Julian Michael's is kicking my B***

I am SO sore! Monday I started Julian Michael's 30 day Shred and let me tell you..........it's tough! BUT it's awesome! The reasons I Love it:
1. 3 mins of strength, 2 mins of Cardio and 1 min of Abs. So when you are getting tired of jumping jacks or butt kicks you are about to stop and go on to something else and you just have to push yourself for 2 mins....how hard is that?? Even a person with NO motivation can do this! Come on it's 2 mins!
2. The entire workout is done in 30 mins!
3. I feel AWESOME when it's done
4. Even though I am SO SORE I am still looking forward to my workout each morning! (That has NEVER happened to me before!)
5. Lastly.....Everything I have read about it says that people who do it everyday loose weight usually about 20 pounds in 30 days! I can do anything for 30 mins a day for 30 days!

I totally recommend everyone doing this workout! Even better...If you have Comcast On Demand workout 1 and 2 are free right now, so you have NO excuse not to atleast try it!!

Good Luck! Look forward to pics in the next few weeks!

Random

I know it's been like a month since I posted but we have been EXTREMELY busy around here! We started the kitchen remodel and it's still going on. Graham knocked out half the wall between the living room and kitchen and started the dry wall and cleanup of the wall (still not done). Last week I painted the walls LIME GREEN, and LOVE LOVE LOVE it! I was VERY nervous about it at first but I am so glad I stayed strong and went with the crazy color, it looks really good. Last night I started sanding and painting the cabinets. WHAT A JOB! It really sucks, luckily I don't have ALOT of cabinets. My plan is to get them all painted by Friday. Actually I WILL get them painted by Friday because I just started and it's a complete mess! Mess+ 2 little girlies= trouble! Graham went last week to the countertop place to order the color we agreed on and it came up to like $200 more than we thought because of the finish on them. I told him to wait and let me look at some more because I wasn't INLOVE with them enough to spend that much money on them. After alot of looking and arguing with him we have picked another color, so I am calling to order them today. It should just take a week to get them back. SO MAYBE, just maybe we will be down with the in 2 weeks (after the countertops get in Graham has to finish the dry wall, he can't finish it till the bar piece comes in ). Did I mention we have something planned for every weekend from this past weekend till sometime in OCTOBER! Seriously! AND Graham has 2 classes instead of 1 for the next 8 weeks, which is taking MOST of his time! I keep thinking if we can just get to Nov we will be fine but then it will be Thanksgiving, and Christmas! AHH! Oh yeah, Graham has planned a get-away for me and him for our anniversary in October too! He won't tell me where he is taking me but says its really pretty and I will love it!

Addie has climbed out of her bed 2 times now SO I am on the hunt for a new "big girl" bed for her. I figure since we are changing that we should just go ahead and redo her room, as if I don't have enough projects going on........by the way, I started sewing again last week :). Anyways, Dottie has given her and antique chest so I have totally scratched the idea of hot pink walls, zebra prints, black furniture etc and I am going for a sophisticated "pretty" little girls room. My friend Heather showed me what her friend was redoing her little girl's room in (does that make sense?) and I LOVE IT! Since I don't really know her friend I figure it's okay to copy, hehe. Here is a picture of the bedding........

isn't it BEAUTIFUL?? I love it BUT I don't love the price....for everything we "need" it would be about $800! Seriously?? Who pays that much money for a little girls bedding??? I showed it to my mom and she said we could do it. So I am just going to order a few things and we are going to make the quilt ourselves, I love having a crafty mom! Currently, Addie's room is painted pink and green stripes so I am just going to paint over the pink stripes with white. It will take awhile but I am going to slowly buy her and antique chest, nightstand, and vanity, which will grow with her through her teenage years. For now we are just going to get a white toddler bed but eventually she will get an antique big bed. I think it will be very cute.....just don't know when I will get around to starting it :)

King of Pop

As everyone in the world knows The King of Pop has passed away today :( Michael Jackson was a BIG part of my life when I was little. I listened to his music all the time! I loved it all from the old stuff back in the Jackson Five days to his most recent. MJ was such a GREAT entertainer in every aspect of the word! I know he turned alittle weird the older he got but if you look as his childhood you can't help but be inspired by him. He overcame so much abuse to become one of the few names that will live on forever. So to Michael, your music and legacy will live on forever and to his family and all those who loved him, my prayers are with you!

Share your favorite MJ song!

Mine is :

Man in the mirror

My Perfect Job

Since Addie was born Graham has given me the best gift he could ever give me, he works very hard so that I can be a stay-at-home mommie. I could NEVEr Ever tell him how much this means to me.

