A Little More Idina

Idina sang this song called "Asleep on the Wind" during her concert. I'd never heard it before, but it was gorgeous. I just found this video of her singing it with the NY Philharmonic and thought I'd share. Enyoi! :)

Defying Gravity

Last Sunday (the 17th) Kurt and I saw Idina Menzel (of Wicked and Rent fame) perform with the Colorado Symphony at Red Rocks amphitheater. It was such a fun night. The weather was perfect--it had been really hot all day, but the sun was out of reach of the amphitheater, and we were higher than on the plains, and the breeze was blowing. Just perfect. Idina was absolutely amazing. I am so glad I was able to see her sing live. She's ... well, amazing! And very cute, she told all of these cute stories about her and her husband (Taye Diggs!) making up raps about their 2 year old son. Her conductor was Marvin Hamlisch, a superstar himself! Red Rocks is absolutely gorgeous by itself, and then you get this perfect view of the city, and the symphony and Idina ... an awesome, awesome night. :)

Married?! TJ!

[Warning: LOTS of pictures!]
We married off my little sister, Caroline! Woohoo! Caroline and Skylar were sealed in the temple for time and all eternity on July 9th in the Idaho Falls temple. The day before my parents' 32nd anniversary, in the same place they were married. Pretty cool, huh? Actually, it was quite toasty. We had an awesome weekend spending time with friends and family. We drove out on Thursday and dined with Kurt's mom at the Red Iguana. Deeeelish. Then I stayed the night with my sister Steph and Kurt stayed with his mom. Steph and I ran over to Ryan and Mandi's place (they've been vacationing in Utah at Mandi's parents' condo for the summer, before Ryan starts his PhD program, smarty pants) and played Dominion all night. Then we carpooled up to Idaho Falls,, went through the temple with Caroline, and ate at Chuck-A-Rama. Which is surprisingly good. There's one in Provo but I never went there, on principle, because of it's name. But it was quite tasty. Us kids stayed up late that night playing Dominion again (of course!) The next day they were married and the day was CRAZY. Wedding at 12:30, pictures, luncheon, reception, then Kurt and I drove back down to Salt Lake. On Sunday we hung out with Shelley and Carlos, then drove down to Provo to spend time with our besties, the Wilcox's, before coming back up to my Grandma Hatch's for more family time and, you guessed it, Dominion. And I actually won both games I played! (I even beat Kurt and Ryan!) The next morning we all parted ways. Kurt and I met some friends of ours from NY, the McGeehee's, in Salt Lake before driving home via Steamboat Springs, CO. It was great to see Mark and Alicia. Steamboat Springs is now my favorite place in the state. So gorgeous, especially the pass on the east side. I want to live in there. We stopped for about an hour in Steamboat and walked around, and Kurt bought me a White Buffalo Turquoise ring because he's nice and I liked it. :) The weekend was absolutely wonderful, spending so much time with our family. I can't believe it was already 2 weeks ago!

 

I'm so proud of Caroline for marrying a worthy priesthood holder in the temple. :) Now he's stuck with us forever!

White Water Adventures

For July 4th, we went white water rafting. It was a spontaneous decision. On Friday the 1st I was sitting at home, minding my business. Kurt comes home and says, "Do you want to go rafting for the 4th?" I said sure! But I didn't think there would be an reservations available. Well, there were. And we had a blast! I love me some white water rafting--I went a lot in high school for girls camp but haven't done it since 2003. We did the Arkansas river in Big Horn Sheep canyon. We wanted to run it through Royal Gorge, but the water was too high and no companies were running through there yet. Not normal for that time of yeah. We had crazy amounts of snow in the mountains this winter. It equalled an awesome boarding season, and now an awesome rafting season. The canyon was about 2.5 hours from us, so we woke up good and early on the 4th and drove down. We stopped in Colorado Springs for breakfast at this joint downtown called The King's Chef. My breakfast sandwich was large, in charge, and uber delicious. Then we rafted all day! Actually, we ran it in 4 hours because the water was so high and so fast. The morning was pretty tame--the biggest we hit were a couple of 3's at the end. The afternoon was completely different. All big 3s and 4s, almost non stop. We nearly flipped a few times, but luckily we made it through without even losing anyone (although Kurt came close a few times). Then we drove home the long way, through the mountains, and saw parts of the state we've never seen before--Salida, Buena Vista and the collegiate peaks, South Park (which is seriously one of the prettiest spots in the state I've seen so far). Such an awesome day! Yay America! :)

 Looking lovely at 7 am.

 For reference, Kurt and I are on the right.

Where the Streets Have No Name

Going waaaay back, the weekend of May 20th, Kurt and I celebrated our anniversary. We spent a night at a resort in Vail where we hot tubbed it in the falling snow (seriously) and ate a delish dinner at Kelly Liken restaurant. The next day we came down and watched U2 in concert! That was May 21st, the supposed day of the rapture. Since it was supposed to happen at 6 pm in everyone's time zone, we were expecting to be raptured from the concert. Not a bad place to go! Luckily, the guy was wrong (who woulda guessed?).

