Anything of interest beyond pictures and the occasional blurb is locked to everybody but Friends. Apparently some people don't have lives of their own to worry about, and insist on digging through mine.

Comment to be added!

Just wanted to post and saaaaaaay:

Happy Birthday victoriais1337! I don't have any cool chocobo cakes to post, but hopefully your own birfday post will suffice! :D

Happy Anniversary to us! :)

I can't believe that it's been a year already.

I remember, I remember
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon
Nor bought too long a day;
But now, I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away.

I remember, I remember
The roses, red and white,
The violets, and the lily-cups-
Those flowers made of light!
The lilacs where the robin built,
And where my brother set
The laburnum on his birthday, -
The tree is living yet!

I remember, I remember
Where I was used to swing,
And throught the air must rush as fresh
To swallows on the wing;
My spirit flew in feathers then
That is so heavy now,
And summer pools could hardly cool
The fever on my brow.

I remember, I remember
The fir frees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now 'tis little joy
To know I'm farther off from Heaven
Than when I was a boy.

--Thomas Hood

After finishing the Twilight series in its entirety, I can now officially say that it fucking sucks. Not just sucks in the way that Warheads suck. Or the way Dick Cheney sucks. Or getting your tongue frozen to a flagpole sucks.

No.

No, my friends. We've reached an entirely new level of suck. I feel horribly ashamed that I read them at all.

More progress has been made on the kitchen even since these pictures were taken. I'm a little behind in updating them. Maybe I'll get around to posting the new ones tonight.

In the meantime, you'll have to settle for Sloppy Facebook Seconds.

I don't think that I remembered to post this here, so I'll go ahead and catch you all up to speed.

Anybody who's ever been inside my house can attest to the fact that the kitchen and bathroom are the worst parts of it. The hardwood floors are charming, the brick exterior is pretty slick looking, the gardens admittedly need a lot of work, but they'll be great come spring...but the kitchen was absolutely hideous.

When Nick and I first moved into the place, the cabinets smelled so vile. I think that between the four people that worked on scrubbing the damn things, we probably had 30+ hours just in cabinet disinfecting. On top of that, the nasty 1970's pearl pink, baby puke green, and old fingernail yellow backsplash was eye-gouging. The linoleum was peeling. Somebody had let the sink leak for so long that it had rotted out a portion of the subfloor.

Long story short: it needed to be remodeled.

We started working on it about three weeks ago. Maybe four. Jason's dad and stepmom have been absolutely crucial to this project, as they've pretty much done and/or shown us how to do everything. Jason knows how to do most of this stuff already, but I'm absolutely clueless.

The wall separating the kitchen from the living room no longer exists. It was the first thing to go. We plan on putting a breakfast bar in its place, to turn that wasted dining room space into something that can actually be used for dining. On top of that, it opens up the whole house and makes it look a lot bigger.

We also knocked out a hall closet and absorbed that extra four feet into the kitchen. It doesn't sound like much, but it's going to make a big difference. We may get a small prep cart/island thing and stick it in the center, but I'm not sure how Jase feels about it yet. I'll have to talk to him.

And of course, I come bearing pictures of the transformation! It's not done yet, and the red paint looks terrible in these last ones, but I just finished putting on a second coat, and it looks a lot more even already.



Before. Not a great picture in terms of detail, but you can see the points I talked about.





We start ripping out stuff!






...and putting it back together.



The room is mudded and primed.








The ceramic tile goes down.



We painted the room a pretty bold color. Now that it has 2 1/2 coats on it, it doesn't look so streaky.



Grouting was a bitch....



...but the result is so worth the work!

I'm really excited to get the cabinets in. We can't really do that until the countertops are finished being made, but I'm really growing weary of having no way to cook food at all. If I have to eat Imo's one more time, I think I'm going to puke.

Halfway there!

I finally found our wedding picture DVD. Turns out it was in my desk drawer, neatly filed with other things of importance.

No wonder I couldn't find it.