DIY Kitchen Cabinets

FINALLY!!

We are finally done with re-staining our kitchen cabinets!

Here is the "Before" picture. 

(Excuse the crying baby & lovely mess, I didn't think to take a picture before we started prepping and making a big mess.)

 And here is the "After". I LOVE how it looks now! Such an improvement!

 It was about a two and a half week process to get the kitchen done, from the start of the first section to putting on the last cabinets. It seems much longer because we started the staining adventure on our Master Bath cabinets back in January, knowing that the kitchen was our ultimate project if we liked how the bathroom turned out.

After the time and effort involved in getting the bathroom and stair banister done, I was NOT excited to do the kitchen (we have a lot of cupboards in there!). But Josh is not a procrastinator at all, and he wanted to get it done. We decided to do it in sections to try to make it a little easier on ourselves. We started on what we (or I) thought would be the easiest small section to get it going. I was wrong, it was probably the hardest section that we could've picked. Blah, it wasn't very fun, but we eventually got it all done! And it was worth all of the hard work and pain. (I don't recommend taking on a project like this when you are 7 months pregnant!)

Doesn't this look so much better!?

 Here is a picture of my little wanna-be helper. I tried to get the coats done while she would be sleeping since she would be on a mission to destroy everything. But every once in a while she would wake up earlier than I needed and she would stand at the baby gate and talk to me while I worked.

We spent a lot of time on the floor of the garage putting multiple coats of stain and clear coat on the pieces. Josh is very happy to finally have his parking spot back!

Here are some pictures of the kitchen partly done...

 And now some pictures of it all done!

 There are still things we want to do in here, like run a gas line and get a nice stainless gas stove and microwave, oh and a stainless dishwasher. We would like to put in some granite counter tops at some point also. We were planning on doing the granite ASAP, but with the new cabinets the older counters don't look as bad so we probably won't rush that as much now.

Anyways..... That's our newly improved kitchen! I love it, it makes me happy every time I walk in! 

(I'm also SO happy to be done with the staining! at least until Josh wants to get the 2 guest bathrooms done too, sigh)

Happy Meal

Somebody loved her happy meal, lol!

 And I loved watching her enjoy the cheeseburger. She really loved it and even knew how to eat it, super cute!!

Garden Helper

During the weekend of us building the garden, Presley got to have some fun outside with us too. She ran around outside and got a little sun tan on her cheeks and arms.

 At one point Josh turned on the sprinklers to test some drip lines out. As soon as they were on Presley ran out into the water giggling and having so much fun! She loved it and got totally soaked! Good thing it was perfect weather. :)

See poor bunny laying in the water in the background. She was a yucky mess after this day and had to take a ride in the washing machine.

My new Garden!

Because we didn't already have enough on our plates with redoing the kitchen cabinets, we decided to build my garden at the same time too! It's a good thing Josh is a hard worker and likes to stay busy.

From the very first time that we looked at buying this house, we were excited because there was plenty of room to have a garden in the backyard. (maybe Josh wasn't excited, but I was :)

 After 10 months of living here, we finally decided to get it done so I could plant some vegetables this season. I thought it would be a really easy process, but it was a little more involved than I planned. It all turned out perfectly though and Josh did a great job building everything and running the water lines.
He also bought me the orange tree I've been wanting for years!

 I have two 4'x8' box gardens now. I'm excited for the plants to grow and start producing. We loved having the veggies out of the garden we did in Maricopa and missed it last year.

Our ficus trees froze and died so we also had to replace those with some Ash trees. I didn't get any pictures of them yet, but Josh did a great job with them as well :)

30 Weeks with Baby #2

 Here is a belly shot comparison from last pregnancy and this pregnancy at 30 weeks......
(I'm surprised to see these pics side by side because I Swear I'm bigger this time! but it doesn't look like it in these pictures)

       Pregnant with Presley                                                        Pregnant with #2

I feel like my stomach muscles are stretched to the limit and I'm a lot more uncomfortable this pregnancy than last. I get wiped out walking through the grocery store and then start having braxton hicks contractions.

My favorite thing to eat this time around is In & Out burgers and fries! Oh my gosh I love them! I'm lucky that they are open 24 hours, and that Josh passes one on his way home from work at night. I usually crave them the most right around 10pm, so it works out nicely. lol

I can't believe we are only 10 weeks from my due date now!

I'm seriously considering my option of having a repeat c-section so we could actually be 9 weeks away since I can schedule that for 39 weeks.

Here is a comparison shot of my belly from 5 weeks ago and now...... maybe I'm angling the camera different because I'm further along in the picture on the right.

            @25 weeks                                                                  @30 weeks

My kid is Awesome!

I'm sure you know I think my kid is awesome, especially because this whole blog is overloaded with pictures of her. But really, she IS! She is so fun :)

 When I pull the camera out to take her picture she always starts going through her crazy faces..... here are just a couple from this string of pictures I took.

 She sleeps through the night pretty dang good. But every once in a while she will wake up and Not want to be put back down. So we will read a few books and take a picture to send to daddy while he is still working.

 On this night she was sad about a dream she had and has a little tear on her cheek.