Days 229-232: Over the Weekend & Through the Woods...

Took this picture of my littles tonight.  It will adorn our new bathroom wall among a few others...

I miss my kitchen.  I miss it so much.  I miss cooking.  I miss having a counter--I'm tired of chopping or preparing food items at a kitchen table or worse--the coffee table in the living room!  Washing dishes in the tiny bathroom sink is also getting old.  I know I sound awful.  I'm about to get a brand new kitchen!  I'm grateful for that, I really am.  But the day-to-day with my two darlings is grueling.  Lunch is always a sandwich.  And I mean, a sandwich where you don't have to cook the meat.  I could get creative and use the grill more for lunch items, but everything takes so much longer because all of my kitchen utensils and ingredients are in different places.  Plus, given the choice between spending extra time making a meal and using that time to get something done in the house sounds like a no-brainer.  I just want this home to feel complete.  I know some people say, "Oh, it'll never feel finished."  As true as that may be for some things, I do have a list and it will get done.  For instance, the kids' bedroom is DONE.  I don't feel the need to do another thing in there.  I'm not saying that nothing else will ever go up on the walls or that I'll never replace the shades, but for now--for the foreseeable future, it feels complete.  I want that sense of accomplishment in all my rooms.  Then I'll be able to breathe easy.  The bathroom and our bedroom are almost there.  But those 2 rooms are occupied by extra kitchen stuff at the moment, too.  It feels like an awful lot is hanging on the kitchen coming to completion.  Over the weekend (including Friday) the tile floor in our apartment really came together.  It's almost done!  There are just a few tiles that are waiting on the plumbing work before they can go down, and about 1/2 of the floor still needs some grout.  And that's it!  The nights that Randy and I stay up until midnight tiling together are ones to remember.  Through the frustration I'm also trying to cherish these moments that I know I'll look back on and smile one day.  The floor has taken about 3 weekends to get done (we're talking--everything got ripped up and a new sub-floor went down complete with ply wood and cement boards before the tiling could start) and we are just about through the woods with it!  So this week it's my job to paint the cabinets.  You see, these phrases all sound so easy when you just say them, but let me explain that "paint the cabinets" means I have to prime them, sand them, and then paint them--and carefully.  Cabinets are not the easiest items in the world to paint.  I'm hopeful that this weekend the big, empty room in my house will start to look like a kitchen again!  (My hopes aren't too high, though--gotta leave room for the little unknowns that take forever to deal with!)

For meals over the weekend, we did order out or just have sandwiches quite a bit.  But on Sunday night (Day 231) I made my caprese burgers, only without the avocado that's in the linked recipe.  Tonight we ordered a calzone since we only had a short time to eat with Randy's work schedule as it was.  I look forward to hopping back on the grill tomorrow night for grilled steak fajitas!

We started our second week of home-school preschool today.  Of course, Abby was so excited.  This week we're going to focus on some basic skills like tracing, drawing straight lines, numbers, and using scissors.  I have 2 fun crafts planned and some fun number activities.  I'll keep you posted and list my resources at the end of the week.  Fridays are our "field trip" days and at this point, they don't all have to be educational.  I think we all know that play and exploration are wonderful forms of learning!  Last Friday we went to the beach where Abby collected a whole bunch of shells and pretty rocks.  This Friday we plan to go to "open gym" at her gymnastics center.  The library is also a regular stop for us during the week.

I'm trying to get back to managing my social media, as well.  I have a catering site on facebook and I would like to launch my new website soon.  I honestly thought it would be done by now but I had no idea how consuming this renovation would be!  Please check out my catering facebook page!  I just posted a recipe for Blueberry Banana Cinnamon Bread.  It's amazing!  Something to do with those freshly picked blueberries...  Enjoy!

https://www.facebook.com/CookieCrumbleCatering