The Fray opened and they did a great job. U2 performed for a LONG time and it was awesome. It was more than a concert, it was an experience. They had all these visual aids and full on videos. They played my favorite songs--"With or Without You" and "Where the Streets Have No Name"--and lot of my newer faves as well, like "City of Blinding Lights." We had an AWESOME time!

Silence on the Airways

It's wedding weekend in my family.

My little sister is getting married!

Ack, I'm so excited.

Anyhow, we're heading up to Idaho via Utah for a night,

so no kitchen posts (or any) until Tuesday.

Plus,

I have to take more pictures.

Because our last computer crashed and I lost a ton of pictures (hadn't backed it up in a few months).

Ugh ... let's not think about that now ...

On to the wedding!

Kitchen Wars: Staind

(...is a terrible band. Okay, maybe not terrible. They're definitely better than 30 Seconds to Mars or Good Charlotte. But, only marginally.)

So, sink was installed. Hooray! Now it came time to seal the counter top. What product? What color? These are questions that plagued our minds for a whole week. Actually, we'd been thinking about it for a while, just in the back of our minds, ready for its turn. There were a few options. A traditional sealer would not give us color options. It would just darken what wealready had slightly. And then we found another product that had food-friendly stains. We grabbed one of our counter scraps, snagged some stain samples, and tried out some of our favorites. We were thinking of a warm brown, since our floors are warm. And we'd already decided on a warm brown for our walls. We got red oak, red mahogany, gun stock, and dark walnut (not particularly warm, but I love me some dark walnut stain). 

A is the traditional sealer, B is the red mahogany, and C is the gunstock. We really liked B and C, but decided they didn't look well with the floor. And A almost matched it, which we didn't want at first, but decided it was the best option.

And honestly? We're so glad that they almost match. We thought the matchy-matchy would look bad, and if we were going to paint our walls a color other than brown, then it might not. But it looks great! Especially considering the fact that once we paint our walls brown, if we'd gone with a stain, then we'd have three browns in one room. And not just that, but three very big patches of those browns. That would not look bueno. 

So, the sealer we got (no idea what it's called off the top of my head--I'm at work) had a few different "versions." The original sealer, which could be used alone or under a different finish, was extremely shiny, as you can see here. It's still drying in this pic, but it was still pretty shiny afterwards. So then we added one coat (and we might go back and add one more) of a satin finish, so it still has a lustre, but it's not blinding! Especially because we get direct sunlight in the late afternoon.

 And there you have it. 

(Date: February 26ish, 2011)

Kitchen Wars: Everything AND the Kitchen Sink!

You totally saw that coming, didn't you?

You totally did. You're so smart. And attractive. (You should totally keep reading my blog.)

Anyhow, as I have previously mentioned, the sink is my absolute favorite part of the the kitchen. Other than the openness and natural light. We decided on a porcelain apron/farmhouse sink. Kurt's coworker gave us the idea (she's thinking about it for her own house and mentioned it to Kurt). After we googled it, we fell in love. And then looked up prices. And quickly felt deflated. On average, $900! The cheapest we found was $700. And then ... Ikea. For $350 a pop! And then when we got there in July, it was on sale for only 300 bones! Sweetness! The day we put it in, I danced with glee and clapped my hands (actually, I don't remember but that's typically what I do when I'm happy). It looked so cool and decor-ish. I'm not making much sense right now, even to myself. But see for yourself!

The faucet is from Ikea too. We wanted something we could pull out (instead of the extendable sprayer you typically have), and Ikea had one. The only downfall, we thought at first, was that it doesn't have a button to turn the water from a stream to a spray. But once we turned it on, we realized that isn't necessary, because that faucet has better water pressure than our shower head.

You might also notice the extra upper cabinet (on the far right of the upper cabinets, etc) that we added. The arrangement up there is actually going to change, because we've found a lot of extra cabinets in our sheds that we're going to use, one of which is an upper cabinet. That will really help with storage space, since we don't have a pantry. Speaking of, we're busy painting and installing all of those extra cabinets!

Also, the dish washer is installed. That's the black thing in the middle of all the white cabinets. It was so nice to finally have a dish washer and sink again! Yay for running water! And exclamation points!!!!!!

(Date: February 14th, 2011)

Kitchen Wars: The Main Event!

Okay, not really. I would say the sink is the crowning piece to our kitchen. Because I loooove it. But I was really excited about our counters. And "The Main Event!" sounds a lot cooler than "Counters!" Plus, then you might expect to see a certain lovable vampire on here.

Ack, no. Bleh. via

Much better. via

Do you concur? ("I should've concurred!") (Apparently my computer doesn't think 'should've' is a word.) (I like parenthetical statements.)

