Revamped Mama Dawg (and Kitchen)

Well, I finally found (made) the time to get a free template and revamped my blog.

To quote that manliest of men, Toby Keith..."How do you like me now?"

In the spirit of revamping, I'm going to show you my revamped kitchen. Like I explained here, the house was, hmmmmm....to put it politely...crap.

The kitchen needed the biggest makeover since the floor was literally rotting beneath our feet. The owner is one of those home building, can do anything kind of guru's, so he replaced the floor. He used a beautiful pine tongue in groove and then stained it honey oak. It turned out so pretty.

The cabinets, walls, ceiling and door jambs all had to be painted. Almost half of the kitchen walls were covered in...oh, crap...what's that word...oh, yeah, paneling (gag, gag). We Kilzed those and painted them a bright cheery yellow. The rest of the walls were covered in some sort of white plaster board stuff. Since it was white, it was fine.

I painted the cabinets (even taking off the hardware and cleaning the crap out of them. They were so grease and yuck covered...shudder) and the door jambs and the landlord painted the ceiling all bright white.

It turned out quite nice if I say so. Keep in mind, this is all DIY...we don't have the money to hire someone professional.




This is the before picture. You can't see it, but the floors are rotting underneath the linoleum. To be fair, the only thing holding up the floor is the 4 LAYERS of linoleum.



Here it is after a majority of the work was done. See how cheery it looks?



Here it is filled with all my crap. See the pretty wood floors? I normally have a dark red throw rug in front of the sink area.

I'm so strapped for space in the kitchen, the refrigerator is actually in the dining room. The cabinets you see in this pic are the ONLY cabinets I have (except for the one above the stove that you can't see). So, I had to do...



...this for a pantry! I found this gorgeous metal shelf at Wal-Mart for $20 (retail is like $70) and it was a gorgeous, gorgeous red color. I used black, white and this red (kind of a dull cherry) to accent the yellow kitchen.

I have so little space, I have no place for silverware and kitchen utensils. My mom thought of the idea that I use now.

Look at the door at the back of the kitchen. That's a plastic shoe holder! Like the kind you put in your closet. It's perfect for holding all utensils.

And I have all these (same color! miracle) red roller bins that hold our chips and popcorn and snack foods.

As small as it is, I actually love my kitchen!

Later,

Mama Dawg

Room Makeover Part 1 (of 2, don't worry)

When I decided to pull up roots and move to a small town, one of the worries I had was finding a place to live. There is a family house that wasn't available but would have been right across the gravel road from where my mom's building. So, since that was out, it was back to square one on finding a place.

Luckily, my uncle's secretary has a house that was available for rent. However, the last tenant was a drug user and trashed the place. He left three cats (or so) in the house and never changed their litter box. He would just come by every couple of days and toss some food in and would leave again.

Needless to say, the house was TRASHED. The only thing that saved the wood floors from being totaled was that there was like 4 layers of flooring (linoleum, carpet, etc...) and the cat urine managed to not get to the gorgeous original wood floors.

Light of my life's room is one of the newest rooms on the house. It was an addition that came along years after the house was built.

However, it had nasty linoleum and paneling. Gross....

Well, when I moved up there, I didn't have a job yet so I decided to help with the renovations to get the house ready to move into.

Mom and I worked on her room. I think it came out pretty nice, considering what it looked like before.



Here's the room before we got to it.




Here's the room after we painted it. Light of my life chose these colors. I think it's a pretty sophisticated color palette considering she was 7 when we did this.



Now here it is all decorated with all her "stuff" in it. The A/C is a new addition. A VERY MUCH NEEDED addition here in the south.

In the next post, I'll show my kitchen.

Later,

Mama Dawg

Just One of Dem Days

Ever have “one of those days”? Mine started off that way. I got up at the usual time I need to get up in order to get a shower and then get light of my life a shower. At some point during the night she had crawled in to my bed (never heard/felt a thing) so I let her sleep a little bit longer while I took my shower. I was up at 5:34 (alarm was set for 5 and I normally hit the snooze for half and hour before finally rolling out of bed) and in the shower about 10 minutes after that.

I had painted my bathroom yesterday (skipped church in order to do so, but what can you do with only two days off!?!?!?). Because of that, I had gotten paint on myself including on my fingernails. They were already painted (on purpose and a lovely dark pink, if I may say so myself) but with the green paint on top of that (green was my color choice for the bathroom), I really needed to remove both paints from my nails. I took a few extra minutes to do that. Maybe that was my first mistake that led to my horrible, horrible morning.

Anyway, I hopped in the shower and when I got out, I went through my usual routine. I always dry off, do the deodorant thing, perfume/body spray, brush my teeth and then put in my contacts (yes, I do all this before I get dressed). Well, B, my neighbor, had told me about Clean Clear or Clean and Clear contact lens solution. You put your contacts in this medieval looking contraption and the pour the solution on it and then in the bottle. You let the contacts set in this stuff for at least 6 hours and during that time, the solution turns to saline. You can then put your contacts in but if you need liquid in order to do so, you have to pour some from the little tube, not the big bottle of solution.

This whole process was new to me. I had always used that no rub stuff.

Anyway, all I know is, when I put in my right contact, I screamed like a mofo (in my head only). It burned!!!!!!!!!!!!! I don’t know if I accidentally used the actual solution or if something was wrong. I flushed my eye out with cold water immediately and it helped, but my eye was red for like an hour. It’s ok now but the trauma has made me all sleepy. That and I’m bored at work.

After that, it all went downhill. I woke up light of my life and got her in the shower. While she was showering, I went in to the kitchen to make her lunch and get the life saving coffee going. I glanced at the clock and saw it was 6:20!!!! I thought it was (at the latest) 6:10. That meant I was 10 minutes behind. I needed those 10 minutes to dry her hair (she has a sore throat and a cough) because it was cold outside this a.m. Luckily, she takes a quick shower and I got lunch made in record time. However, the broom near the garbage can was CONSTANTLY falling over and annoying the heck out of me. There were groceries that hadn’t been put away on the kitchen table where light of my life eats her breakfast. My hair was still wet, light of my life turned over a bucket of headbands in the bathroom, light of my life’s hair was barely dry, I couldn’t find my keys, I forgot to put on a coat when walking light of my life to the bus stop and nearly froze, I found my keys and went to start the car up to get the windshield defrosted and the car almost wouldn’t start, I went back in and realized I had forgotten to pack me a dessert (not that I need it) for lunch, mom was up and on the phone with the Terminix guy who was just wanting to show up to re-spray for fleas (he was supposed to have called so we could have time to clear the floor and give the cats their flea meds) and yelling at him, I couldn’t find my i.d. for work (I have to have it to punch in), finally found that, got in the car to leave and realized in never put in my contacts. I had to run in to get my out of date prescription glasses on. I couldn’t get a clear signal on my favorite radio station, I was 5 minutes late to work, my hair was still damp, I kept dropping things at work, my computer was slower than molasses and I had to reboot twice. It was just horrible. It’s gotten a bit better, but not much.

Man, I just need to start today all over again. Is that possible????

Later,

Mama Dawg