Radvent Day 2: Organizing

A continuation of Princess Lasertron's Radvent Blogging Extravaganza!

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Focus on one drawer, table, or surface today and spend 15 minutes making it pretty! (And take a pretty picture afterward to motivate yourself!)

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 Well, isn't this just perfect timing.  My husband and I are just wrapping up our massive kitchen remodeling project.  We just have details remaining: trim, touching up the paint, and installing the backsplash.  The fallout of this project has overtaken the entire rest of the house however.  So I have been managing to take time out here and there to organize minor areas of the house.  Boxes are being unpacked as we move back into our new kitchen.  Tools are being moved to more permanent homes.  And I recently revamped two of my closets and am in the process of collecting items for a large donation to charity (the truck comes Tuesday!).  Soooo... I had a hard time coming up with a "small" area to organize for this project.  The Princess organized her medicine cabinet and when I got home from work I realized that mine was also struggling.

Last week I had my wisdom teeth pulled.  It was not a fun experience and I was out of commission for 5 days straight.  My bathroom turned into a big mess of medications and scattered "sick" items...  gauze squares, crazy syringes, etc.  See for yourself.



Yeah... there are all my prescriptions on the shelf.  Along with an assortment of jewelry that I have a habit of taking off and leaving there instead of putting it away in my awesome jewelry chest.  *sigh*  Lots of empty boxes and medications on the top shelf.  Including immodium, heh.

Ten minutes later...



Much better.  Stashed away items that don't get as much use.  Threw away the empty boxes.  Put away the jewelry and hairbobs.

And on the shelf...



The dish I got from a maker of blown glass in Canada on a trip with my husband.  Containing: a variety of shells and stones from our honeymoon in Antigua, a safety pin because you never know and some broken turquoise earrings that I've been meaning to give my mom so she can craft them into a new piece of jewelry.

Also...



The only perfume I currently wear, Iris by L'Occitane, a gift from the husband's trip to Paris.  The Paris gift box from our trip to Las Vegas (ha!).  And a pretty, fragrant candle.  Hmmm... looks like I should have spent a little more time and dusted as well.  Next time!

Kitchen remodel

The long-awaited kitchen remodel is actually going to happen!!!

It has been in the planning stages for awhile, but we recently have made some actual decisions. *gasp* AND, over the weekend, signed a contract. *double gasp* Our demolition day has been set for August 25th!!!! I'm am unbelievably excited about this. I can't wait for nice new cabinets, pretty stainless appliances, an oven that doesn't leak heat everywhere and a non-portable dishwasher!!! Do you know what a portable dishwasher is? I didn't either until I moved into this house. It means that the dishwasher is not hooked up to a water line. So, anytime we want to run the dishwasher, we wheel it out of its cubby across the floor to the sink, hook up a hose to our faucet and run it. All while this enormous beast of a dishwasher sits in the middle of our floor. It's fun. If you like moving enormous, squeaky, heavy beasts across your floor multiple times a week. :) Can't wait for that thing to go.

We have a plan in place for decor. It took us a long time to come to these conclusions, but I am satisfied with them. The one disappointment I have is that we decided to go with the lighter stain on the cabinets. I LOVED the dark wood, but after much debate, we decided that was not the ideal choice for this particular kitchen. Mostly because we both loved the dark granite. Dark cabinet, dark granite, dark tiny kitchen... not really a good thing. So we went light. With stainless appliances. And a glass tile backsplash. With dark granite. And medium gray/green-toned ceramic tile.

Without further ado...

Our granite, Uba Tuba


Our cabinets, light honey


The closest representation of our glass tile backsplash that I could find


And, the flooring


All of which I think will look pretty sharp with our stainless appliances, including our new french door refrigerator! :)


I can't wait! We still need to decide on cabinet hardware and paint. We've narrowed our choices a bit... I'm leaning towards something in the orange family, but there really won't be much wall space at all, mostly just down the hallway.

Am I looking forward to the chaos and destruction that I have to survive to make it to my new kitchen? Absolutely not. But I've lived in dorms. And even a basement. It will be rough, but it will be worth it.