Baby Gift!

My best friend is having a baby in July! I can't travel to her baby shower next week, so I bought a gift off her registry and shipped it to her cousin's house (her cousin offered to bring it to the shower for me).

In addition to that present, I wanted to send her something personalized (as well as a nice card).

(two custom onesies, five homemade baby bibs and two pacific clips). 

I had a couple of white onesies sitting around from a prior project, so I decided to do something unique (and funny!) I appliqued a couple of messages as well as a picture of Alex and myself onto the onesie! These are the finished pieces:

 I started with a couple of plain, white onesies and some photofabric. Photo fabric can be placed right in your printer and you can print a design right one to it.

After you print, you have to let it dry (i.e. follow the directions!). After dry, you rinse it out and then lay it out to dry. I didn't take pictures of that! After it was dried, I cut the images that I was going to sew for Kelly (ignore the other images, those are a present for my cousin). 

Using Heat n Bond, I cut a piece of the product, and then ironed the non-paper side to my fabric image. 

 After it's been ironed:

Peel off the paper back:

Place the image on your piece of clothing, making sure it's exactly where you want it to be.

 Then iron! The directions said 2 seconds on each section, but I probably left it on there about 10-15 seconds, just to be sure.

For the type of Heat n Bond I bought, you need to sew around the edges. I used a zigzag stitch.

 and then sewed around the photofabric.

 Here it is all done!

All packaged up to ship:

Kitchen Sink

The new faucet is the last item in our kitchen that needs to be done, so that we can get back to the real world. Yes, the kitchen does need other work (like artwork and blinds), but since those aren't in my way when I'm trying to cook, I'm not as concerned.

This is our old sink.

It's not terrible. But it's a little bit boring. 

We picked this up at the store, not only for the long, graceful neck of the faucet, but because it has a pull-down spray. I'm so excited!!!! I haven't had one of those since I lived in New York!!!

Hopefully we'll install it tomorrow or this weekend! 

Lara Bars

Have you tried these?

• Apple Pie
• Banana Bread
• Blueberry Muffin
• Cappuccino
• Carrot Cake
• Cashew Cookie
• Cherry Pie
• Chocolate Chip Brownie
• Chocolate Chip Cherry Torte
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough
• Chocolate Coconut Chew
• Coconut Cream Pie
• Ginger Snap
• Key Lime Pie
• Lemon Bar
• Peanut Butter & Jelly
• Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip
• Peanut Butter Cookie
• Pecan Pie
• Tropical Fruit Tart

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I'm quite impressed with them. They have very few (and natural) ingredients, and taste yummy! So far, these are my thoughts on the flavors I've tried:

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough - Not impressed. I bought a box without looking at the ingredient list (a mistake, I know), and there are a lot. It's still made up of good items, except that they have added sugar. I was expecting to be a little bit impressed, but I wasn't. I was quite disappointed, and didn't even want to finish the first bar. It did not taste like CC Cookie Dough. 

Cherry Pie - Delicious!!! Low amount of ingredients, and tasted great! I'll definitely buy these again! 

Peanut Butter Cookie - 

Pecan Pie - 

Blueberry Muffin - 

Chocolate Chip Cherry Torte - 

Cashew Cookie -

Apple Pie -

• Pecan Pie

Kitchen Paint Colors

Given the hatred we had of our old kitchen color (spearmint lime, anyone?), we bought samples this time, and painted them throughout the kitchen. We're planning to look at them throughout the day, and decide which one we like best in all lights of the day. 

Honestly....I don't really like any of them. The husband likes the green one (you can only really see it on the white wall).

So I really don't like any of them, I'm going to comprise and say that we'll go with the color he likes. Hopefully we'll get this painted tomorrow night (today is our anniversary so we're going out to dinner!) 

Kitchen Progress, Current Before and After

This is where we started:

This is where we are today. The crown is installed, cabinets are painted, the knobs/pulls are installed, and the doors have been put back on!

All that is really left to do, before we can say the kitchen in completed, is to paint and replace the kitchen faucet! Well, and a DEEP cleaning. There is a layer of drywall throughout the kitchen... gross! And, of course, the stove will eventually need to be replaced. I just can't see replacing a perfectly good (and working) oven, just because of the color.

First Knobs are up (and of course there are issues)

I started drilling holes for the knobs today, with my handy template. Last night, Alex and I agreed on a proper place for the knobs to go, on both the drawers and doors.

So far, I've encountered a couple of problems:
1 - the screws included are too short to go through our drawer fronts (no big deal, just another trip to the hardware store)
2 - We never marked the holes for the knobs on the smaller doors (only the pulls). So I ended up using a lower hole for the knobs. I realized this when I went to go to a pull on a lower door and had to use different holes than planned. Not a big deal, Alex just really liked pulls/knobs higher up on the doors. I haven't told him this yet, and I am considering using the originally chosen holes for the rest of the upper pulls (I don't think anyone would notice that they are slightly different, since overall, they would look the same).
3 - The real issue -- we didn't account for where the door hits the base of the cabinets, so, the screw behind the knob is hitting the cabinets. Over time, this can cause a gauge in the cabinets and it sticks out from the base cabinet more than it should.

Right now, for problem #3, I put a felt back over the back of the screw, which helps damper that effect. Unfortunately, the cabinets are still sticking out slightly from the base, but I don't think anyone would ever notice that. But for now, I'm waiting for Alex to get home from work before I drill any more (If we have to go back, wood fill, repaint and then redrill, I want to minimize the amount of rework).

But this is one of the sets that are up:

We're using the small knobs on the smaller doors/drawers and the pulls on the rest of the larger doors. Hopefully, this will give is some differentiation and some interest!

Kitchen Update!

The final coat of top coat just went on! That means we can start drilling the holes for the cabinet pulls and put those up. I'm very excited for this project to be done!