The Dreaded Kitchen Wallpaper

We made a LOT of progress on some house projects this weekend!  And we made some plans for a few house projects during the coming weekends. One project that has just been hanging over our heads for the past year or so is the wallpaper in the kitchen... We'd pulled the top layer off a few weeks ago, but the baselayer (the layer with the glue that attaches to the wall) was very stubbornly attached, so I decided to tackle that this weekend. I got a squirt bottle and put some hot water and some fabric softener (Snuggle! My favorite) and sprayed that on a small section of the baselayer, and then I started scraping! It was coming up pretty darn well! The wall beneath the wallpaper had been previously painted (like you're supposed to do before you apply wallpaper!), which helped a LOT. The Master Bathroom had not been primed or painted underneath, so the wallpaper had been applied directly to the drywall boards, so that was a MOTHER to try remove. I'm so glad the kitchen was easier. It still took me like 4 or 5 hours, but the walls beneath the wallpaper looks great! I don't think McGee will have to do much patching at all - just a few small areas that had some weird holes from old shelving or something. Here are some before and afters!

This was when we first moved in... with the old chandelier and the old fridge. But that wallpaper was not our favorite. It had lots of gardening stuff on it, and herbs in the border. Oh and you'll notice that they even wallpapered all around the fridge!! It went all the way behind it. 

Another look at the old wallpaper. 

And here's the walls now! They will be ready soon for me to prime and then paint! 

And here's that pesky wall behind the fridge! I had to move the fridge out (it's heavy!)  and scrape all that wallpaper off... It was SUCH a pain. 

And there was a border above the cabinets too! So that's down now.... 

And here's another look at the Master Bathroom when we first moved in: 

That's a pink toilet, by the way. And my goodness that wallpaper gave me a headache. 

And here it is after removing the wallpaper, repairing the walls, priming, and painting the ceiling (white) and the walls (a green-ish color), and installing a new light!  Oh and we have a white toilet now, because the pink was just not good. We're keeping the old medicine cabinet because it's ENORMOUS, and it's actually in good shape (I just still need to clean it up a bit). And we're using the original vanity too, but I still need to clean that up a bit too... and we're going to replace the faucet (it's currently a gold and silver combo... ). 

We're still not finished with the master bathroom, but we're getting really close! We still have to put up most of the trim, outlet covers, and replace the faucet and towel bars (they're all gold). We love the light we picked, and it looks really pretty when the light is on (it's like a frosted glass), but the pictures were not turning out at all so all my photos have the light off. 

Oh and McGee took super cute pictures of Guinness from Friday evening when we were hanging out in our screened patio after work! Guinness was having fun running around while McGee and I were chatting and enjoying a celebratory cocktail, but then I guess he got tired because he decided to lay down underneath the table!

All you could see when you were standing up was his little paws and nose... 

But then if you got low you could see his cute little face!  I love this picture. 

He just melts my heart, he's so darn cute! 

Master Bathroom Progress... and some Flowers

Well, last weekend was semi-productive!  Our productivity was interrupted on Sunday by the fact that McGee got super sick! Poor guy was sick most of Sunday, and he still isn't feeling 100%. He ended up having to take a few days off this week, which NEVER happens... But luckily he's feeling a lot better now, and hopefully it'll be completely out of his system soon!

One thing that we did accomplish this last weekend is painting the Master Bathroom! McGee did a great job of fixing that one wall that was being super stubborn, and then we primed it, and then I painted! I really like the color a lot, and I'm excited to see it once we get the lighting, etc back in there. I tried to take a few pictures, but the lighting was weird during the time of day that I took the pics... so I don't know how well you can see the color! It's called Pleasant Valley by Benjamin Moore if you want to look it up online.

It's kind of a grayish-blueish-greenish color... But it pretty much just looks gray in this picture. Haha 

And while I was in our Master Bathroom (which currently feels really chaotic), I took a picture of our tree outside the window because it has some beautiful blossoms on it right now! I think my friend Lindsey had said this was a Dogwood tree?  I think I'm remembering that right... 

Pretty blossoms! 

And speaking of pretty Spring-ness, I took a few pics of our Azalea bush right outside our front door! It somehow survived this winter (it was completely buried in snow), and it's looking beautiful! 

