7th Birthday Fun - Part I

Well, I guess it's true! My sweet baby girl is turning *7* today!!! I still can barely believe it. Time really does go by waaaaaay too fast!

So we started the big day with our usual celebratory fare: birthday pancakes!

Then LO was able to open her gifts from Mommy, Daddy and her brothers. She was pretty excited about it and I couldn't imagine making her wait all day to open them (more for my own sanity than anything else... LOL!).

First up... one of the My Little Pony books she's been pining for!

I think she was happy. ;)

Another new My Little Pony book! Terrible pic, but she was pretty ecstatic to see this one, too!

New pj's!

Oh... she's pretty happy to see what's in this next box!

A dress with a pony?! SCORE!!! :)

A new framed pic for her horse-themed bedroom! I took this photo when she and I went to visit my friend and her horse. She was so excited to help care for the horses! I took this one of her and Beau when she took him out to graze, then matted and framed it to match her room! I can't wait to see this one up on her wall!

This last gift was tricky! I wrote a note on it that said to open it ONLY IF she loves to read. Of course, she does and of course, she opened it...

It's her new Kindle Paperwhite! I gotta admit, I was pretty stoked to see a ridiculous deal on these things when I logged into Amazon a few months ago (yes, months). I'm a fan of all things Apple, so adding a non-Apple electronic to the family was a pretty big deal for us, but it was such an amazing deal, I would've been crazy to pass on it. I still don't know how to use the thing, but I was able to get several books she's been wanting to read on it for her to get started with, so I guess that's a pretty big win. And I have no doubt she can show me how it all works by the end of the day. ;)

There's much more to come for our birthday weekend o' fun! A movie, dinner at her fave restaurant and a party at the water park are all on the schedule! It will be super great!

I love this girl bunches and I can't wait to celebrate HER all weekend long!!!

What a Journey... SEVEN Years!

Happy 7th Birthday to my sweet girl! What a crazy journey this motherhood thing has turned out to be! My sweet LO is everything I could have ever hoped for in a daughter -- and then some! I love her SO SO SO SO much and am so grateful God chose me to be her mommy!

My Sweet LO Finally Arrived - July 25, 2007 @ 11:48 PM!

One!

Two!

Three!

Four!

Five!

Six!

I cannot wait to see what her big 7th birthday weekend brings us! I just love this girl bunches!!!

Catch Up

Just a few things to get caught up on during this busy summer...

We bought a play set for the kiddos. They LOVE it. I love tossing them outside to play without having to provide 37 toys/games/instructions on how to entertain themselves. Win!



We've got two more big projects coming up for our backyard and I'm totally stoked about both. More details to come soon!

After almost six weeks for a "10 day" repair on our Sienna, we were finally able to get it back! I was SO happy to have my family complete once more!



I'm still so totally in love with my new china cabinet. In fact, I'm looking forward to my mom returning from a trip to my grandparents' home in PA because she's bringing some of their old furniture back and I've got dibs on refinishing some of it! Woot!!!



We've spent a lot of time at the library this summer. The kids love the computer games and of course LO loves the books. I let her get her very own library card last week!



After scheduling appointments months ago, both kids had a dentist appointment yesterday. LO has been a few times ready; it would be Chase's first time (share your #momfail lectures for later... 😉 as much as that boy of mine has been through, I haven't wanted to force anything else on him!). So with Chase, he has to have an antibiotic one hour before any procedure, even just a cleaning, so getting that taken care of was a feat in and of itself. LO's appt. was at 10:45 and Chase's was at 11:15. He would watch her do it and then have his turn to be brave! I gave him his pre-med at 10:15, had been talking up this visit for weeks, and left at 10:30. ON OUR WAY THERE, at 10:40, the dentist office left me a message that they couldn't see Chase today because the dentist was home with a migraine. OMG. And they were trying to reach me "before I gave Chase his pre-med." Really. I was so bummed because I felt like we really lost the momentum of having Chase take his turn and he ended up not impressed with the dentist and isn't looking forward to coming back next week. It's gonna be a fight, y'all. I'm so disappointed. He did sit back in the chair (to watch the tv on the ceiling), but it took a LOT of begging. Not looking forward to next week...



Today's a big day! LO and I leave for her first-ever SUMMER CAMP! It's with our church, for kids who have completed 1st & 2nd grades, and is only through Saturday. She's really excited because she'll get to ride a horse! There will be lots of other fun to be had as well. Can't wait to share updates!

All THREE of my kids picked out new Crocs for the summer. The strap on LO's old pair broke, and Chase had been wearing to same pair for about 2-3 years now I think. After tripping and falling and busting up his right knee twice in 2 days, I figured he'd outgrown his Crocs and needed a new pair as well. And E loves his too! They're much easier to put on than his sandals and surprisingly stay on really well too! So cute!!!






Guess I'd better start laundry and packing for camp! It's gonna be a LONG few days, but I can't wait!

Everything in it's Place!

I wanted to share some pics of my newly transformed china cabinet now that I've moved all of my china in! I apologize for the poor photos, but the battery on my dSLR needs charged and I'm just lazy that way. So here are a bunch of photos from my ol' iPhone!

I'm really really really happy with how this turned out! I couldn't believe I had so many boxes of china stored in our spare closet! Now that I've had a chance to go through it and store it all in the cabinet, it will be so much easier to grab (and wash) a few settings whenever I need to, making an ordinary dinner extra special in a matter of minutes! I'm so excited!

An Exciting Transformation

So... I haven't been posting much here on the blog lately, but it's been for a good reason! I've been spending lots of time over the past month working on a new addition... to our dining room!

