Scavenger Hunt Sunday 03.16.14

Hello!  Welcome to another Scavenger Hunt Sunday!  We had lots of beautiful sunshine this week.  I even got outside on Tuesday to do some running (actual exercise running - not errand running).  :)  It felt so good to get out and enjoy the warmer weather.  However, Wednesday we had rain which then changed to snow and ice.  Ah, winter in Pennsylvania.  You gotta love getting two different seasons in the same week.  :)

Anyway, you are here for the hunt, so I'll get to it ... 

{doorway}

Keira agreed to help me with this prompt, so after doing some shopping, we sought out an interesting doorway downtown.  We found these on a church.

{candid}

This candid shot of Doug and Alex cracks me up.  They were looking at Alex's eye spy book together.  Doug is hiding from the camera, as usual.  :)

{open}

I already mentioned that we have had lots of sunshine lately.  Soon it will be warm enough to open the windows and let the fresh air in.  Yay!

{look up}

After taking Keira's picture in the church's doorway, I only had to look up to see this steeple.  

{stuffed}

Alex helped me try a new gluten-free cookie recipe on Saturday.  Once he stuffed a couple in his face :) he gave me a big thumbs up.  They are yummy!

Thanks for stopping by!  Be sure to stop over and say hello to our gracious host, Ashley!

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Scavenger Hunt Sunday 04.28.13

It's been another crazy, busy week!  But somehow I managed to get all the prompts again.

{walking}

Keira is now part of the Strolling Strings program so she been practicing walking while she plays her violin.

{yummy to my tummy}

Does this really need an explanation? :)

{favorite toy}

Nick has a new favorite toy - a LEGO set he bought with his birthday money.

{what I did this week}

Just one of the many things I did this week ... visited Phipps Conservatory with my mom.  I shared more photos a few days ago.

{anything}

I bought a cake stand at the thrift store the other day.  It doubles as a trifle dish, which is great because now I can try some of the yummy recipes being shared around blog land lately.  Like this Red Velvet Blackberry Crash Cake from Kleinworth & Co.  Anyway, when I placed it on my kitchen counter, I noticed that the lid top makes my back splash look abstract.  Cool, huh?

We're going to watch Nick get baptized this morning so it is an exciting day here!

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a great week!  

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Scavenger Hunt Sunday 03.10.13

I'm a little late to the party this week. Mainly because I was really stumped on some of these prompts!  So a few of my interpretations are possibly a bit of a stretch, but just roll with it, k?

{#5}

From the archives, obviously.  This was the butterfly #5 of the Monarchs we raised last summer.  This is the best shot I got of him because we were leaving for a day of fun when he decided to emerge.  So I wedged the bug box lid in our maple tree, snapped a few quick pics, and left.

{word of the day}

SNOW! was the word of the day on Wednesday.  The kids had their first snow day.  In March!  My back is still a little sore from all the shoveling we did that day!  And it is about 70 degrees and beautiful today!  Not to last though, but we are enjoying it while we can.

{sharing}

I'm sharing a photo of our newly remodeled kitchen.  I shared a whole blog post a few days ago, in case you want to see the ugly "before" photos.  :)

{wiggle}

In another month or so a beautiful butterfly will wiggle its way out of this chrysalis we have been observing since September/October.

{cookies!}

This little girl loves cookies!

Thanks for stopping by!  Be sure to visit Ashley for more great Scavenger Hunt finds!

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The Great Kitchen Remodel

Good Friday morning to you!  As promised, I randomly chose a winner for the new VeggieTales DVD, The Little House That Stood this morning.  Congratulations, Laura!  I'll get your DVD out to you right away!

************

Now, it has been almost a year since we remodeled our kitchen and I realized that I never took any "after" pictures to show you the difference.  So since I was in a cleaning mood the other day and scrubbed the kitchen from top to bottom, I thought it would be a good time to get those after pictures.  :)

But first let me show you the kitchen we lived with for about 14 years ...

Now it wasn't this bad the whole time.  It deteriorated over time.  We probably would not have bought this house had it looked like this at the beginning.

All the things I disliked about our kitchen ... lack of counter space, which is why we put a desk back in the corner ... only three electrical outlets - one of which was behind the refrigerator - you can see the other two ... ugly, dark fake wood cupboards ... white textured walls that were impossible to clean because they would rip apart anything you tried to clean them with.  The range was here when we bought the house so no idea how old it was.  It still worked though.

