House Progress Galore

This past weekend was very productive! We made a lot of progress on the two bathrooms that we're in the middle of renovating, and McGee also worked on some electrical stuff going on in our kitchen. So, I took pictures of some of the progress that was visible! Stuff like plumbing, electrical, etc isn't very interesting to look at in pictures, so I didn't document any of that! Just trust me that it's all moving along quite nicely :)

For our Master Bathroom, we're almost done!  I have completed the paint touch-ups, and McGee installed the new faucet and the toilet paper holder. All that's left in there is putting up the wood trim (painted white) and finding some towel bars and knobs. So, we're pretty much there! Here are some before and after pictures:

Before!  Pink toilet and all. 

After!! I wish I'd gotten a picture of the faucet "before"... It was a brass and silver combo. But we kept the sink and the mirror, and just replaced everything else. 

And I have a picture that I just need a frame for to put on the walls in here! I think it'll look nice with the paint color. 

Here's a close-up of the new faucet! I love it. The old brass-silver combo one always bothered me. 

For the downstairs bathroom, we got all of the beadboard up on the walls!  And we painted, but I think I'd mentioned that already (I just hadn't taken a picture yet...). We have lots of trim to put up in there, but we've painted all of it white which I think will look nice with the white beadboard. We're also trying to figure out our ceiling for that bathroom... We think we might go for something kind of fun/bold on the ceiling. Here are some before and after pictures:

Before! That's a green toilet. 

Here's the original ceiling and vanity. We've pulled down the ceiling because it was gross and falling apart. We just have to figure out what to put back up there... 

Another before. 

And here's a paper towel holder. They had them in all of the bathrooms for some reason... 

And here's how it looks right now: 

Still needs trim, etc, but you can see the blue color and the beadboard! 

And here you can see a little glimpse of the flooring! We've been keeping it covered with a drop cloth so we don't mess it up with all of our work in there. It's a grey porcelain tile that looks like wood. We already have the new sink and vanity and toilet but we just have to install them after we get the trim up. Another big project for this bathroom is that we're going to attempt to put in a light switch for the light in there... There is currently only a pull-chain on the light, which is kind of a pain! We may have to hire an electrician for this task though because of the weird configuration in this bathroom. 

That's the status of most of our progress right now!  I hope you're all having a great week! 

Vegas!!

Wow, we had WAY too much fun in Vegas. We did not have as much fun as a lot of the people we were seeing around Vegas though, which is a very good thing. Soooo many people were soooooo messed up during all hours of the day! It's such a weird town. We had a blast though, and we did a LOT of walking! On Saturday we arrived in Vegas at around 3pm, and took a cab to The Venetian so we could get all checked in!  It was SO beautiful.

The lobby of our hotel! 

The ceiling of the lobby! 

Here's a night picture I took of our hotel! 

We had a quick bite to eat at The Venetian and then started walking The Strip! It was so fun seeing everything, and witnessing all the craziness that Vegas has to offer. I took a bunch of pictures: 

The ceiling at The Bellagio! It's one of my favorite things. If you haven't heard of it, it's a must-see! It's an art installation by Dale Chihuly, and it's all glass!  It's so crazy beautiful.

And this was in the Bellagio conservatory area! 

Bellagio conservatory also. A cute birdie made of flowers. 

Bellagio conservatory! 

Bellagio conservatory! So pretty. 

 

The Luxor! 

After exploring a bunch of the resorts on The Strip, we ended up at our Cirque du Soleil show! It was hilaaaaarious, and it's really so incredible what those people can do. There were at least 4 times that I thought someone was going to fall to their death during the show, but nope! I am very happy to report that everyone survived. McGee and I were pretty much zombies by the time the show was over though because it was SO late for us and we'd been up almost 24 hours by that point! We made our way back to The Venetian and crashed SO hard.

The next morning we were up decently early (that time difference really messes things up...), and we had a nice breakfast at the resort before exploring more of Vegas!  We had an awesome day, and that evening we had dinner at Gordon Ramsay's Steak restaurant! We both ordered the Beef Wellington, it was amaaaaazing. The really fun/awkward part though was that the "steak knives" they gave us were NOT sharp at all... so we were making such a mess out of our beautiful Beef Wellingtons while we were trying to cut them! They still tasted delicious of course, but we were both trying to not look ridiculous while we were cutting our dinners. We were both cracking up about it while we were trying to be sly with our cutting.

 After dinner was LIONEL RICHIE!!!  That man can put on a show. It was SO amazing, and he's such a good performer! He sounded great, and made the show so fun for everyone. After the show was over, we did a little bit of gambling!  We even tried roulette, and we actually won about $70!  We'd lost about $50 playing slots, video poker, etc, so all in all we were up about $20!  Not too shabby.

