Bright and Shiny

Holy shiz people, we FINALLY have great lighting in our kitchen!! We broke down (okay, so actually I broke Jim down... he he) and put in can lights in our kitchen. I can't even explain how excited we are to have proper lighting in our kitchen. I never really thought that we were going to find better lighting than the can lights but Jim was hesitant because we had to cut into the ceiling to put them in. Well folks, after a couple of hours working in the kitchen we had working lights. It is so great to have finally finished one thing in the kitchen. We have been working for so long, but we haven't really finished anything. But in our defense, we had a lot of demolishing to do. Anywho... we are both SUPER excited to have our lighting done! Well, at least we have our main lighting done. We still have to pick out our pendant lighting for over the sink.

Here are the pictures of our new lights!!

So far, I like the pendants below. We are going to put two of these above the sink for some accent lighting. We haven't decided on the color, but we are leaning towards the amber and red colors.

Jello Shots + Baby Gifts = The Non-Baby Shower

Last night we headed over to Sarah and Orly's for a Non-Baby Shower. This was my first baby shower that had a pony keg full of a local beer along with munchies and jello shots. It was great to see some friends we haven't seen in awhile and to celebrate the pending birth of Maddox Grayson (Sarah's baby!!). It was a little painful getting Sarah's gift because there were kids crying in the baby section of Target but I survived. We were over at their house for a few hours drinking and catching up with friends. Luckily the weather held out and it didn't rain, but we did see a good lightening show. After the party, we headed over to Tiffany and Stacy's house for a few minutes. We got to meet their super sweet kids (also known as their dogs)!

Sarah and I

Jim and Orly enjoying a Patron shot

Sarah opening her gifts

Stacey, me and Tiffany... the "Indianapolis Training Crew"

I'm trying to pose with the baby before he is even born :)

This is Max, Tiffany's huge Great Dane. He is such a lover, he just wanted to be pet!!

Jim fell asleep on Stacey and Tiffany's floor. Max kept him company :)

A break in the rain

I brought my camera with me while I ran some errands today in case the rain stopped. I really wanted to head down one of the green belts to check out the water in the creeks. The rain stopped and the clouds broke up, so my camera and I headed out. It was a little scary because one of the roads I needed to drive on had water on it. The media has been freaking me out with all of the stories of cars getting swept down the creeks. So I watched a couple cars drive though without any issues, so I gave a little pep talk to the Jetta, and we drove over. Of course all was fine, but I was a little freaked :)

The creek was raging. I used to take Taylor to this creek to go swimming until I saw a couple of snakes swimming around in the water. I'm sure they didn't want anything to do with us, but I didn't want to risk Taylor getting bit. Anywho, the water in the creek was higher than I have ever seen it. But there was still a path along the water, so I decided to walk down a bit with my camera to see what I can find. My impromptu hike wasn't so easy mostly because of the wet conditions and mostly because of this....

My flip flops, not the greatest hiking foot wear. But it was helpful when I had to walk through some water to continue on my trek.

The most exciting thing I saw, besides the raging water, was 3 kids in a raft attempting to ride the creek. I was just about to head back to the car, when I saw them coming down the creek. Once again, i remember what I saw in the news about all of the rescues and thought that I would be seeing them on the news later getting rescued. But the 10:30pm news is one and they haven't mentioned any rescues today. So I took a couple of pictures of them, they were damn surprised to see me sitting on the banks with my camera pointed at them :) They just pointed and laughed at me.

Bad Blogger

This week has flown by!! I am in full swing with my new class for school, work is a little nuts because I have new employees that I have to train as well as do my normal job, and we are still working on the kitchen while it rains cats and dogs!! So I have been stretched a little thin, which always means that my blog gets neglected. :)

Where to start???? We are in search of new lighting for our kitchen. We have crappy florescent lights in there now, and it is looking like we are going to have to keep them. I have been looking through magazines and most of the kitchens have the can lighting, which is the lighting in the ceiling. Jim says it would be a total pain in the ass to do it so I have been considering finding a contractor to do it. I REALLY don't want the fluorescent lighting, unless we can find a cool looking light fixture. We have some friends that are using a contractor to do some work around their house, so I might see if we can get him over here for a quote. I prefer to use somebody that has done work for friends or family. The trickiest part will be convincing my husband that it is okay to have somebody give us a quote for the lights. We wanted to do the kitchen by ourselves, but at this point if there is something that we can't do, then I have no issues getting outside help.

Here are some pictures of the rain and the kids....

Cute Pooches

Taylor, Chewie and I hung out in the front yard for 20 minutes or so this afternoon. With all of the rain, we haven't been able to let them in the back yard,,,, it is way to muddy. I took my camera with me to get a couple of shots. I think there was way to much to look at because it was near impossible to get them to look at the camera :)

I kept calling their names, but they would not turn around to look at me. I guess the traffic is more important than their mommy

Damn you light fixture!

So, we hit a point in our kitchen remodel where we had to make some decisions aside from whether we buy 4 or 5 pieces of sheet rock. We needed to figure out our lighting decision. We want to take down the crappy fluorescent light and replace it. But that is the easy part. We headed to Lowes and Home Depot to check out their light fixture section. Agh. Of course, I didn't find anything that really blew me away. Damn, why am I soooo picky??? (Mom, I'm looking at you...). So we found a fixture that we thought would look okay (but not great) so we bought it. I worked on some dry wall and dinner while Jim put the fixture up. I have to say it looks pretty good, BUT it doesn't give off enough light. Shit. It would make a good extra light fixture, but not as a main light.

We are going to head out to some specialty light shops this week, so wish us luck!!

Kitchen- before the dry wall

Our old light

Jim working by the light of a flash light to take down our old fixture

The rain came down on Saturday while working on the kitchen/dry wall

Ta-Da!! The new (but soon to be returned) light fixture. We didn't put it all the way up... there is supposed to be another section to the right of the junction box (thingy in the middle). We figured that we didn't need to put it up since we are going to return it. This picture also shows the dry wall that we put up on the wall.

Happy Birthday Nick!!!

A picture of the birthday boy doing his best Zoolander face

On Saturday night we met up with friends for drinks at The Belmont to celebrate Nick's birthday. The typical crew went out and enjoyed the summer night. Luckily the rain stayed away and brought a nice breeze that kept the weather enjoyable. The Belmont seems to be the new place to go to right now, so it stayed busy all night. I have to say that the two patios (one upstairs and one downstairs) with live music makes it a cool place to hang out. I just wish that we had been able to find a table to sit down. Instead we stood and talked, which I guess is a little better since you can walk around and talk to everybody. After a few hours at The Belmont, we decided to head to another bar, Union Park (at least I think that is the name). Unfortunately, once we were in that bar, I realized that I didn't get my debit card back from the bartender. Shit. I paid our tab, but never got my card back. So we had to walk back to the bar (mind you, I am in some good looking but uncomfortable shoes), to pick up my card. Once we had the card back we decided to call it a night. It was 30 minutes until last call, and my feet weren't in the mood to walk all the way back to the other bar for one drink :).

Here are some pictures of our drinking adventure:

We ran into a friend of ours, Norm, at The Belmont. He was heading up the stairs to the patio while we were on our way down. We know Norm from a friend of mine at work. He is the crazy Jenga player (you may or may not remember me talking about a party where we literally played drinking Jenga for a couple of hours). Sarah is having a party next weekend, but Norm won't be able to make it. Pooh. At least we got to catch up with him for a little bit last night.