Oh, and once upon a time there was a window above the sink that opened out to the front room which is now my "office".  (I call it that for lack of a better word.  It is where I have my laptop, all my scrapbooking stuff, sewing stuff, photography stuff, etc.)  Anyway, we assume that at one time it was an outer window and that the front eventually got closed in.  But the window opening stayed.  You can see the back of the drywall that is now a wall in my office.

We had to buy a new refrigerator about 6 years ago, so it is fairly new.

My husband needed to rip part of the ceiling away so he could install insulation and drywall on the outer wall (since there was none and you could feel every breeze that blew). It stayed like this for quite some time.  Ugly and gross.  And embarrassing.  Ugh.  If you walked in the front door and looked up, this is what you saw.

The panels in front of the sink fell off and we couldn't ever get them to stay back on, so eventually we just gave up.

The floor was coming up in several places.  Plus look back there by the cabinets.  That is a shirt stuffed in the hole in the wall to keep the cold out.  Since Doug couldn't get to that part of the wall without ripping out the cabinets, we improvised.

Why did we leave the kitchen like this for so long?  Well, we don't do debt.  So we had to save up the money to remodel the kitchen.  Kitchens are pretty expensive, so it took a while.  Especially when you still have other emergencies to pay for that take away from the savings.  Oh the joys of home ownership.  :)

Looking at these pictures makes me so very thankful that our kitchen is now done and looks like this ...

I love it!  We have oodles of counter space now, a microwave, and a dishwasher!  After hand washing dishes forever, the dishwasher is my favorite appliance. :)  

I left all the papers, etc. on the refrigerator because that is what it typically looks like ... school lunch menus and calendar, husband's work schedule, kids' artwork.  I love it!  It reminds me of how blessed I am with having a family.  Nick jokes that Alex's winter tree picture looks like a hand coming up out of a grave.  The Walking Dead, anyone?

Doug installed under cabinet LED lighting which is great for when I am working in the kitchen.  They are all controlled by the switch, but you can turn them each on and off individually and have as much or as little lighting as you need.

We have sooooo much cupboard space now too!  The old cabinets had about 10 inches of wall above them.  The new ones go all the way to the ceiling.  We had to buy a little kitchen ladder to keep handy to reach the top shelves.

Off to the right you can just see the message board cupboard.  We couldn't find a better place to put it, but it turns out that it works very well there.


I love our back splash.  It is sparkley!  And some of the squares are iridescent and change color depending on your angle.  Lots of greens, pinks, purples, and blues.


The range and microwave are now where the refrigerator was.  Kind of.  We now have that small counter top on the left.


Deep sink basins.  LOVE!


No more gross ceiling or floor coming apart.  Our only issue was putting the refrigerator where we did.  It covers the window just a little.  We looked into getting a fridge that was only as deep as our counter top, but they are really expensive!  For less room!  So, for now, our refrigerator is fine.

I plan to attempt to make curtains soon.  I'll let you know how that goes.  :)

And the best part of all of this is that we still have no debt (except our mortgage)!  We paid for the entire kitchen when we worked on it, so we can truly enjoy it without worrying about how to pay for it.

Linking with Photo Story Friday and Friday Photo Journal.

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Week 25 in Pictures

By the time you read this, I'll be in the midst of our church's Vacation Bible School, which runs all this week.  This past week was filled with last-minute preparations so I don't think I managed to get any of the prompts from Project 366 Rewind, Be Inspired, or P52.  And I don't know that I'll get any this week either, although I'll try to make more of an effort.  

One of my jobs at VBS is to photograph the kids in the different areas and create a slideshow for Friday, so by the time I get home each day, I may not feel like picking up my camera.  So next week's recap may be all VBS photos.  You've been warned.  :)

We did finally get the back splash in the kitchen installed this weekend, so I'll try to get my before/after kitchen post finished up.  I can't wait to show you the transformation!

But before I even think about doing that, I'll show you last week's photos ...

{Sunday}

It seems that my attempt to get another great shot of all three kids together will have to wait for another day.  :)  I was hoping to get a good one to give Doug for Father's Day.  Nick wasn't really cooperating.

{Monday}

I was excited to finally capture a photo of a butterfly that I didn't raise and hold captive.  :)

{Tuesday}

While visiting my in-laws, this hummingbird stopped in at their feeder for a sip.

{Wednesday}

How cool that on the first day of summer our first Monarch butterfly emerged from her chrysalis.

{Thursday}

I took this photo for the Scavenger Hunt "glazed" prompt.  Unfortunately I wasn't able to get all the prompts and didn't participate.  Hopefully I'll get to play along this week.  I already have one of the prompts done, so I'm off to a good start.

{Friday}

Monarch butterfly #2, a petite little female, joined us today.  Her brother/sister should be along any day now.

