Updated Kitchen Cabinets...OH MY!!!

Wowza!  Refinishing kitchen cabinets is not always easy, but, man, is it worth it?  Yes, it is!  

Our kitchen wasn't in bad condition, I just wasn't a fan of the color of our cabinets.  I had thrown around the idea of staining them darker, but after binge watching Fixer Upper, I knew I wanted white and gray.  

My sweet husband took our munchkin to an air show in Ranger, Texas, that weekend so my awesome Sister and I could get as much done as possible without the help of Bray.  Here's a cute pic of them at the air show.

Like I said, my Sister is awesome and came to help.  She spent the night with me Friday, and we spent most of the day Saturday painting.

After scouring Pinterest, I decided i needed to try General Finishes Milk Paint.  I used Snow White for the upper cabinets and Driftwood for the lowers.

Prep was fairly easy.  I filled in the holes from the previous hardware.  We then cleaned them, sanded with a palm sander where the hardware had been to make it smooth, quickly ran over the whole door with the sander so the paint would stick better, then used a deglosser to wipe them down once more before painting.

The Snow White took five coats to really cover evenly.  The Driftwood only took two coats.  I finished it off with three coats of General Finishes Top Coat in Flat.  I'm wanting to refinish more cabinets in the house, and I may go with the darker colors simply because of it needing fewer coats.  I did not paint the insides of the doors because this paint is expensive, and I didn't want to buy more than I had too.  I used one quart of each color for the whole kitchen.

I finished the cabinets by replacing the outdated contact paper with wood grain contact paper.  The hardware that I used was purchased from Amazon.  I got knobs, bin pulls, and hinges all in Satin Nickel.  

After Nick got home, we decided that the Clary Sage walls were too much with the Driftwood cabinets.  The green looked great with the old color, but the Driftwood looked too blue next to the green.  So, I had some Megagriege left over from painting the living room.  I busted that out and did a quick coat.  It looks so much better now!

It's been holding up well so far.  I'll update if it starts to chip.

Housewarming Party, Engagement Party, and New Kitties...Oh MY!!!

On September 25th, Brayden & I headed to New Boston to spend the night.  We were throwing a housewarming party for my sister the next day.  Bray spent the night with Bibi & Harpo while I helped my Sister get the house cleaned and ready.  We had a smorgasbord of yummy food for the guests.  My sister made those adorable edible buttons.  We had some great hostesses to help us.  And I drew the sign-in canvas.  I drew the house from Up, and then people used ink to put their thumb-prints for the balloons.  They put their initial next to their thumb.  I loved the way it turned out!  She had a lot of people visit to see all the hard work she has put in.  It was a great party!

That evening, Joe & Melanie watched Bray for us while we went to an engagement party for these two lovebirds.  Kassidy is our youth minister and his sweet bride-to-be is CheyAnne.  Kassidy has become like a little brother since I've started working at the church.  I'm so excited for these two and can't wait for their wedding!

So, we got new kitties.  A few weeks back, we got a white cat from the Gilberts and named her Aslan (from The Chronicles of Narnia).  Well, she didn't last a night at our house.  We ended up taking her back to their house thinking she was just too small to be away from family.  Bill had found out about a littler of cats that a lady was wanting to get rid of.  We wanted two, so I got these little ones.  I have to admit, I've wanted to name a cat "Aslan" forever, so I wasn't about to pass that up again.  So, the Siamese got the name Aslan, and the black and white is named Crookshanks (from Harry Potter).  Aslan lasted a week with us, and we've not seen her since.  Crookshanks seems to like us and is sticking around.  The Gilberts still have Aslan #1, so we may go try and catch her so Crookshanks has some company.  Brayden loves Crookshanks!  And she's so good with him.  She lets him man handle her, and he can't get enough of her!

Just being silly.

End of September & Houston Trip...Oh MY!

So, mid September we were blessed with some beautiful weather.  Too bad it's super hot again. Come on weather!  Quit being bipolar.  It's October 14th and the high today is 98!  But, we took advantage of the pretty weather whilst it lasted.

