened from smoke and bubbled.

It could have been A LOT, A LOT worse, but it was still very scary to experience.