{Saturday}

Doug finally had time to install the back splash in the kitchen.  Yay!  He wasn't done with it when I took this photo - still working on the grout.  It didn't go quite as smoothly as the instructions said it would but it is up now and looks great!


Last, here is my favorite photo from June ...

I just love this photo of my niece, Christy.  She's such a sweetie and hard to capture as she moves quickly as most two-year-olds do.  :)


If you feel inclined, please pray for our VBS this week.  That the kids that attend would really learn about Jesus and how much He loves them.  Hope you have a great week!

     

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Scavenger Hunt Sunday 04.08.12

Happy Easter!  He is Risen!  

This week's Scavenger Hunt items are sponsored by me!  So I had to be sure to play along.  :)  They are New, Life, Fragrant, Pink, and Obvious.

{new}

I love our new dishwasher.  Especially since we've never had one before.  I just press the start button before I go to bed and when I get up in the morning, the dishes are clean.  It's almost magical.  :)

{life}

Spring is such wonderful time of year.  All of nature comes to life again.

{fragrant}

The neighbor's lilac bushes are so fragrant when they start to bloom.  All you have to do is walk outside and you can smell them.  Achoo!  :)

{pink}

Nick's new favorite color is pink.  He even colored several of his eggs pink.

{obvious}

My friend, Laura, hosted an Easter party for her friends' kids at her house on Thursday, so we could avoid the crazies at the public egg hunt.  It was a great idea and lots of fun.  The girls that hid the eggs "hid" a few in some very obvious places.  Ironically the little kids didn't see these ones, which made Nick very happy.  Since he was the oldest, he was on clean-up duty and got to hunt after everyone else was done.  Even though he thought he was too old, he had a blast.


I wish you all a blessed Easter!  We will be celebrating with family today so I'll try to visit later in the evening or on Monday.


To see more great Scavenger Hunt finds and to find out what to hunt down this week, head over to Ashley's.  Have a great week!

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Week 13 in Pictures

I realize I'm a little late in posting these.  I've been either crazy busy the past few days ... or like today, sick and lazy and not wanting to do anything but lay on the couch.  I thought we had gotten past the yucky stomach bug that has been going around with only one casualty (Alex - a few weeks ago).  But around 5:30 I woke up and felt like someone punched me in the stomach.  I've pretty much had that feeling all day.  Ick.  So I've been trying all day to get this post together ... in between short naps and laying on the couch until the nausea passes.

Anyway, better late than never ... here are my photos from the past week ...

{Sunday}

We stopped at the boys' school to photograph the daffodils before the impending "killer frost" got to them, and while there I noticed how pretty the trees were.  So I photographed them also.

{Monday}

Bought Alex these cool shades.  He reminds me of Clint Eastwood with them on.  :)

{Tuesday}

As I shared in my last Wild & Wonderful Wednesday post, we had a butterfly emerge from his overwintering chrysalis this morning.  He was beautiful.  I managed to photograph the details in his wings while he was here.  Unfortunately his wings didn't form properly so after keeping him inside for a few days in our butterfly house, we put him outside to let nature take its course.  It was too hard to see him trying to fly and not able to.  :(

{Wednesday}

While grocery shopping I picked myself up a bouquet of flowers.  I took them outside along with my macro filters to see what I could come up with.  I really love the colors of these.

{Thursday}

I also bought a pot of tulips while grocery shopping.  They were so bright and cheery, they just called to me.  Hopefully I'll get them planted in the ground soon.  I started to weed one of our flower beds, but it needs much more TLC before I add these to it.

{Friday}

More progress on the kitchen.  The cabinet installer came to finish up a few things and tweak some other things.  He installed our hardware so now I get to fill up the cabinets!  Truthfully I'm a little nervous about organizing them because I'm not sure what to put where.  We've never had this much cabinet space before!  :)

{Saturday}

Our church's Youth Group had a pancake breakfast to help raise money for an upcoming missions trip the teens are going on.  Keira wanted to help even though she's not going on the trip, so since I had to be up early to take her, we went ahead and had breakfast.  I'm not used to eating that kind of stuff for breakfast, although it was tasty.  And it was a fun time of fellowship with other people from our church.


One last thing ... Gina and Sarah asked us to include our favorite photo from March in this post.  I know I already posted this for Click It Up a Notch, but this is definitely my favorite ... 

I love that we got to go see the zoo's Penguin Parade!  And I got this cool pic of a Gentoo Penguin.


So that was my week.  We are looking forward to the kids' Easter break this weekend.  And some gorgeous weather in the forecast.  Have a great week!

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