Let me back up, growing up I didn't play house, I played business. My dream from a small age was to have a business, work as a CEO or something along that line. I know, BIG dreams, lol. As I got older and started studying business in college my dreams changed. I wanted to graduate college, move to New York City and world with the Stock Exchange. After taking a few international finance classes I decided that I wanted to work with money exchanges. I graduated with my Bachelor's of Finance and got married. I started looking for my perfect job, nine months into our marriage, Graham and I found out we were pregnant. Now, I am not going to lie, I was alittle upset at the very first. I had always wanted to have a career, be successful, and have my own money before kids. I really thought I didn't want kids till I was 30ish. God had a different plan! Isn't it funny how we make all these plans and the God throws us a curve ball as if to say, "haha, your not in control, I AM!" Instead of continuing the search for a perfect job and having to leave as soon as I got it, I put that on hold. Eight months later we were blessed to welcome Addison Nell Hines into the world!

When Addie was born I quit my job because I knew IF Graham made me go back to work I was going to do something in my field of study. When my 6 weeks were up I had a break down and told him I didn't want to go to work, I wanted to stay at home with my angel. I remember him laughing and saying, "honey if that is what you want, that's fine. We will be fine! We may not be able to take grand vacations, buy a big house, but I'm willing to put that all on hold if you want to stay home." See Graham thought I wanted to go to work, he had no idea I wanted to stay at home! Silly Graham, what mother doesn't want to stay at home??

So that began the journey of my "Perfect Job". I had NO idea that being a house-wife and stay-at-home mom would be my dream job, but it is, and it is what God intended all along! Even though my bonuses are smiles, hugs and kisses Money could never compare! I love walking into Addie's room every morning and seeing her hair all crazy, jumping around in her crib, then seeing me and holding her arms out. BY FAR the best part of my day!

Over the past 16 months I have become EXTREMELY domestic. I cook dinner and have it on the table every evening at 5:30 on the dot! I make a meat and one veggie side. I bake CONSTANTLY and really don't understand why Graham and I are loosing weight instead of gaining??lol. I clean everyday all day, I am constantly picking up toys, and loose snacks Addie and Ellie throw on the floor. I steam mop my floors in the kitchen and living room ATLEAST 2 times a day and I vaccum my rug in the living room ATLEAST 3 times a day! I do laundry on Mondays and usually Thursday or Friday. But all this cleaning and baking is not all I do...............I attend and sometimes host Tea Parties, picnics, I play dress up and take pictures, I watch Barney and play outside. Sometimes we get a blanket and lay in the yard and read books, this is something my mom did with me and I LOVE doing it with my little girl! I change LOTS of diapers, Lately we have been running to the potty constantly too! I give baths, I sing silly songs, we dance and we make tents under the kitchen table! Don't get me wrong all this play is very tiring and when Addie takes a nap........I have to clean up!

I love my life and hope it lasts forever! Thank you to my most AMAZING husband for giving me this opportunity! I LOVE YOU!

Hump-Day Treats!

Wednesdays are usually the day I bake some YUMMY treats. So I'm going to start sharing them with you through Hump-Day Treats! I messed up alittle this week because my bananas were getting old and I baked yesterday. I made some YUMMY Banana Bread, here is the recipe:

2 cups of all purpose flour

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter

3/4 cup brown sugar

2 eggs, beaten

2 1/2 cups smashed bananas

*When I bake, I take a recipe and change it till it's the way I like it. I have worked on this banana bread for several months and finally got it Perfect!*

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a large bowl- mix flour, baking soda, and salt and set aside

In a medium bowl- cream the brown sugar and butter with a mixer, then STIR in eggs and bananas

Stir banana mix into the flour mix and blend well.

*I use a wooden spoon so there are chunks of bananas, if you want it smoother use a mixer*

Bake in a greased pan for about an hour. Check it at 45 mins it may be done.

Let it cool in pan for about 10 minutes, then put it on a wire rack to finish cooling!

Cut and enjoy!

Addie and Ellie LOVE this bread! I usually make two batches and use one batch for muffins! You can also freeze these for a later use!

Kitchen.........again :)

So I have TOTALLY changed the whole Kitchen Remodel!


