progress

I just wanted to remember this photo, so that when the floor is all done and looking lovely, I remember all the hard work it took to get there! Jason ripped out the kitchen floor/ sub-floor ( pictured above ) and then put in a new sub-floor. In the next week or two we should have a new kitchen and laundry room floor!  We also removed the door between the two rooms and need to redo the door frame, but until we do I'm enjoying the exposed brick.

words on renovating

 I've been wanting to do an update on our renovations for some time now, but most of them are half or getting finished projects. And while that can get me down at times, I thought I'd suck up my pride and do a little house update, because who doesn't need a little comic relief from seeing my fridge wide open in my dinning room ( with three layers of peeling wallpaper that we wait to touch because we aren't at the dinning room phase of renovations yet) while my toddler colors and thinks we are crazy. Today we got everything out of the kitchen that touches the floor, so that Jason can rip it out and that we can finally get a new floor put in our kitchen/ laundry room (pictured below)

 kitchen floor that needs to get ripped up

 This is soon to be our powder room. We decided to keep the brick wall exposed to keep some of the rich charm of our old home.

 Dining room/ kitchen for the next couple of weeks?????

 These are some well written words that struck a cord with me as we are doing the same! A fantastic renovating blog that keeps me inspired! We are the "other" strategy all the way!

It seems to me that there are only a couple of general strategies to choose from when undertaking a major renovation. The first is to just bite the bullet and do it all at once, often before even moving in, usually with lots of assistance from trained professionals. Any walls that need to come down have the chance to come down, systems get upgraded in one comprehensive effort, and then everything gets put back together, painted, decorated, and BOOM…that’s it.
Then there’s the other strategy, whereby one chips away at things piecemeal for a matter of years, never with enough time or money, living endlessly in a state of chaos and destruction that hints only vaguely of progress. In an effort to avoid going completely insane, one might try to keep things contained to, say, a single room, only moving onto the next thing when that space feels more or less completed. -manhattan nest

Monster Inc. Cake + Cupcake

This was probably one of my favorite requests this year! Don't get me wrong, I love pretty much everything people throw my way as a cake decorator. I love a challenge, especially something I've never attempted before, but for some reason this cake just got me very excited to do what I do. This Monster's cake was a lot of firsts. I've never done a pixar character before, or baked a round cake (used to make Mike) so that was some good learning experiences. I've been working with a new fondant, one that tastes sooooooooo much better than the other I had used in the past. It tastes like marshmallows. While I love the new taste, it's a bit softer than I'm use to working with, so that brought about a whole new set of challenges. I've picked up a few tricks of the trade and things seem to be working out great! So here are a few more shots of Mike sitting on Sulley from Monsters!

  I also did a smash cupcake with a little Sulley.