Concrete countertops... NOT a good idea!

So, after 15 hours of pouring concrete by myself, I came to the conclusion that concrete countertops are NOT a good idea.  Why?  They just aren't. 

Don't waste your time and money.  If you want a nice countertop on a budget, just do Granite tiles or some type of tiles.  It's not that expensive.  In the end we probably spent about $300 on the concrete, but we got granite tiles, with $50 shipping for just under $400. 

Pictures to come, stay tuned!

Right now my projects that are all in the works....

-Countertops
-Backsplash
-repaint (we did just paint a year ago, but I'm over brown & tans... we're jumping on the Grey train!)
-Closet Redo (ALL of them, but we're starting with the hall)
-Office Revamp into pantry/playroom
-Master Flooring
-Master Bath Renovation
-Guest Bath Redo (paint, floor, vanity, mirror, lighting)

Sound busy enough?

I Neeeeeeeeed Motivation!

I have so much to get done in the 18 days before the baby shower!  AHHHHHHHHHH!  I have to get on it!  I didn't have any coffee today, but I went to bed at 8:30pm last night!  lol  Let's see what I can do!

awesome, amazing, fabulous, delightful weekend!

Had a great weekend.  Totally killed my diet (part of the reason why my weekend was so great probably!  lol), but I will overcome this week. 

I'm honestly so tired from the weekend, I'm coming here to try and get motivation to get on all my projects for today. 

So, on Friday I installed the wood floor in the kids room 100% BY MYSEFL!  AHHHHH!  insane.  I've never used a saw before, but I feel totally inspired and I'm ready to... pretty much build a house!  lol  Pictures to come soon! 

I have some revamping to do on a free bunk bed we got from our friend Alex (thank you thank you thank you!).  The kids have been in toddler beds STILL cause every time we think about buying them new beds some money issue arises.  :(  So, she was going to burn hers and I said WHAT???  I'll take them.  So I'm going to make the side guard rail and the latter and rig them together.  Oh and sand and paint them.  ALL the kids furniture is currently different colors.  Their dresser is white, the beds are a light wood, their train table is a black/espresso.  Since the train table is the newest thing and easiest to match everything else too, I'm gonna paint the dresser and beds to match it. 

The kids room still needs the molding done, but I'm gonna wait 'til I do the floors in the other bedroom and then do the molding at the same time.  BUT, today I need to move everything from the kids temporary room, back to their room so I can scrape the ceilings in there, spray texture, paint the ceiling white, paint the walls (who knows what color yet), install the floor, install the molding... insert nap here!

And pretty much all that stuff needs to be done this week!  And that's with a sea world trip thrown in the mix on wednesday.  ahhhhhhhhh! 

So, that's why I'm missing!  lol!  I hope to be back soon... VERY soon!  I have so many pictures that need entries to go with them. 

Oh, and update, had to take my cpr/first aid class on saturday.  While there, BORED, I got a facebook message....  if you remember this entry "How are your relationships?" you'll remember my struggle with a friend, I said things I shouldn't and never gave her the chance she deserved.  I was a HORRIBLE friend.  So, I sent her a message about 2 weeks ago and hadn't heard anything back.  So I got a message back during my class and it was GREAT!  We actually went to dinner with them saturday night after my class and they came over and BBQed with us Sunday.  I'm VERY happy with my decisions and I'm so glad that they are part of our life again.  I couldn't have asked for a better outcome and I'm working on being an amazing friend!

I'm gonna stop here because my children are running around the house like little maniacs and screaming for breakfast and hopefully if I go make it I'll get motivated to wash their bright outfit for kids choir (they have to wear the same one like 5 days this week, lol), move their room back and scrape ceilings..... uuuuuuuuuuugh. 

Are we done yet???

I swear, the world of home remodeling & fixing up is NEVER ending!  I can't WAIT for 5 more years when our house is paid off and we have more money to fix more of the big things that need to be done.  'Til then of course, little by little, we're getting there.

So, after a week of madness.....  demo, painting, ceiling scraping... and worstly, LIVING on plywood floors with a house covered in dust from removing the tile glue and crap... ugh...  FINALLY on thursday our flooring was started and all put in (well, now ALL put in, but all the rooms they were hired to do) by Friday night!  :D 

Since my child care inspection will be here way too soon, there's no way we had time to lay 1400 sq. ft. of flooring in the main living areas (living room, hallway & entryway - 1168 sq. ft, bathroom - 65 sq. ft, kitchen - 122 sq. ft.) so we paid for that to be done.  Plus those are areas our guests really see and have a TON of angles not to mention the rock fire place to go around.. gosh.. they spent almost ALL of friday just on our little kitchen alone because the angles were so hard.  So, we wanted those areas to be done right and look the best.   Money well spent.

So now we have the flooring for the two bedrooms, one being the kids sleeping room, the other will be set up with more baby toys for the younger child care children. 

Anyway, I haven't uploaded all my pictures from my nice camera, BUT I do have a sneak peek cell phone pic I can share 'til I do...