The other night Graham said if you want to change the color of the kitchen this is the time to do it. That thought hadn't even crossed my mind! WOOOHOOO I thought! See a year or so ago Heather had an idea of a________kitchen and didn't do it, but I thought it was ADORABLE! So after getting her permission I have been working overtime to get all the colors, countertops, hardware, sink, etc to go together. Even though Graham isn't LOVING the new color scheme (which I just don't care anymore :), Addie and I are going to Home Depot to pick new countertops and paint colors and hardware. I know, most of you don't care but this is my life right now so it's what I am going to post about :)





I have come up with an AWESOME decorating idea for this room, here is alittle hint:

Randomness

So this is how hard it is to get Addie to look at the Camera!

And we Gave up after that one :)

After a week of arguing about the kitchen remodel, colors of the roof (I'll tell you more later), and just normal, "why can't you pick up your clothes from the floor (me to Graham)" , " Do you not know where the dish washer is?? (me to graham, AGAIN)" , and " I've had a LOOONNNGG day YOU put Addie to bed (me to Graham)", Graham set up a date for us on Friday night. I REALLY needed it! We started off having dinner at Red Lobster. It was so nice to be able to have a glass of wine, and just talk with my sweetie, without having to entertain Addie! I love her to death, but she is NOT GOOD at restaurants :) After dinner, Graham ran into a few stores with me to give his opinion on some dresses I have picked out for Sam and Nikki's wedding on the beach in September (Graham's brother). We ended the night with a movie, my pick! Ofcourse I picked:
It was GREAT!

Last week sometime Graham put safety things on the cabinets and Addie helped him! She was so proud of herself!

I know this post was all over the place! Sorry! Have a Great TUESDAY!!!

I love my husband BUT......He is CRAZY

You know how couple get divorces when they build a house together........................well Graham and I may get a divorce just trying to MINIMALLY redo the kitchen! HE IS HORRIBLE TO WORK WITH!

Here is how our evening went.......

Graham calls and says lets run out to Lowe's and get a REAL estimate on the cost of the counter tops, paint, hardware, lighting, range hood, and sink. Although I was in the middle of getting estimates on a new roof, getting Ellie home, taking Addie from my mom's house (we went swimming and she took a nap there) to Dottie's house and running down to the church to meet the fence guy (we are putting in a fence to keep the little kids in one place) I managed to get it all done, jump in the shower and be ready to go when he got home (I had about half an hour!). We get to Lowe's, find the sample of counter tops we want and proceed to find someone to help us with the estimate. After pressing the call button and waiting AWHILE a guy comes up and says that the counter top guys leave at 6 and won't be back till 10 a.m. tomorrow. Now if you know Graham you know he is pretty quiet, and generally a nice guy to everyone.........well not tonight, he got mad, proceeded to tell the guy that it was STUPID for the store to be opened till 9 and not have anyone there to help. He said that he works all day so that he can afford counter tops and he couldn't be back at 10 in the morning. He then turned around and walked away while saying VERY LOUDLY, " I will NEVER buy anything from Lowe's again!" Needless to say, I was Embarrassed.

We went over to Home Depot, found the same counter tops and sat down with the guy to get some prices. Everything went smoothly until we walked over to look at sinks and facets. I just want a basic white sink, after seeing prices of the nice pretty granite sinks Graham agreed to the one I picked. He then walked to the facets, oh my! We had talked before and decided to use the same facet we have because it is really nice and was new when we bought the house. Apparently he didn't remember this. So he tells me to pick one, I say IF we are going to spend money to buy a new one when ours is FINE then this is what I want.................it was like $250. If I am buying a new one, then I am getting a nice black one to go with every other accent in our kitchen. We stand in the isle at Home Depot and fight for 15 minutes about buying a facet or not! AHHHHH!

After a few minutes I walk over to the range hoods, bad idea. I find a NICE one on sale and say what about this? He says there must be something wrong with it since it is on sale like that......OKAY then FIND ONE! We argue YET AGAIN about what looks good and what doesn't. Somehow we end up by the microwaves that vents in them....the ones that go over the stove. Well, the range hood that HE likes is like $198 and a decent microwave vent thing is $220. WHY IN THE WORLD WOULDN'T YOU JUST BUY THE MICROWAVE?????? I'll tell you, because GRAHAM doesn't like microwaves over the stove, and GRAHAM is the MOST important person in this house, and you know it matters to him so much because he is the one that has NO counter space while cooking and it would be so nice to get our current microwave off the counter! Double ARRHHHHH!!

To sum up the whole evening, I am so upset with my CRAZY husband that I am about to go to bed, and I very well could lock the door. We said two words to each other since we have left Home Depot and I'm sure my blood pressure is through the roof! I can NOT imagine building a house with this man, we would NEVER EVER EVER make it! Thanks for listening and letting me vent! I love Graham very much but my goodness some things need to be left to me to decide!

