Spring is Here!

Pretty much, anyway.

On Monday I showed you the flowers that bloomed for me on Mother’s Day: 

I thought I’d take a few more pictures and show you what spring looks like for us right now:

My lupins are growing like crazy

And my rhubarb is too (it’s already about 4 inches taller than that – it’s growing a few inches a day J).

And spring in our house wouldn’t be complete without nerf guns everywhere. The kids have ‘battles’ with each other and the kids next door. Mr. E has to be REALLY careful when he cuts the grass, so he doesn’t chew up any bullets. Thankfully they’re orange J

It’s tough living in a cold climate – my tulips are almost ready and they’ve been blooming in other parts of Canada for weeks now. My Mom has already had rhubarb desserts, but mine won’t be ready for another three weeks, at least. It looks like a few of my plants didn’t survive the winter, and it was a mild one. L

And . . .

The weather channel is calling for snow tonight – yup, snow. Planting anything outside before the May long weekend is definitely tempting fate here.

It takes so long for spring to arrive here, and fall shows up way too fast.

I may have to visit the garden centre on Monday though, just to pick up a few new plants to try out. I have some plans for our front entrance – I’ll keep you posted on how it turns out.

Have a great long weekend!

Cheers! Kim

Meals and Planning – an Update

Meal planning is such an amazing time saving concept – but it’s tough to execute when you feel stretched and overly busy.

And, you need a usable kitchen to cook in J

Our kitchen update is ongoing, and taking longer than I thought, so the kitchen has been a mess and pretty much unusable. 

I’ve fixed that by moving the cupboard doors to the garage where I’ll continue to paint them. (more details about the project that here). So, we now have our counter space and table back.

Anyway, back to bad meal planning . . .

I haven’t done it in weeks. I talked about how I fell off the planning wagon back in March, and I really haven’t done it since. I do plan on changing that – maybe next week J

The plan of having a new meal every night just isn’t going to happen – not with a full time job and a full time commute and being a full time mom and full time wife and sometimes DIY’er. So, I’m going to have to be more flexible.

We have frozen pizzas in the house now, and frozen meatballs for spaghetti night.

And that’s okay.

Cheers! Kim

Mother's Day

We had an absolutely beautiful Mother’s Day. The weather was glorious – not a cloud in the sky, but it got a bit breezy later in the day. We set up the patio furniture and enjoyed a glass of wine on the deck, in style. J

Mother Nature gave me these for Mother’s Day:

Both my daffodils and prairie crocuses bloomed for the first time on Sunday – the perfect bouquet.

And the boys gave me lots of nail polish. They picked the colour that they wanted me to wear to work on Monday:

I know it’s a day late, but Happy Mother’s Day to everyone.

Cheers! Kim

One Year Ago . . .

Photo by Eric Daigle Photography - he is amazing

I became Mrs. E.

Happy anniversary sweetheart. I love you.

Kitchen Update - part 2

Wow, this is a HUGE project (here’s how it started, last week).

This is how part 1 ended:

 

And to be completely honest, it doesn’t look a lot different, even though I’ve put a ton of work into it.

The paint I’m using needs 16 hours of drying time between coats (Benjamin Moore Advance) – so that’s one coat a day. I paint light coats, so the cabinets need four coats (yup, 4). The oak grain is quite deep, so the fourth coat finally covered all the grain enough that I was happy with it.

So – that’s four days for one side of the cabinets. Then I have to turn them over and spend four days painting the other side.

I spent every night last week painting – the stove and countertops make a good work surface:

At least the dishes can go back in the wall cabinets. The four coats are done on those.

So, at the end of a very long week, here’s what I have:

No doors on any cabinets, which shows me exactly how unorganized my bottom cabinets are L Here are the bottom cabinet doors waiting to be sanded and filled and primed.

I’m moving them into the garage tonight to start that.

Oh well, ‘they’ say it always looks worse before it looks better, right?

As I mentioned last week, please wish me luck because I think I’m going to need it.

Cheers! Kim

Kitchen Update - Part 1

As I mentioned here, I decided that updating the kitchen would be my big project for the year. The kitchen is fully functional and a decent size, but I don’t like the oak cabinets and dark tile backsplash. The entire kitchen seems dark and dated. I’d love a bright white space to cook and bake and entertain in – because truly, this is where everyone ends up.

That was back in January – and until this past weekend, I hadn’t done anything else about it. What an overwhelming project – painting the cabinets, new tile, granite countertops – where to begin?

I bought paint:

And started. I’d procrastinated enough.

Here’s what the kitchen looked like when I started:

I took the molding off the top, and washed the tops of the cabinets. Yuck. This took a lot longer than I thought it would. But seriously, who ever looks at the top of their cabinets? Magic Eraser to the rescue – they took all the grime off (I’m blaming all the grease on Mr. E and his love of bacon J)

While I was up there, I decided to paint the wall behind the cabinets – might as well, since I was already standing on the counter. I used the same colour I painted my wall stencil with.

After that, it went pretty quickly – the doors came off, and I taped the walls and white parts of the cabinets.

The first brush of primer meant there was no turning back!

I primed the cabinets and called it a night – it was after 5, and I was tired. Proud, but tired.

So here’s where we ended up at the end of the day:

My plan for this week is to finish the cabinets and the doors, so the upper cabinets are done – so we can put the dishes away and actually eat at the kitchen table.

I’ll keep you posted, but wish me luck – I think I might need it. J

Cheers! Kim

A Time for Reflection

I’m back.

The past month or so has been a time for me to stop and think – re-prioritize my life and make sure I’m doing the things I want to do, and not doing the things I don’t want to do. I wish that was easy to do, but it’s not.

But, my life is getting back on track. It was seriously out of balance.

I can not do it all – and I thought I could.

My personal life suffered, and that’s not acceptable. Which is why I took some time to re-prioritize.

There are still some big decisions to be made, and some hurdles I have to overcome, but I do feel that my family is my focus again. Nothing should have changed that, but sometimes, trying to be Superwoman turns out to be impossible.

And that’s okay – I don’t have to save the world. Not every day anyway J

Cheers! Kim