I don't know how well you can see it, but almost right in the middle of the pic is a big bumblebee... It was tough getting a good picture of it without moving close to it (and I didn't want to scare it!). 

We don't really have any big plans for this weekend, but I think McGee's going to try to work some of his magic on the Master Bathroom to finish it up. We still need to do some caulking, put the wood trim back up, put the toilet back, install the mirror and the light, and I think that's it! Whew! It's a lot of steps left, but I think the worst steps are behind us. And I'm going to try to work on taking down the wallpaper in the kitchen... We got the top layer off, but we still need to remove the base layer.  And I think we'll have plenty of time for relaxing this weekend too. Oh, and watching the season premier of Game of Thrones of course!! AHHH!!!  I'm so excited for the new season to start. I hope you all have a great weekend!! 

Spring... or not.

Well... this last weekend Winter decided to visit us AGAIN. In April. Not cool. I was not amused, and I didn't take any pictures of the snowfall because I was too annoyed and over it.  But this is pretty much what it looked like everywhere:

We got about 4 inches of snow on Saturday during the day, but luckily it didn't affect any of our plans. On Saturday morning McGee's parents and sister (Mo) came over so that we could all carpool to a baptism. McGee's cousin had a baby, and the baptism was at a Greek Orthodox church about an hour away. After the baptism was over there was a lunch celebration at a restaurant (it's apparently part of the Greek tradition to have a nice celebration afterwards?), and I had maybe the best filet mignon I've ever had. It was amazing.

So after our amazing lunch we all carpooled back to our house, and McGee's parents got ready for a formal surprise party for a friend that was being held near our house. While they were at the party McGee, Mo, and I were going to go to the movie theater to watch Batman vs Superman! I had very low expectations for the movie, and I was hoping it'd be better than my expectations... but nope, I really didn't like it at all. I was trying SO hard to be positive about it the whole time, but about 2/3 of the way through the movie something happened (I won't give spoilers, don't worry!), and I was just like, "Nope, this is horrible".  I thought a few things were great... Like I thought Ben Affleck did a good job as Batman, I thought Wonder Woman was great, and I thought there were some good fight scenes... But that was about it. I did not like Jesse Eisenberg as Lex Luthor at all... I felt like he was trying to play Heath Ledger's Joker instead of Lex Luthor.  So, that's just my two cents on the movie...

We've made a bit more progress on the Master Bathroom, but unfortunately one of the walls is being really stubborn. It'll be ready for paint by this weekend though, and then it should all go back together pretty quickly! We got a light fixture that I LOVE, which is kinda funny because I'd probably looked at about 1000 light fixtures online over many months, and I wasn't LOVING anything... And then one evening McGee and I spent like 5 minutes looking on Home Depot's website together and BAM, there was one that we both loved!!  It has kind of a vintage-y vibe to it, and it's the perfect size for over our mirror in there. I hope we love it as much once it's on our wall!

Our light! I loved the look of the glass. 

Hopefully next week I'll have some pictures of our finished Master Bathroom!!! 

I Heart NYC

Wow, we had a PERFECT weekend!!  I sure do love NYC. The whole city has such an energy about it... It's just definitely a city like no other city.  Our train arrived in NYC around 10:30am, and right away I had an amazing experience: There was a woman walking in front of us at the train station, and right in front of her was an older couple (like 70s or 80s maybe?).  The woman in front of us tapped the older woman on the shoulder and said, "Your hair is beautiful".  The older woman just lit up like a lightbulb. It was SO darn cute, and I'm so happy that I saw that exchange. She was so happy and just glowing after that compliment, and after the younger woman walked in a different direction, the older lady told her husband "She said my hair is beautiful!", and she looked so darn happy. That was the start to a great day :)

We took the subway over to the 9/11 Memorial, and can I just say WOW. That memorial was SO beautifully done, and it's incredibly powerful and moving. And one really cool aspect of it is that the sound of the waterfalls in the memorial really drown-out all of the noise of the city and even conversations around you. All you can hear is the peaceful white-noise of the water. It was amazing, and I don't know how someone could NOT get emotional at that memorial... I was definitely very moved and got a little emotional.