 

Can't even tell you how much I LOVE it!  My parents had installed the carpet when I was in 5th grade.  that carpet was going on 17 years old.  And I can't tell you how many dogs my family used to have.  Actually right after the carpet was installer, our family dog had puppies... yeah... 6 puppies NOT potty trained.  Ugh.. and when we took over the house 2 years ago, my childhood dog was still around but on her last leg.  In her prime of course she would never pee in the house, but when she was practically blind and barely walking, pretty much all she did was pee and poop in the house.  So the carpet was hammered, to say the least.  Not to mention the fact that we live on 3 acres of DIRT!  Let me tell you when we ripped that carpet up, there was literally PILES of dirt!  PILES!!!!!!  Like little mountains.  It was gross.  I will NEVER get carpet again.  NEVER.  with dirt, kids and dogs, carpet just does not work.  I don't care if I have to sweep and mop everyday the rest of my life...  

So, I need to get back to cleaning the layers of dust off everything and getting my construction zone back to home condition, so I can move onto the next project..... :D  Can't wait to share pics of all we've done though!

A new, smaller me is back! lol

So, It's been a bit.  I've been C R A Z Y busy doing work around the house!  cleaning, painting, scraping ceilings!  I can't wait to show some before and after pictures!

We FINALLY found our flooring.  We're going with a cheap laminate wood in the living room, entry, hallway and two bedrooms.  We're doing an 18x18 tile in the kitchen, office, bathrooms and the master bedroom.  The master has a jacuzzi tub in it which is where my munchkins take their baths and yeah, when they take baths the water is ALL OVER the floor so if we did the laminate wood in there, it would be thrashed.

We're having the living room professionally installed because it's 1168 sq. ft. and I just don't feel up to doing THAT big of a room!  lol  It's bad enough I have to scrape the ceilings and respray them!  lol  I'm doing pretty good though.  I plan on more scraping today.  The kids are going with their "old" dad, aka my ex, for the night.  My poor hubby has inventory tonight and will have to work super duper late 'til they're done.  ugh.  So yeah, I'll have a lot of time to kill.  But in between that I have to clean for people to come over for super bowl tomorrow.  Although luckily it's just super close friends so I don't feel the need to be anal about the cleanliness.  Especially since there's a white dust settled all over everything from the popcorn ceilings when they came down in the area's I did yesterday.  lol  MESS!

Anyway, I'm excited about the floors but it's so much work to do before they can go in, it's a little intimidating to be honest.  lol.  All the floors have to be taken down and resprayed, all the rooms painted... I mean luckily we're kinda doing the floors room by room so once all the ceilings are down, then I'll paint then do floors room by room kinda thing.  Although the living room is already painted, we'll just have to go over it once the ceillings sprayed.  Some spots on the walls needed a second coat anyway.



So yeah, that's where I stand...


OH YEAH!  HOW COULD I FORGET???

The smaller me!!!  lol!

As of yesterday I was down exactly 19lbs! :D  Thank you weight watchers for helping me kiss 19lbs goodbye in exactly a months time! :D  yay!!!

And that's with 100% no intentional exercise.  I mean I've been doing house work, but I have not went to the gym and I have not done any videos... nothing :D  Yay!

Thank goodness...

Christmas is over.

And even better, 2010 is almost over!

I have mixed opinions about 2010.

One of the best things of my life happened in 2010... I married my best friend and love of my life.

Also, my divorce from my ex husband was FINALLY final after years of arguing and only staying "married" to finish my foster sons adoption.

Some of the worst things of my life happened in 2010... My boss demolished the office with me inside, and fired me, all because I told him there wasn't enough money for him to steal, yes, STEAL, from the corporation at the time.  He then fired me.  He lied to unemployment.  And left me currently on disability which pays about 1/4 of the pay I was used to in a month.  We've been broke pretty much all year because of it.

My neighbors 19 year old daughter died in a car accident.

My ex husband quit paying COURT ORDERED child support and rarely ever seeing the kids.

I backed into my husbands car (sorry hun!)

My parents barely got any work all year (they own their own business and do iron work)

We were informed that Jared's grandma Dora only had 3 weeks to live.  That was about 2 weeks ago now....


To say the LEAST, I'm 100% ready for 2011!

It's already off to a great start in my opinion...

On monday I had an appointment at the preschool and we qualify for low income assistance.  What does that mean?  Nolyn can go to preschool, FREE!  Not that I don't love having my little booger home, but he was getting VERY, EXTREMELY attached to mommy.  Everytime I'd leave he'd cry.  ugh.  It's hard on my heart.  The little man LOVES being around other kids and really needed some time with kids, without his big brother.  We qualified for 5 days a week, just from 8:30am-11:30am.

This also helps with my new business venture.  I will be opening my own family child care out of my home.  Because of this we're trying to fix up the house like crazy... and on a budget at that.  I'm sure i'll be posting pictures of the improvements as they're done.  Currently my first room is the boys room.  I've moved them into the extra room.  I scrapped the popcorn ceilings down, now we're getting them ready to spray on the new texture.  My plan is to make them an amazing room!

None of our bedrooms have flooring.  We pulled up the 15+ year old carpet when we moved in (and I WAS working and making enough $ to afford new flooring) and we've been broke ever since!  I'm planning on painting the floor in the boys room I think... at least temporary.  We all have plywood subfloors right now.  not fun.

So yeah, that's most of our excitement around here.  I have 'til June (when my disability runs out) to get this daycare stuff going.  yikes.  I'm nervous!

I hope everyone had an amazing holiday!  For being broke ours was actually good because we're here and healthy and we did have enough cash to give our kids what they wanted at least, and to get each other things we *needed*.