#1: Paint My Kitchen

A week and a half ago my dad called me. "I have a week and a half off starting this Thursday afternoon. Do you want me to come help you do some things around your house, like paint your kitchen?"

Did I ever! He arrived Thursday evening.

Friday was spent assessing some things, buying final supplies, and, for half of the day, working (at my office). On Sunday morning Dad and I started scoring and soaking the wallpaper border. After it soaked we scraped it off the wall (it came off pretty easily, thankfully) and then started taking the cabinet doors off. I don't have fancy cabinets; they are homemade (by the people before us) painted wood, so they had to be painted, too. Yikes.

(Honestly, if I had known what a big job this was going to be before I did it, I would never have thought I could do it myself. Good thing I didn't know...and even better that my dad came to help me.)

So...after an 11-hour day on Sunday, a couple of hours on Monday morning and evening, and Dad doing touch-up yesterday, we finally have a finished product! Here are the before and after pictures, with a couple of "in process" photos in-between:

BEFORE: My dad inspecting the wallpaper.

DURING: The wallpaper scraped off the wall and littering the kitchen.


DURING: Cabinet doors off, almost everything painted.


AFTER: The finished product!

Old #1: Paint my kitchen.
New #1: Make/Send my new niece a baby gift.

#4: Finish Kayla's First Year Scrapbook

I did it! I finally completed Kayla's first-year scrapbook. I've been working on it since before she was born, and it includes the obligatory positive pregnancy test photo, belly pictures, and photos of getting the nursery painted and set up. It ends with Kayla's first birthday party photos and the messages friends and family wrote for her to enjoy later in life.

I had actually finished the pages several weeks ago, but the slip covers I had used for the last half dozen or so pages weren't hole-punched the same distance as the others, so I had to get a hole-punch and punch new holes so the sheets would fit in the book. I finally did that and found time to get it done, so now I can cross this off my five things list.


Old #4: Finish Kayla's first year scrapbook
New #4: Plant flowers in my porch flower pot