Check it out!!

I am SO excited about this transformation! It was a LOT LOT LOT of work, but it was SO worth it!!!

For those who may be interested in the details, here we go!

I found this amazing china cabinet back in January 2014 on a local Facebook buy/sell/trade group for $100 -- what a steal! I immediately contacted the seller and told her I was interested, and luckily, I was the first and it was mine! We made arrangements to pick it up from the seller, who turned out to be the nicest young woman ever, and before I knew it, hubs and I, with the help of our brother-in-law and a $50 U-Haul rental, acquired this beauty and settled it nicely in our garage. We had it smooshed up against the wall so we could still park both of our vehicles in there, and waited for the weather to warm up (oh, and Chase's heart surgery out of the way) so I could get started.

Finally, on June 9th, I decided I was ready to tackle this beast. It would be my very FIRST attempt at transforming/refinishing furniture EVER, so I spent a lot of time researching how to go about it. I had ultimately decided that I would just paint it (rather than strip and stain it) because I wasn't too concerned about keeping the wood grain look and figured it would still match our dining room table just fine with the paint instead of stain.

Here's one last look at the "1982-ish" BEFORE pic:

So here we are ready to get started! I removed the doors and drawers and prepared to tape everything off.

After everything was taped, I decided to start by priming the doors.

This was the spray primer I used on the doors. I was disappointed because it took two light coats over all of the surfaces and seemed like it took forever since I had to dry one side before moving on to the other side, then repeat, etc. I wasn't a fan.

Here's how the doors looked after two coats. Kind of a pain and taking waaaaay more time that I expected.

Once the doors were primed, I wanted to try the spray paint I had selected to see if it would match our dining room table.

This.Spray.Paint.Was.HORRIBLE. I couldn't believe how terrible it went on over the primed doors. And I knew there was NO WAY I would EVER waste this much time to cover the doors, much less the rest of the entire china cabinet! Seriously. I was so surprised how awful this was. I had read SO many blogs with tutorials on spray painting furniture and they made it look so easy! To say I was disappointed was an understatement. :(

So the spray paint idea didn't seem like it was going to pan out for me. So I figured I'd need to buy a gallon of primer and a gallon of paint and roll/brush it on instead. I really wanted the china cabinet to match our dining room table, so I removed the leaf from the table and hauled it to Lowe's to have them color match it for me. Oh, this is the table, btw. The color is called "Almost Black" and actually looks a lot more "brown" here than ours does.

So after hauling the center table leaf and only 1 of my 3 babies with me to Lowe's, it turns out they didn't have a paint that could hold enough "color" to darken it to the necessary shade for my paint. Boo. So off to Home Depot we went, hoping for a better outcome!

Home Depot saves the day! They were able to color match the leaf and provide me with a gallon of tinted paint as well as a gallon of tinted primer (just a dark gray instead of white). Hurray!!

Here's how things looked after the primer was applied:

I was hoping to leave the back panel on because it had like 8,203 nails around the perimeter and across the two shelves, but it was just impossible to attempt to paint the inside of the cabinet. It had to go!

I rolled the primer on the entire china cabinet, drawer fronts and cabinet doors. Then it was time to roll on my paint! That was the point that this project really took a turn in a really wonderful direction!

Isn't it looking lovely?

It was really coming along nicely, but I was really concerned about the original legs (feet?) on the china cabinet. First of all, I didn't like the look. I wanted something that would match the more contemporary look of our dining table. Secondly, it seemed like they would snap in a heartbeat! Even with the little bit we had moved it, I was just really worried with the lack of support the original ones had. See?

So we went ahead and switched them out for these babies, which I love SO much!

Once the painting was complete, I applied 2 (maybe 3?) thin coats of Polycrylic protective finish over the entire china cabinet, doors, and drawer fronts. I let it sit for a day or two to cure.

On July 2, about 3 1/2 weeks after I started this project, we were finally able to move it inside into our dining room to complete the finishing touches! Yay!!

I reused the original hinges (cleaned and painted them to match), so we added those along with the cabinet hardware and then put on the doors and added the drawers!

I am SO SO SO in love with this new addition to our family! It looks so perfect in our dining room and I think it matches our table perfectly! I love the hardware, too! So gorge!

Here's a picture of our new china cabinet all settled into her new spot in the dining room! Sorry about the glare from the light...

Here's another shot... LOVE!

Here's a close-up of the new hardware!

I'm just so happy with this transformation! Oh, please ignore the reflection of the screaming baby in this pic. ;)

I wish I would've maintained a better record of the total cost for this project, but here's my best guess:

China Cabinet - $100
U-Haul Rental - $50
Primer (gallon) - $20
Paint (gallon) - $30
Polycrylic (quart) - $18
Drawer Hardware - $15
Door Hardware - $25
Miscellaneous tools, supplies, etc.: $25 

GRAND TOTAL... Approximately $283!

For comparison purposes, I found a new china cabinet online that I liked for about $1,600, so that's sort of a savings of over $1,300! Totally worth it! Plus, now it has some sentimental value to me since I worked so hard on it for so many hours, and because it gave me something to focus my energy on while dealing with a few of life difficulties during that time.

Now to bust out the BOXES of china that hubs and I each inherited from our parents and put this bad boy to use! I'm just so stinkin' happy with how this turned out. It was a LOT LOT LOT of work -- literally hours in the hot garage while the kids played out front and rode bikes and poor E was stuck in a jumperoo next to me -- but I'm so glad it's done and honestly, it looks better than I ever could have imagined!

YAY!!!

Now to refinish our bedroom furniture and possibly our living room tables... Woot! :))