Anyhow, counters. We thought long and hard about what kind we wanted. In a perfect world, we'd get some kind of nice, black/dark gray granite. It would look so cool with the white cabinets, and the walls painted ... some pretty color or other. But, let's be honest here: our house is 60 years old (this year! Happy Birthday!) and our neighborhood, while a great neighborhood, is not really a "granite counter" kind of neighborhood. For the most part, it's filled with 50s ranch homes. There are a few $500k+ houses, but I think those people are stupid. Haven't they ever heard the mantra, "Buy the smallest house in the best neighborhood you can afford"? (We did, but couldn't afford any of those kind of neighborhoods.) We didn't want to make their mistake of building over the neighborhood. Plus, we didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on a counter we wouldn't enjoy the rest of our life. But didn't want something we didn't like. Eventually we found a good compromise that we liked: wood! I was leery at first--Kurt suggested it--but after some research found out they're actually very durable, cost effective, and look cool! So we looked around and saw that Ikea had nice looking, thick wood counters for super cheap (even with our flights out to Utah and our moving truck on the way home). We couldn't resist.

They sat in their boxes for a long time (July - February), but when I got home from work one day and saw them sitting on the cabinets, I couldn't help but squeal with glee.

GLEEEEE!

There was still a lot of work to do on the counters--cutting a hole for the sink and deciding on a stain(ish)--but for now, I was pretty happy to just look at them.

(Date: February 12th, 2011)

Kitchen Wars: Sweet, Painted Cabinets

To the tune of Elton John's "Sweet Painted Lady." Actually, no we didn't paint them again, but in a few paragraphs you'll see the wording that inspired that bad parody.

As you saw in the last post, Kurt was moving bottom cabinets into place. So, here they are, mostly installed! As you can see, we took our galley kitchen and made it into a U-shape. Way more counter space--huzzah! We also pushed back the cabinets on the right by a good foot and a half. Still not a large kitchen by any stretch of the imagination, but Kurt and I can walk by each other now without having to squeeze/shimmy our way past. Huzzah again!

As part of our budget-keeping initiative, the only new cabinets we bought were the two corner units and the sink unit. From--you guessed it--Ikea. They don't match exactly, but whatever. Although, apparently now they do have doors that match our other ones, so we'll have to hit those up when Ikea opens in Denver (this fall! Huzzah x3!). I was going to paint the doors so they have the same painted look (see what I did there?) as the rest of the cabinets. Buuuut, since we'll probably get new, matching doors in the fall, I see no reason to. The difference is subtle, so why bother? (Now I have Weezer's "Why Bother" in my head.) Although, it may end up driving me crazy, but we'll see about that. In the meantime, we do have to paint some other cabinets, so I'll probably go ahead and paint the boxes. 

And now, for the fourth time: HUZZAH!

(Date: February 10th, 2011)

Kitchen Wars: Lay Me Down

After Kurt primed the newly drywalled walls (er?), he laid down the flooring. We replaced the flooring in the main part of the kitchen due to some water damage from last summer, and then put down flooring in the annex. We just did wood-looking laminate because of two reasons: we already had it in the dining area and office and didn't want to two different wood floors in the same, small house, especially right next to each other; and we couldn't afford to lay down all new hardwood flooring. Actually we could, but let's face it, this house is 60 years old. It's in that awkward stage where it's too old to be considered cool but not quite old enough to be cool again. Don't get me wrong, we love our house. But one goal we've kept in mind with this project is to not build over the house and neighborhood. The flooring looks awesome though. We get compliments on it all the time. And I really love it, because if you get paint on it, you can scratch it right off. That comes in handy for a klutzy painter like yours truly.

Also involved with putting down new flooring was moving the cabinets on the right side of the kitchen (well, now middle of the kitchen).  

 

That plumbing is from/for the sink.

 Then after the new flooring was in, he started moving the cabinets back into place.

So, the color of this flooring is not our first choice. Kurt and I are cool wood people. We're cool color people, too. In case you hadn't picked that up from the white white walls, the greens, the blues. I just love cool colors on the walls and so does Kurt. Both of us get overheated really easily and I think the cool colors keep us calm. I can just imagine myself getting all hot and stuffy in a red room. Ack! Not good!

If we had our first choice, we would've gone with a nice lighter toned wood probably. And then walnut counter tops. And light gray walls. Ah, that sounds like heaven to me. But, we've made do with what we've got. Trying to stay under budget, you know! And what we've got is warm mid-tone wood flooring. If we hated it, we'd replace it. But we don't. We just don't LOVE it. But we like it well enough. Plus, it's forcing us to design outside of our comfort zone (there's been talk of dark, warm brown walls for the kitchen ... what??) and it's been fun to play around with it.

(Date: February 8th, 2011)

Kitchen Wars: Closet Freak

After all the plumbing was all ready, Kurt built a wall and a man came to do our drywall. That is the only thing we've hired someone else to do. It was just way faster/easier and less messy to do it that way. This was the day Denver didn't get above -3 all day. I worked from home. I really like sitting on my bed to do my work, while Kurt works out in the living area with classic rock playing. It was fun.

After 4 days of work, we had a whole new closet!

This closet is behind that extended white wall in the first two pictures. We bought a stackable, front-loading washer/dryer set and hid them in here. 

It's funny we diminished our laundry room so much, because I loved how big the laundry room (annex) was when we looked at the house. But I'd prefer to have a bigger kitchen than a bigger laundry room. Ideally, I'd have a big one of each, but that ain't happenin' in this old 1400 square foot ranch.

(Date: February 4th, 2010)