We were silly and ate cookies when Momma wasn't looking.

ETMC had a Health Fair at our Church one Friday.  Brayden got to enjoy seeing the helicopter land right next to the Lighthouse.  He was super excited about it.

We were lucky enough to get to go visit our friends, Jess & Larry, in Houston towards the end of September.  We had an absolute blast!  We didn't get there till super late on Friday, but we made the most of our weekend.

We woke up Saturday morning and Larry got us all collates from the Kolache Factory.  It was delicious!  We went to the Houston Zoo on Saturday.  We got a blessing while standing in line.  A lady walked up to me after we'd been in line for about 15 minutes.  She said, "Excuse me, how many people do you have in your group?"  I told her, "Four and a baby."  She said, "Here have these!"  She handed me four park passes.  She must have purchased the season tickets and had guest passes that expired that day.  We were so excited and blessed by her!  We had lunch there, got to pet goats, and had lots of fun looking at all the different animals.  Brayden was well taken care of with all four of our attention on him, and he crashed as we walked out of the park.

After the zoo, we headed to Camping World to go dream about campers we would all one day own. The sales man asked Nick and I if he could talk numbers with us.  We said we were just dreaming, and his response was, "I make dreams happen."  Nick said, "Not today."  I don't think they would have taken an even trade for our pop-up for that Jayco Seneca we liked.  Ha!

After Camping World, we went shopping at the outlet mall close to Jess & Larry's house.  Our kid LOVES the Disney store, but I wouldn't expect anything less.  There was lots of "DUST!!" going on (translation: Dusty from Planes).  We shopped till we dropped then headed for sushi!  Nick & Larry went to get us Blue Bell, and we vegged out the house the rest of the evening.

Sunday morning, we all went to church.  Then we left from church to head straight to the Houston Astros game.  Let me tell you...game changer.  I never want to go to another baseball game without an air conditioned stadium!  It was heaven at 1:00pm!  Brayden LOVED the train that moved every time the Astros scored a run.  I felt sorry for Jess because he kept bouncing around in her lap.

Love our sweet friends!

AND, the most exciting thing happened while we were there.  Nick & I went to the concession stand to get lunch.  Brayden stayed behind with Jess & Larry.  As we were climbing the stairs, I did a double take.  I said, "That was Josh Lovelace!"  For those of you who don't know, Josh Lovelace plays piano for needtobreathe, my favorite band.  As we stood in line, I checked needtobreathe's tour schedule to see where they were that night.  They happened to be playing at the House of Blues in Houston.  I told Nick, "That was him!  Would it be weird for me to ask for a picture with him?!"  So, needless to say, I got a picture with him.  I walked up and said, "Excuse me, but are you Josh Lovelace?"  He responded (after swallowing the pretzel he was eating), "Yes, I am!" I said, "Oh, I knew it was you!  Y'all are my favorite band!  Would you mind taking a picture with me?"  He obliged most kindly.  I was rude and forgot to ask Nick if he wanted a picture, so we went back later for a family pic.  We had other Astros fans in the stand stop us and ask who he was.  Amazingly, none of them have heard of needtobreathe.  I do believe they've been living under a rock!  He was so kind and even talked with me on Instagram.  I had such a fan girl moment.  I think he thought it was cool too because I'm guessing not a lot of people recognize him without the rest of the band there.  He's not a front man.  The rest of the guys were staying at the hotel next to the stadium (I shamelessly asked), and they didn't join him.

After the game, Nick & Larry went to see where Larry worked while Jess, Brayden, & I headed to the restaurant to get ready for dinner.  We ate at Saltgrass, and it was scrumptious!

It was so weird to see coolers full of Blue Bell.  We brought two half gallons home with us.  We demolished the first one with in a week.  We're trying to make the last one last until this precious commodity is back in East Texas.

We headed back home on Monday morning.  The weekend was amazingly fun.  We can't wait to do it again!