Well, spring finally arrived. For a minute anyway. As the snow melts, we were treated to a few days of high temps and bright sun. Gray and rainy for the weekend, but hopefully the warm weather will stay.

We've had a few meetings with the contractor and kitchen designer, and OH my head is swimming. We've gone from putting in new cabinets to gutting the whole thing to the studs. The most attractive option is of course the messiest and most expensive. Next week we'll see the drawings the kitchen designer has come up with and go from there. He called me this morning and said, what if we rip out that chimney that butts into the room and fill the back wall with windows?? I immediately called the contractor and said, "I'M SCARED."

A few shots of the kids playing outside this week. In the photo of Anthony, that is the back of the house there. The kitchen designer is proposing adding windows all across the back. How beautiful it would be... facing west and looking out across our yard. Sigh....

It's Still Winter

Dear Winter,

I hate you. Leave me alone.

Sincerely,

Amanda.

So, yeah. We had a blizzard this weekend. A foot of snow, 40 mph winds. My camera was in West Virginia so I can't show how beautiful it really was, but now it's melting and flooding and slushy and pretty much horrendous and if spring doesn't come soon I may never recover. Oh, and we all have the flu. HAHA! We are awash in melting snow and snot.

We're looking forward to this weekend, Kelly and Gab and Maria are coming in for a visit. And the weather is supposed to be nice, so hopefully we can shake this flu bullsh!t and have a good time. Tony has been chanting "In like a lion, out like a lamb" in this crazed voice for the past few days. Thank god for the BE tournament....

Happy Birthday

In honor of the much-anticipated arrival of Miss Kyra Antoinette Shafer, and because I know that new parents really need all the help they can get, I'm posting these helpful Baby Do's and Dont's. Kevin, you might want to print these out and keep them handy.

Congratulations, Christa and Kevin, we're so proud and excited! Can't wait to meet our new little cousin.

Ice Storm

In which we try to get off our sleepy butts.

Yargh. As I may have mentioned, this time of year IS SO NOT FUN. We had tornados (IT'S A TWISTER!) one week, catastrophic snow storms the next week. Global climate change has jacked us UP. That, combined with the usual seasonal affective boredom disorder, has meant we have really not made much headway in our ongoing debacle. HAH! I MEAN REMODEL.

So Saturday morning Tony got all motivated and started stripping wallpaper (again. sob.) in the dining room. Taking off layers two and three, which shall hence be known as The Blue and The Pink. It's crazy, The Blue was hanging on to the plaster for dear life in the hall and Parlor, but in the dining room it just kind of chips off. Underneath it is The Pink, which has been coming up pretty easily as well. So we each put in 45 minutes to an hour of stripping and called it a day.

I have an appointment with the fabulous Contractor Guy on Thursday to assess the pit of despair that we call a kitchen. He has done awesome work at my sister's house and apparently enjoys the challenges of old homes. AND HELLO, HE IS FROM WEST VIRGINIA. So, obviously we love him to death already. I intend to offer to pay him in pepperoni rolls and I'll let you know how that goes over.

In other news, the short and loud half of our family continue to entertain us daily. Anthony is starting to talk a lot... real words even! He started with the obvious: "lunch." And "car," "juice," and "that." He uttered his first BIG long compound word last week, and it should come as no surprise to anyone that it was "meatball." Followed a few days later by "basketball." Or, actually it might be "baseball." Whichever. Rosie has been painting and doing "crafts" at every opportunity and is getting good at writing her name. One entire wall in our kitchen is filled with her construction paper paintings, and she kindly pointed out that now we don't need wallpaper, we can just user her ART instead. Which is actually not the worst idea I've ever heard....

On to the pictures. As always, click to enlarge.

Here is Tony stripping The Blue and revealing The Pink. Which, actually, in these pictures it looks like The Brown, because it's wet. It's got the cutest pattern of white Queen Anne's Lace on it. I would totally buy that wallpaper.




Art class. For future reference, if you lick that glitter glue there, it WILL make your diaper contents sparkly.



Jumping off of furniture turns out to be a good way for The Short And The Loud to combat the dreaded winter cabin fever. I haven't tried it yet myself. But I'm close...

Moving Along...

This is always the longest time of the year... the stretch after the holidays are over until the weather gets nice is just dullsville. After a short break, we're back on track with our renovations.

On Sunday Tony and I stripped the top layer of wallpaper in the dining room. It took less than an hour, and we made an interesting discovery: apparently there was at one time a door leading from the dining room into the room behind it, which is now the master bedroom. We suspected there used to be a door between the two rooms, because of some awkward seams in the baseboards, and it turns out we were right! We think the master bedroom may have once been the kitchen, but we really aren't sure. The doorway was closed with drywall, at the same time the vomitous green wallpaper went up. We're guessing that was late sixties, maybe early seventies. Before 1978, is all we can say for sure. We also found that under the green, and under the blue wallpaper, was an adorable light pink wallpaper with airy white Queen Anne's Lace blooms all over. A pink dining room, could you get cuter than that? I wish I had the nerve!

Last week we also met with a kitchen planner to get an initial estimate on new cabinets. Color me excited! I am more than ready to say farewell to the 1980s horror show of cheap tacky cheapness that is our current kitchen. Our initial plans include quartersawn oak cabinets, light counters, and switching the sink from the wall to under the window. I think it's safe to say that everything in that plan is subject to change! All I can guarantee is there will be nothing beige, nothing rustic, no earth tones. Just clean, classic and new. We expect to hear back from him by the middle of this week.

Picture time! Click any image to enlarge. Let's start with a "before" shot of the dining room, taken from the entrance hall facing in to the left. That small door is a closet.



A mere 45 minutes later, and goodbye green wallpaper! The white patch is the primed drywall where the door used to be.



Tony wanted to make sure I got a picture of him during the work, so we can look back years from now and admire how youthful we once were, and how dark our hair used to be. So I snapped this quick one. Please note ghostly orb above the drywall patch. Hopefully whoever that is approves of the work we are doing.



The pink wallpaper, hidden underneath the gross green and blue layers.



One final announcement: Anthony has joined the Lollipop Guild and would like to welcome you all to Munchkin Land.

Where did the time go?