In front of the Paramount Theater in downtown Denver. We don’t go to concerts often, but when we can take our kids, all the better!
Last August “Weird” Al Yankovic came in concert in Denver. We got tickets for the whole family! This tour was announced in 2014 not long after Weird Al’s Mandatory Fun album was released, and our boys absolutely loved the songs and music videos. More »
In the Unlikely Event by Judy Blume
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Judy Blume digs deeps into her past, citing the horrible 1950s aviation tragedies that struck Elizabeth, NJ, one after another. Blume takes us into the hearts and minds of several residents of Elizabeth, including children who were impacted by seeing the crashes and wreckage, as well as stories of several victims themselves.
If you are familiar with her other adult novels, such as Summer Sisters and Smart Women, you will find the style familiar. As always, her ability to capture the thoughts and emotions of pre-teen and teen girls is second-to-none.
The reason I didn’t give this book five stars is that there were simply too many characters to keep track of. Like Smart Women, each chapter changes the point of view of the characters, but there were nearly 20 characters to track (some of whom perished in the aircraft crashes during the story) and I was constantly flipping back and forth to remind myself who was who, and who was related to whom?
I don’t know what I was thinking by reading the last third of this book on a flight between Denver and Baltimore, but that’s exactly what I did. Despite the numerous characters to track, the story will grip you and you won’t want to put the book down.
We are done!
Today the contractor finished grouting the backsplash tile, and with the exception of some very tiny touch ups and sealing the grout, our kitchen is officially REMODELED!
Before:
This was how the kitchen looked when we were first viewing the house in May 2013.
Photo: KRDO
This is a photo of some houses who had suffered some erosion damage from recent rains in Colorado Springs.
But Dave and I like the blue part of the color scheme on the right-most house. I’m putting the picture here for a Pinterest pin. That is all.
Move along, there’s nothing to see here….
Can you see the difference? The vibrant wood grain should be the biggest difference you see, but we also nudged the color a little bit to make it more brown…less yellow/orange in color.
On Thursday and Friday, we had a contractor come in to sand and re-stain our hardwood floors. Jeff from “A Cut Above Hardwood Flooring” was recommended to us by our carpet cleaning guy.
This piece of floor is continuous from the front door to the kitchen, and to access the front door, garage, basement, and staircase, you will step on the hardwood. I’ll discuss how we dealt with that in a minute.
As mentioned before, there were some areas to the floor that had clearly suffered water damage, but had subsequently dried out. The wood was structurally sound, but the sealer and stain color were messed up. It was important to me that those areas get extra attention, and Jeff did that very well. More »
So here we are again — time for the next installment of where we are with the kitchen transformation.
As you can see, we have a *very* white kitchen now. I absolutely love my “new” cabinets, and am excited for the next stages of our project. Those stages aren’t DIY, though.
Next up will be the floor refinishing. I’ll make sure to post before and after pictures when that project is done this weekend. The floor is in desperate need of sanding and refinishing, so we will take advantage of that work to darken the color some. I hope it turns out as well as I’m envisioning. More »
Today Dave painted our chairs. Before on the left, after on the right. I think they’re lovely!
Our renovation continues, with just some little things. Unfortunately, our hardwood floor refinish was bumped from tomorrow to the end of this week, but that’s okay. We have a flexible week and it’ll work out.
Note the bar chairs at the island. We are painting them so they don’t stand out from the new brown and white colors.
A well-framed photo of the doors and drawers in place. There is still one drawer face missing just outside this view, and I just barely cut if off.
Today Dave put the doors back in their places in the kitchen, and also installed the new hardware. I am incredibly happy with how it turned out. More »
I LOVE THEM!!!
Tonight we started putting the doors back up. I’m so incredibly happy with how much brighter our kitchen looks now!
We also added some hardware, which we picked up at Ikea. They complement our appliance doors. Hopefully they help keep dirty hands off the new white cabinetry. More »
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