Oh Yeah we changed our counter top color/texture to this color. It has a texture to it! It is alot prettier!

New kitchen!

Wow, we are in the middle of picking things out for our kitchen.................and it seems to be escalating into a whole house remodel! Now Graham wants to tackle the backyard too!

Kitchen:
Our cabinets are in really good shape but just ugly stained cabinets. It makes the room look dark so we are starting by painting them white and adding new hardware! You can imagine the white paint but here are the handles that I LOVE!!

Next off we are going to replace our counter tops. After ALOT of compromising with my wonderful husband (who has too much of an opinion about decorating, I assure you he isn't gay just likes things to look nice,lol) we agreed on these counter tops :

It's called Rustic Slate. Since all our appliances are new (we got when we moved in) and are black, and the cabinets will be white we thought it would look GREAT to have dark counter tops. If you know anything about my house I have used black as an accent color in almost every room. I'm not a dark person I just LOVE black! These counter tops will have alot of colors in them so the next owner will have alot of colors to choose from for the walls.

The other BIG project is to knock out half the wall between our living room and kitchen and make a bar. Our living room and kitchen are two pretty big rooms, so knocking this out will make it seem that much bigger and make it flow better. We are SO excited about this!

So our plan is to go order the counter tops tomorrow night and get started on knocking the wall down, then paint! Hopefully in the next 2 weeks we will have a new kitchen!!

FINALLY!

FINALLY Graham has given me the okay to paint our kitchen cabinets! And POSSIBLY go ahead and tear down half the wall between our kitchen and living room!
I wanted to do this when we bought the house but after painting every blame wall, ceiling and door (which we still have 3 doors not painted ;)) we were burnt out on painting. I also, at that time, thought I HAD to paint the inside too..........well I've seen some cabinets not painted inside and it looks fine!
We are on a tight budget, as everyone is. We both agree that we can go without all the extras so that I can stay at home with Addie. Not that we really go without alot, Graham does a GREAT job of giving me and Addie everything we need and most the stuff we want. When we do have extra money we would rather go on a cool trip than do things to our house..........we will probably always be that way. Have a nice house, but have some AWESOME memories from the cool trips we get to take. We have always prided ourselves in everything we do we do ourselves. We didn't have help from our parents when we bought our house, they didn't pay for paint, cabinets (bathroom) or any remodeling items (not that they didn't try, lol). We really like sitting in our home and knowing that it is all ours, we paid and did everything in it. I am very proud of us for this!
Anyways, this is all we want to do in the kitchen:
1. paint cabinets
2. replace all hardware
3. new counter tops
4. new sink
5. knock out half the wall between kitchen and living rooms and put in a bar (I.E. more counter tops)
6. new lighting in that space
7. new bar stools
8. decorative railing for the top of cabinets
9. range hood (it's the only thing that hasn't been replaced in our kitchen, appliance wise)
10. lighting for the top of cabinets.

It really wouldn't be all that expensive to just do it all at once but I'm NOT going into debt to redo a kitchen when we probably will move with-in the next 3-4 years. So I think we are going to start with painting the cabinets, changing the hardware, and taking the top of our cabinets off and making a shelf, which we will do lighting up there too! Then in a couple of months we will do the rest! I am so excited, this is the last thing INSIDE the house we need to do (it will help with resale value too!).
The outside will cost us like $10,000! So we really will have to wait on that, if we even decided to do it????? Here is that list:

1. Knock a door out of the laundry room (there is no exterior door to the back yard, weird huh??)
2. Buy a door for that
3. Poor concrete on the gravel part beside the side of the house (where our camper stays)
4. Carry that concrete around to make a patio OR
build a deck.
5. Put up a fence (Graham only wants to put up a privacy fence?????)
6. landscaping
7. Furniture
8. MOST IMPORTANTLY---get a HOT TUB!!! (Yeah this will NEVER happen, Graham will never go for that!)

Like I said, $10,000 atleast! Even with us doing most of the work! So that will have to wait, we don't normally keep that much money laying around,lol. Actually if we did, we would be taking a trip to Alaska, Italy or SOMEWHERE!
My plan is to let Addie spend the day and night with mom on a Friday night. Thursday I will take everything out of the cabinets, and sand. Then Friday, while Graham is gone, I will get most the painting done ( i could do it alot faster without him telling me how to do things). Then Saturday we will finish up! I'm hoping it goes that fast! Ellie will be gone on vacation the last week of June so I'm shooting for that weekend! I am so excited!! Pics soon!!