So long slumber

I love nighttime. It is the only time of the day that I can relish in silence and do nothing but sleep. Well, every good thing must come to an end.

Last night I had just fallen into my silent slumber when J crawled back into bed (like I knew he was gone) and he said "did you hear that?!" I was in my non-chaotic, blissful slumber so of course I didn't hear anything. As it turns out, J heard the front door open and went downstairs to investigate. There he found our Matthew walking around in the front yard!! Of all things he imagined I don't think that thought entered his mind on the way down the stairs. He walked him back up to bed and tucked him in.

I asked Matthew this morning if he remembered walking around he acted completely oblivious. I also asked him if he had a dream that he was walking around outside and again, no. I told him what had happened and he thought it was cool, of course. Then he said it would be cool if he had been dreaming about walking outside so he could remember what he saw. Mom freaks out, boy is disappointed because he didn't get to truly experience the front yard at midnight.

Some updates

Jacob's room is the first room in the house completely finished- wallpaper removal, paint, curtains, bedding and most of all- boxes unpacked. I would love to have all the rooms completely finished but I can't unpack and decorate until the wood floors are finished.

You can barely see the flowered border at the top of the wall in the before picture. This turned out to be 2 layers of border of which the bottom layer had been painted over. It was another wallpaper nightmare in our new house. Thankfully it is all done! We have our eye on a new, cool ceiling fan that we will put up soon.

The kitchen. It has been a longer renovation than expected but we are seeing light at the end of the tunnel. Here is a picture of my desk area, we put up a corkboard in the backsplash area.

We tiled the backsplash today. I think we may leave the spacers in; kind of a new age polka-dot look. The stone will be darker when we seal it. I'm hoping we may get that done before next weekend.

The Rustic Look

If we were looking for the rustic look on our cabinets we hit the jackpot three days into our cabinet repaint. If you would like to achieve this look for your cabinets follow these steps.
1. Get a crazy idea to repaint all of your cabinets.
2. Read all you can on the internet on how to go about your crazy idea. I'll save you this step- Clean with TSP, lightly sand, prime then paint.
3. Wait for the paint store to have a great sale and buy the paint. We used ProClassic paint on our cabinets (which ended up great after the rustic fiasco) and will use it on our trim work as well.
4. Since the paint store is having a great sale, it will be swamped with people like us with many crazy ideas. Don't wait for the associates that usually help you because it will take forever. Go straight to the guy that looks new, or maybe just hired for the day. Take his advice that the ProClassic doesn't need a primer, even though this sounds 100 degrees of wrong.
5. Clean your cabinets, sand ALL of them lightly and start painting. After two coats of paint you will realize that the stain is dissolving your paint in the exact places you've sanded just the day before. This won't work.
6. Head back to your local paint store with one of your cabinet doors for some advice. The associates that usually help you will be available and apologize profusely for the new guy's bad advice and point you to a primer that you must use.
7. Go back home with renewed motivation and prime all the cabinets and boards with 2 coats. Realize again around 8pm that the yellow stain is coming through all layers of paint and primer.
8. Local paint store is closed so take your cabinet door to the blue hardware store. Buy the correct primer (Zinnser B-I-N) and start again in the morning.
9. After all the layers of incorrect paint and primer your doors will be very sticky. You must spend the entire day sanding in order to start painting on the correct primer. This will take quite some time because even with 60 grit sandpaper and a rotary sander only the edges will sand smooth. You will now have the perfect rustic cabinet doors...if that is what you were looking for.

We eventually got everything sanded and re-primed after a couple of days. We finished painting last night and J stayed up to hang all the doors and install the mircrowave. We are installing the hardware today and then starting on the countertops. Here are a couple of pictures.

Kit Kittredge

Emmy and I went to see the new American Girl movie "Kit Kittredge" last week. She had been counting down the days until the movie opened and that morning she dressed her Kit doll in her movie clothes so she could come along too. So, the three of us had an afternoon at the movies, snacking on popcorn.

Now a review.
Even though this movie is targeted towards girls, I would take my boys to see it as well. It was a good movie about the depression era and the children in the movie solve a mystery together while bringing plenty of humor to the story. But, I couldn't help but think of the financial downturn of our country today while watching the financial ruin of many families during the depression. Beyond that I would recommend this movie to girls and boys who are old enough to follow a mystery storyline.