My Goodness, My Guinness: Christmas in August, Kitchen Progress, and Fun!

I can't believe we're halfway through August! I'm getting SOOOO excited for Fall though, because it's my favorite season ever and I have had enough of Summer now. The bugs are in FULL effect now (August is always the worst...), and I get a mosquito bite if I'm outside for even like 2 minutes, plus the super gross cicadas are back and noisier than ever.

Last night we went into Philly to meet up with a bunch of friends at Timmy's apartment for our "Christmas" celebration! We get together every year, and last year it became a "Christmas in July" celebration because we weren't able to meet up at the holidays, and then this year we couldn't even meet up in July so it became "Christmas in August", which isn't a thing. Haha :) Timmy decorated his apartment with Christmas decorations though, and I made Christmas cookies, and we had a White Elephant gift exchange. It was also a goodbye party for Sarah Fro, because she's leaving to go to Asia with her boyfriend until at least March.

Last weekend McGee and I finished a house project that has been hanging over us for like over a year!! Our hinges on our kitchen cabinets were TERRIBLE, and badly needed replacing... The hinges were brass or light gold and the finish looked terrible, and they matched the knobs that had been there, but we very easily replaced the knobs with some hammered iron (black) knobs long ago, but we'd been unable to find hinges that would work with our old cabinets! They are definitely the original cabinets from our 1955 house, and we purchased a few black hinge options that we thought would work, but NONE of them worked. So, we tried that for a while and kept striking out, but then we saw this cool spray paint by Rustoleum that gives a "hammered iron" look (and it's black), and we took one set of hinges off and tried it, and it looked amazing!! So it took a few weeks, but we took all the hinges off and painted about 4 coats on them, and then last weekend we finally put all of our cabinets back up!! They look SO good with the hammered iron hinges!! It really helps our kitchen look complete.
Here's a Before (from last year sometime when we hadn't quite finished painting the yellow in that corner. That painting has been finished for a looong time):

Here's an After!! The black hinges look SO good. And they totally look like hammered iron too.

Last weekend we also went on a loooong hike around Valley Forge with Guinness, and then he was EXHAUSTED for the rest of the day! He just slept all day after that. And on our Sunday night we drove to McGee's parents' house for a birthday celebration for Mo. It was a fun time! And Sunday was also my parents' anniversary!! Happy Anniversary to them!! :)