January, February, March, April, May, December

December follows May, correct? It's almost as if no time has passed since my last blog entry.

For all those claiming there are a few months in between May and December I'll give you the Cliff's Notes version of our latest happenings.

Firstly, kitchen frustrations caused me to throw a fit and boycott blogging until happier times....which are now upon us and lucky for everyone I remembered my account login! This is what our kitchen currently looks like.




So, needless to say, the kitchen is still not finished. These photos are from July and it still looks the exact same. It's been quite a frustrating process, however, we're very hopeful everything will be complete by the end of the month.

September rolled around and this little guy moved in to our living room roof, he was nice enough to bring his three closest friends.


Sacre Bleu! No, the dogs did not shrink and some how end up in an animal trap bolted to our ceiling. We had a family of squirrels invade our house, sadly this is the only guy who made it out alive. Two died outside the house....I guess they made it out alive briefly (hehe, so bad!) and the fourth one died, in the house, in the ceiling. And then a week later we had a maggot infestation. Lucky for you we did not take photos. We only drank a lot of this to help erase the disturbing images from our brains.


It worked! We don't remember a THING from that horrible evening!

So moving on to where we are right now. After squirrels and other gross things infested our house we decided it would make logical sense to completely renovate our living room. That makes sense, right?

Before:




Now:




I hope these pictures don't make you jealous. If you'd like to get your holiday card photos taken in front of our blasted out fireplace please stop by. You can even have Alfredo, Rocco, and the dead squirrel carcass pose with you, maybe add a few Santa hats?

All jokes aside our new carpenter is amazing and we consider ourselves very lucky he made time for our project. These aren't even the most recent photos but if I show you all of them right now I won't submit another blog post for 3-4 months.

Happy December the first!

May Days

Seeing as my last post was nearly two months ago I thought now would be a good time to update my 3 Followers (thanks followers!) on the progress of the kitchen renovation.

Photo #1 you can see our new little pantry, I really CAN'T WAIT to store our huge bags of dog food in the pantry. Yes, dog food storage is really number one on my list of reasons to be excited about the pantry.



Number two on my list of reasons to be excited about the pantry is WINE storage, but I'll save that for another post :)

The second photo is of more walls, and more old appliances. I know, we're all getting tired of seeing the old ugly stove and free standing sink. It will, however, make things more exciting once the new appliances arrive!



Under all the Tyvek cover isn't wood, or whatever is normally under Tyvek, it's tile flooring, ta daa!

You'll notice the ceiling and walls are painted...and yes, they are painted TWO different colors. For my 3 fans and stalkers out there you know how boring I can be when it comes to color selection. Do you honestly know anyone who has more grey sweaters than me? Didn't think so. The ceiling is white, and the walls are French Canvas, sounds lovely, no?



The cabinets should be arriving at the end of next week and the appliances are scheduled for delivery a few days later. Exciting things should be happening on the Kitchen-Aiding blog....at least if I take the time to write about them!

Happy Friday!

2 Months!

It's been two months since I last posted and we now have drywall! Who knew drywall could be so exciting? These aren't even the most recent photos, I figure I will save those for another post in 2 more months. There wasn't much going on between February and now. Photos of electrical thingeys aren't really blog worthy, maybe this is because I don't understand them...or maybe it's because it's really not exciting.

Enough chit-chat this is what you missed in the last two months....

Photo #1, you can see the frame of our new pantry. I'm most excited about our ginormous bags of dog food now having a home!



Photos #2, a wall. Not nearly as exciting as the pantry, but one day it will house our range and microwave.



Tony and I decided to take our stress to a whole new level and got this guy.



He is crazy and adorable, all at the same time.



Kitchen Renovation + Alfredo =

Before and Now

What was the dining room is now this...

Before:



Rocco simply loves dining in the dining room



Now:



What was the kitchen is now this beautiful mess...

Before:



Now:



And of course don't forget the lovely photo of the windows in the post below. I must say, I do not miss the green, orange, and brown kitchen one bit!

Temporary Kitchen which certainly rivals Julia Child's!

Anniversary

This week marks our four week kitchen renovation anniversary. Of course we did not remember this, frankly we're not that in to the kitchen right now. However, our disinterest did not stop by kitchen from getting us a gift.

New Windows....



Should we feel horrible for forgetting our 1 month renovation anniversary? We really haven't been spending a lot of time with the kitchen lately. I think we are more interested in pursuing a friendship right now, while it seems the kitchen is looking for a long-term relationship. Perhaps we'll remember our 2 month anniversary and get something really nice for the kitchen, like this...



or this...

Progress!

Our contractor, Adam, has been working on the kitchen a little over 2 weeks now and I must say we are quite happy with the progress he's made thus far. Removing the *classy* brown and orange cabinets took a bit longer than expected as the original homeowner (who we think installed everything) had an apparent bolt and nail obsession. He also seemed to have a wood obsession as nearly every room in our house has *custom* built-ins. I imagine our house looked a little something like this back in the 1970s....



Below are three recent photos of the kitchen. After ripping nearly everything out, we're left with MORE WOOD! Why does this keep happening?







And finally an image of what the final layout should look like.

Apples to Apples

With our kitchen renovations commencing this coming Monday, two days from now, I've been constantly thinking about how much more fun cooking and baking will be once the renovations are finished. I've been pouring over my cookbooks trying to find something worthy of being the first recipe I make in the new kitchen. As much as I love grilled cheese, pancakes, cookies, and pie they really aren't *new kitchen worthy* as I frequently made these in our old, ugly kitchen. No, this renovation calls for something really delicious and really special. I'm thinking Austrian....and apples....APPLE STRUDEL. And not the crappy imitation apple strudel recipes that use phyllo dough, oh no, this will be the real thing.



I've always wanted to make this, but have been quite intimidated by the recipe. I think it requires rolling out the dough to something crazy like 4 feet in diameter! Obviously I couldn't make it in our old kitchen which has one small section of counter-top, 3 feet by 2 feet, at least that has always been my excuse in the past. No, this recipe would have to wait for our brand-new, sparkly kitchen. And in true Austrian fashion we will eat it for dinner.