Friday, July 29, 2011

Winner Winner, Chicken Dinner!

I am on a roll - two blog posts in two days!

A couple of months ago I entered a photo contest held by Utah Senator Mike Lee.  He was looking for photographs of Utah to put on his website, and one of my entries was chosen!  If you go to his website here and scroll over Constituent Services, you'll see my photo of a sego lily plant (Utah's state flower).  Or you can just look below to see the photo.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

It's about time!!!!!

Sooo......, you'd think since I've been out of school for over a month and a half, I would have found the time to blog before now.  I am way behind on posting all the fun things we've been up to, but for now I am just going to post a few projects we've been working on at the house.  

Let's start in the front.

BEFORE


DURING
The trees were dead, and now they're a stack of firewood in the backyard thanks to a chainsaw and Spencer's new winch.

AFTER


The next area is the east side of the front yard.

BEFORE



AFTER
crookneck yellow squash, pear tomatoes, goliath tomatoes, zucchini, acorn squash, bell peppers, and two types of lettuce


And now let's venture inside the house, shall we?  Starting with the family room.

BEFORE
Sorry for the lame photo - I couldn't find another one.  The walls had blue wallpaper under the chair rail (which was painted navy blue) and a border just above it.  It was gross.


AFTER





And finally, the kitchen!  This is my favorite interior project so far, and it was also the most work.

BEFORE
Yum, shredded carrots!

DURING
cabinet doors removed


sanding


painting (our garage was unusable for a while)


tearing out the drop ceiling


It took Spencer a while to figure out how to push all these wires into the newly raised ceiling.  He had to extend some of them, put in a few junction boxes, drill holes through the floorboards, and more, but he did it!


After painting cabinets, raising the ceiling, installing canned lighting, painting walls, and getting new counters...

AFTER






My favorite part is the granite countertop.  


It's also the easiest part because we didn't have to do any of it ourselves!  We hired out the countertops and the drywall on the raised ceiling, but everything else was done by us--with the help of our families.

We've done a lot in the backyard too, but you'll have to wait a little while to see those pictures.