It's hard to get an idea of how massive this is from a picture, but it's huge. And there's two of them (one for each of the towers). I don't know if you can see in the pic, but there's water flowing down the walls (and that's where you get the peaceful sound). 

This is the new World Trade Center building (the Freedom Tower). It's a really cool looking building.

Our next stop was a BBQ place that I had heard a lot about, and it was right across the street from the 9/11 Memorial. It's called Mighty Quinn's, and there are a few locations in NYC but this one was so convenient for us. The BBQ was DELICIOUS, and they also had a very nice beer selection!!

After that lunch stop, we had a very leisurely stroll along the water to get to Pier 16 where we would catch our boat to go around The Statue of Liberty. We ended up being a little early, so we saw a bar right next to the pier that had AMAZING views, so we stopped in there for a drink and had a lovely time relaxing. Then we went back to Pier 16 and caught our boat, and OH MY GOSH. That was one of the coolest experiences ever!!  The views of the city were SO cool on the whole trip, and I was so darn excited to see The Statue of Liberty!! I got a little emotional when I saw it too, so I've decided I'm just becoming really sappy in my old age. Oh well. It was an amazing time, and it was shaping up to be an absolutely perfect day.

The Brooklyn Bridge!!  Beautiful. 

The Brooklyn Bridge, and that's the new World Trade Center building on the left.

NYC!!  I love the mix of old buildings and modern buildings. It's so beautiful! 

Ellis Island!! 

This is when I saw that we were getting close to The Statue of Liberty and I really started freaking out! 

She's getting closer!! 

There she is!!  And the boat was playing Ray Charles' version of "America the Beautiful", so this is when I started getting a lil emotional (yes, I'm a weenie). I blame Ray Charles.

I think this was my favorite picture that I took.

After our amazing boat tour, we took the subway to our hotel in Times Square and got all checked-in, and spent some time relaxing there for a little bit before we wandered over to Havana Central for dinner. It's a Cuban restaurant right in Times Square, and they're rated for having THE best mojitos in the city!!  I love mojitos. We both ordered Cuban sandwiches with plantain chips, and it was an AWESOME dinner!  So delicious. After dinner we wandered around a bit more, and then made our way over to the Gershwin Theater to see Wicked!!!  Wicked was SO good, and I'm so happy that I didn't really know much about it beforehand! It was so entertaining and so awesome. We both loved it!

Radio City Music Hall!! Saw this while we wandered.

Here's the Gershwin Theater before Wicked started!!  You weren't allowed to take pictures during the show, so this is my only one. Our seats were AWESOME!! We were the first row of the balcony.

A picture of Times Square after the show! 

Times Square again! 

Times Square again!  I took this one because of the Wicked billboard in the background.

We saw these statues on the side of a building while we were wandering around at night! 

Sunday ended up being SUPER cold (in the 30s) with some really brutally cold wind, so we decided not to wander around Central Park like we'd originally planned. It was just too painfully cold outside with the strong winds. We had a really amazing breakfast at a cute little restaurant McGee found online. We both ordered large lattes, and I am not exaggerating at all when I say that the latte was in a huge soup bowl!  It was a big bowl of delicious latte, and I was in heaven. We wandered around the city a little bit, and then we made our way over to the train station to check on our train, because there had been a HUGE train derailment around Philly that morning and a few people died... so we were having trouble finding info on the status of our train. Our train wasn't affected, but a LOT of other trains were super delayed, so the train station was a madhouse. We actually saw an earlier train that we could take to get back home a little earlier, so we ended up switching our reservation to that one. We still had a little bit of time to kill at the train station, so we wandered and I saw that there was a Magnolia Bakery in the train station!!  Their cupcakes are supposed to AMAZING, so I got one to take home with me and McGee got a cookie. I ate the delicious cupcake while watching The Walking Dead in the evening, and it was the perfect way to end a perfect weekend!!!

Look at that soup bowl full of latte!!  It was amazing. My open-faced sandwich was awesome too.

The cupcake from Magnolia Bakery!!  So freaking good. I'm a little obsessed now.

Guinness cuddling me during The Walking Dead! 

And I got a good pic of him cuddling Kevin during The Walking Dead too!