Our Vegas trip was amazing, but we were both sooooo exhausted today!  At least we only have to work 4 days this week :)  Here are a few more pictures:

 Paris! 

Paris! It's a mini-Arc de Triomphe (like where McGee proposed!)

The fountain show at The Bellagio! We watched more than a few of the fountain shows :) 

A Very Yellow Kitchen

Well, our kitchen is semi-painted now!  I'd primered it, and now I've painted the top portion yellow. It's a nice yellow (not too bright, not mustard-y, etc), but it's still yellow, so I've had to really think about it once I got it up on the walls! I'm leaning towards really liking it, but I still need to make sure I see it in all lighting situations (and one of our lights in our kitchen is currently not working correctly... something is wrong with the wiring we think). Then I think we're going to paint the bottom portion white, and the strip above the cabinets white also. And then our trim/chair rail is painted white so we have to put that back up after all the painting is done. Here are some before and afters!

Here's another glimpse of the wallpaper situation... But you can see the white trim/chair rail going around the kitchen! That part is staying. 

Here it is! There's kinda some weird shadows going on in this picture from the sun.... but this is the kitchen during the day with no lights on! 

This is when we were trying to decide if we should paint the area above the cabinets yellow or white... and I think we've decided on white. It's still just primered right now. And there are those dang gold hinges that we still need to replace or paint! But then the kitchen is DONE!!! 

And here's a picture when I did have the lights on! See, definitely very yellow! But not a bright yellow... I'm hoping we continue to like it more and more once we put everything back on the walls, etc. But, if it turns out we hate it after some time passes, we can always paint again! :) 

That's about all that's happened over this past week/weekend!  Work has been keeping me incredibly swamped because I had a massive project due today, so I was quite happy to finish that and get that off my mind. And now we're just prepping for our fun weekend in Vegas!  I'll let you guys know all about it next week!!

National Parks, Soccer, and a Rainy Run!

Last weekend was a busy one!  On Saturday we went into Philly to pick up the shirts and bibs for the Broad Street Run that was the next day, and while we were in town we stopped by the Franklin Institute so we could see a film about the National Parks that we'd really wanted to see!  It was a short Imax film (45 minutes) that was narrated by Robert Redford, and we both really enjoyed it. McGee and I recently decided that we want to try to see all of the National Parks together, so we made a list and are crossing them off as we see them!  We've already seen 8 out of the 59 National Parks, and we have plans to see 2 more this year.  Some will be really difficult, so we just have to win the lottery and retire really early. No problem!

I took a picture of Ben Franklin at the Franklin Institute! 

And here's the poster that was outside of the Franklin Institute! 

After the movie was over, we drove to Kevin's friend Juliff's house, and then the 3 of us headed to the Union soccer match!  They were playing against San Jose, but I was rooting for Philly. The weather started out pretty nice but ended up getting really cold as the game went on! But luckily it didn't rain on us. 

I loooove the views from the stadium!!  So darn pretty. 

Here's McGee and Juliff! 

We tried really hard to get to bed at a decent time that night, because we had to be up SO early on Sunday morning to head into Philly for the Broad Street Run!  We were up at like 5am, which is just NOT cool on the weekend. And they had predicted hard rain all morning and day, and they were SO right. It was pouring while we were driving into the city, and it didn't stop raining the entire time we were at the run. McGee had a GREAT run though, and I was so darn proud of him! I had fun cheering on the runners with McGee's parents, and the runners were so very sweet and appreciative of our cheering. Usually there are a TON of people cheering on the runners, but this year most people stayed home because of the rain!  There were 40,000 runners though, and as they were running by us they were thanking us for coming out to cheer!  So sweet.

Here's a great picture of McGee that his dad took!  McGee was getting ready to hand me his sunglasses (he'd had them to block the rain from getting in his eyes, but they kept fogging up!).  He also gave me a quick kiss as he went running by :)  

McGee and I both felt SO exhausted by Sunday night (McGee earned his exhaustion way more than I did!  He ran 10 miles!), so as a result this week has been a pretty tough one! But luckily tomorrow is Friday, and we don't have any major plans for this weekend. Tomorrow night (Friday) we're having our friend Timmy over for dinner, and then on Saturday we're going to see Captain America: Civil War!  Wahoo!!  We're also going to work on a few projects around the house, so hopefully I'll have some fun progress to tell you about next week. And Sunday is Mother's Day, of course!!  Happy Mother's Day to all of the moms, but especially to my amazing mom!!