Kitchen renovations COMPLETE!!

We are finally done with the kitchen! We have done several things over the last few months trying to make it more functional for us. We have bought a new stove, re stained the grout, put in extra cabinets, painted, and finally put in granite counter tops! Our counter tops went in yesterday and we spent all day today getting it all back together. It was a great chance to clean out cupboards and put down new shelf liner. Below you'll see on the left the "before" pictures and on the right the "after" pictures. We were in desperate need of storage space and I am SO happy to have my limited counter space available for working, rather than storage! I do have to give a disclaimer...the picture on the left with our stove in it was doctored up a bit, Derek's mom and I were trying to get us on an HGTV show and tried to make it look as cramped as possible...needless to say it didn't work. I forgot to take a more updated, cleaner looking picture before we ripped out the counters!

Cake Class

Class this week worked with fondant....here is our creation! If anyone would like to purchase this cake I will only charge a million dollars...it took FOREVER :)

Our little Dancin' Queen

Taylor has been quite the dancing queen lately so we thought we'd share a video! Daddy and I put some music on this afternoon and have been enjoying the show...hope you do too!

Kimel Wedding!

Last night Taylor got to attend her first wedding! Our friends Geoff and Danielle were married in a beautiful outdoor ceremony! Of course our "chatty" child could not sit still so Taylor and I had to watch from afar! She had a BLAST at the reception. We couldn't keep her in her seat. She found other little ones to chase after and spent a lot of time dancing! Thanks to cousin Bea for letting Taylor borrow your dress, it worked out perfect! And of course CONGRATS to Geoff and Danielle, we wish you lots of happiness!

Snack at the Park

Our weather has been awesome the last few days...which means under 90 degrees! We have a little park/grassy area in our neighborhood so I decided we should finally take advantage of it! We have walked down there the last couple of days after Taylor woke up from her afternoon nap. We took a snack with us, a blanket and some toys..which I found out quickly were not necessary, she just wanted to walk and walk and walk! It has worked out to be right around the end of school when we go, she has loved watching the buses go by and watching the kids walking home from school!

More Home Improvements!

We are still in the middle of home improvements, although we are getting closer to the finish! This weekend Derek and his dad installed our new cabinets. We were in desperate need of additional cabinet space, it was so bad we only had 2 drawers in our kitchen...yes 2! I don't know how we have made it all this time! Derek also painted, we went with a lighter brown for most of the walls and a darker red for an accent wall. Thanks soo much to my good friend Jena who suggested the red color we used, we love it and think it is perfect! We had the cabinets custom made and are so impressed with how close they are to our original cabinets!

This is the only before picture I could find...as you can see we needed some storage and something done with that wall!

Here is the during...for those who like to see progression...

And the cabinets fully installed!

We can't wait to go and pick out granite this week and hopefully have the counter tops and the tops of the cabinets all done within the next couple of weeks! Thanks so much Bob for coming to help Derek, you guys did a GREAT job!

Cake Decorating Session 2

Last night was the final class in my second session of cake decorating. This session we only had to make one cake, which was on the final night of class (the last session we had to decorate a whole cake each class). We worked most of the time on practicing basket weave and then putting it on the cake! What a time consuming process, so if you order a cake and it costs a little extra for basket weave...I know why! The final session I am taking starts next week, so I should have more pictures soon!