A little big girl...

I'm spending a few days up north loving on this little princess who is 6 months old today. What a joy it is to see what a big girl she is getting to be and sitting up by herself already.

In honor of her 1/2 year of life Grandma cut a birthday card in half and a birthday candle in half to celebrate with her. Of course at six months old Grandma helped her out and ate her cookie cupcake :)

tip toe...

through the tulips...






and a couple hellebores.

Kitchen tour part 2...

When I first started planning my kitchen a year ago I joined Pinterest and starting pinning away inspiration photos. Then when I hired Heida Woodworks of Raymond, MN to build my dream kitchen I showed Brad the above photos, the layout I wanted and said I hope you can make it work - as you will see the father-son combo of Brad & Brandon Heida made all my dreams come true.
Let's start the cupboard tour on the right lower drawers which are my plate storage drawers. I also have many divided utensil drawers but neglected to take a photo of them.
My trash & recycling bins are next...
Flanking the sink is a towel rack and...
a rack to hold cutting boards and cookie sheets.
Next to the dishwasher is my double decker silverware cubbies...
and both corners hold extra deep lazy susans.
The majority of my upper cabinets are glass fronted with a ridged glass (seeded glass was above my budget) - after all I've been collecting dishes for years I may as well view them daily.
Next up is my baking cupboard which is behind those 2 large doors coming down to the countertop...
Here I store and use my mixer and other small appliances including the microwave and all my baking staples. The doors open and slide back in like in a tv armoire.
Below the baking cupboard is a rack for all my baking pans.
Between the baking cupboard and the stove is a single glass cupboard filled with my collection of bowls and below is this neat recipe I found for a happy home.
The lower cupboard stores all my sauce and frying pans and measuring cups.
Flanking the stove are the neat drawers I pinned that look like 4 small but are actually 2 deeper ones.

The whole while I planned the kitchen I had glass mosaic tiles picked out for the area inside the stove hood surround. It wasn't until I actually purchased them and held them up in this area that I decided they were too modern looking for me and went with plan B which was painting the backsplash the same warm melted milk chocolate color that I used on the rest of the backsplashes. I then found a canvas I liked for $10 at Big Lots and sprayed it with 6 coats of spar varnish which is highly moisture resistant (they use it on boats). Any grease or stains that splash on this picture are easily washed off now.
The fan itself only takes up room to the top of the mantle shelf so above the mantle I have 3 more doors of storage. I look forward to changing out the decor on this mantle as much as I do the one above my actual fireplace.

The sides of the surround house my spices and flavorings and sprinkles for baking.

All my lower cupboards that I didn't take a photo of house pull outs...no more kneeling on the floor and reaching to the back of a shelf for me...it is my dream kitchen :)

What I love best about my kitchen is the warm, comfortable feeling it gives us. The mocha cork floors are so soft to stand on - they were purchased from Fragodt Floorcovering of Raymond, MN. I wanted warm cream for the cupboards and Heida's had the lacquer matched to the color "cashew" from Pratt & Lambert paints. I picked out a milk chocolate paint color for the backsplash to bring the browns out in the granite and requested the back of the display cabinet above the fridge to be stained choc brown as well. It was Brad's (Heida) idea to bring the brown stain up to the crown moulding instead of cream paint and what a great idea it was!

The tour is done...the remodeling is done...it's time to start cooking and posting on the kitchen blog and get out the camera and bring the birds and flowers back to this blog!

mosaic Monday...kitchen before and afters

We've been enjoying the fully finished kitchen for a few weeks now and I have to say even though it was a LONG 3 months and we had a few bumps in the process the finished kitchen is worth the wait.


Here a few closeups of some of my favorite things and in my next post I'll show you the neat things behind some of those cupboard doors...

mosaic Monday...Easter weekend

We had a wonderful weekend celebrating Easter with family and it started Saturday am when Brooklyn and Mari visited the Easter bunny.
In the afternoon Ashley & Mari came over and we had all-star baby wrestling matches which were very entertaining to watch!
Later in the day we had an easter egg hunt with Alexis, Ashley, Ketcie & Keena and it was cool and windy but still lots of fun.
I love having family over and Saturday evening was so much fun with my brother and his whole family. Brooklyn enjoyed spending time with all her cousins, including the 3rd baby in the photo, Kinley. In the lower right is Benjamin with Brooklyn - he was outnumbered by girls for the evening but a great helper with the babies.
My precious family - Nathan & Tammy (expecting baby Bailey) and Jayme, Scott & Brooklyn.

spring blossoms...

March was one for the record books here in MN with many days of warm shirt sleeve weather instead of snowboots and parkas. Yesterday was one of those beautiful days so I took advantage of it and worked in the gardens. Spotting my first tiny tulips of the year was a highlight so I grabbed the camera to document early spring in the garden.


Not only was this past month one for the record books in terms of temperatures it was also the earliest the pond was thawed and the fish put back in which usually happens in late April to early May. In addition, having to mow the lawn in March was a first in our 31 years of home ownership! I took a look back to my 2011 photos to compare garden shots and was greeted with sights of snow piles and ice...I sure am enjoying this spring.