"My butt hurts" .... "What?"



I completely feel like the bunny on the right.  If any of you follow me on Facebook, you will know that I have been having sinus and ear problems.  My illness has finally resolved, but I have a hole in my right ear drum.  I did this at the peak of my illness one night when I was coughing non-stop.  Since then, I have been having trouble hearing.  I have also been experiencing ringing in my ear and a little bit of dizziness at times.  It has been frustrating, but I expected this.  Yes, I have a little bit of experience in this realm.  Back in 2004, I ruptured my left ear drum badly while swimming with dolphins.  It had to be surgically repaired.  Then again the next summer, I ruptured the right diving 8 feet in a swimming pool.  Thank goodness it healed on its own.  I have successfully ruptured my right ear drum again about 4 weeks ago and it has not yet healed.  The past 2 days I've felt that my hearing was getting worse.  I have trouble telling where a voice is coming from if I can't see the person, I have trouble hearing myself as if I were being muffled or in a tunnel, and if there is a lot of background noise...you can forget it!  And it's hard to hear myself singing, so I hope I hit the right notes!  It's quite frustrating.  I am glad to be able to hear some and I know it should come back, but for now, I feel like i'm missing out.  Today, I see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.  My ENT said he saw an epithelial bridge across the middle of the hole.  This means my body is trying to heal it. YAY!  He was hopeful it would continue to heal on its own.  He still recommends that I get surgery for my sinus and deviated septum....argghh.  I go back in 4 weeks.  I hope it's healed or I'll my reply will continually be, "what?"

drum roll please!

You've been waiting patiently for pictures of my newly renovated kitchen.....TA DA!
While there are still some projects left for the future and some little touch ups to be made, it is done enough to take pictures.  We were so burnt out from the summer projects redoing our yard that we just couldn't even begin to think about the other projects needing to be done.  We slowly got back into things by painting the pool house, the hall way, and the foyer.  We decided it was time to get going on the kitchen, at least painting the cabinets.  We were going to keep the black appliances for now since we didn't want to spend the money to replace them yet.  I know I will disappoint you with before pictures, because who takes pictures of things their not proud of?  I took some in progress pictures though.  We started by priming the cabinets, then eventually replaced hardware and gave them 3 coats of Swiss Coffee. We went to Lowes to look for veneer to cover the end cabinet and ended up getting appliances while we were there!  Come on!  They were a great deal.  The nice stainless steel counter-depth Fridgidaire was half off!  We had to get a new cook top as the old Jenn Air was probably 30 years old and only half of it worked.  We also got a new dishwasher, which is amazing!  I just thought it was the water pressure that prevented the food from coming off our dishes, but this new dishwasher works so well.  Not even a water spot!  Okay, okay...time to reveal.  Here are the pics of the transformation:

See the dark wood? It made the kitchen feel so small.  Oh, and the hanging cabinet prevent me from using the hutch portion of my china cabinet.

  Plus it was just above my eye level that I kept hitting my head on it! It was ugly and made the kitchen feel smaller as well.  It had to go!

My father-in-law, Barry; brother-in-law, Justin; and Daniel took down the cause of my headaches.  Look how open it got!

 Our new dishwasher that Daniel installed himself!  You can see we didn't have money to replace counter tops and flooring.

Our new refrigerator that Daniel, too, installed.  I love it!

This was the hardest to install ourselves.  It was an undertaking to take out the old cooktop as it had a vent in it going through the floor and out of the house.  We patched up the hole and had to cut the tile a bit to fit it in there. We thought we could do it with a reciprocating saw with a carbide blade.  This was not working as it was really hard to control.  We headed to Home Depot and purchase the carbide blade for the circular saw. It was quite scary at first as it shot dust and sparks.  I stopped Daniel quickly and we ran for masks, which we should've had to begin with, and covered things we didn't want dust on.  Boy was it a mess!  When we got the hole cut out, it was so easy to install.  I love my ceramic cooktop!

We had to keep the old wall oven as we couldn't afford to replace it yet.  We hope to one day get a built-in wall oven with microwave.

The finished kitchen!  We kept the original wood chair railing and molding to go with the dormer and to flow into our den/family room that has wood paneling and built-in bookcases.

And I get to use the hutch on the china cabinet that I also painted in Swiss Coffee.  We also had to keep the trash compactor that we never use.  The space is narrow and we weren't sure what to do with the space.  I hoped to get a beverage/wine cooler to go in the space, but they are all too wide!

We installed under-cabinet lighting we got from Ikea.  Love it!

Our project for this spring is to get our bamboo jungle removed out behind the shop/pool house and the pool...

Why are holidays so busy?!!!

Is it me or are all holidays crazy busy?  I usually feel like I need a vacation afterward.  We tend to go visit everyone, everywhere and jam pack all of that into a day or two.  Don't misunderstand...I love visiting my family and seeing people I haven't seen most of the year. But goodness, I feel like a need several weeks to do it!  Now if I could only have a vacation where I did nothing, but lay around.  That would be nice!

It's been awhile

Okay, so I'm not very good about keeping my blog up.  I can't believe it's been over 3 months since I last posted anything.  I guess that happens when you completely redo your yard and home and then get burnt out.  I still have yet to finish painting our kitchen cabinets, but I did get all of the hardware and a new kitchen table.  The master bathroom will have to wait a while longer as it will be more expensive and time consuming. Well, I guess I should catch you up on what's happened since August 19th...
August/September: Alabama football!
October: More football and Awesome Halloween party! I'll try to post some pictures.
November: so far, Daniel and I went to historic Westville with his family.  Other major things that have occurred: My dad had a heart attack on 11/9 and had a triple bypass the next day.  He came home that Sunday.  He's better, but not feeling absolutely great yet and he's completely bored. Also, my two Alma Maters played football against each other last Thursday night.  Daniel had the audacity to ask who I'd root for.  Let me tell you; I did not go to Georgia State for their athletics.  I went there for PT school and that was it.  My allegiance for college football is with Alabama.  ROLL TIDE!  Now I just hope that we can be Auburn!

Grass is in!

Well, it took two installments to get all the grass in the backyard.  Well, a miscalculation only got us two pallets to begin with, but on the other hand, the trailer would not have been able to carry all four pallets. 

This past weekend we got our first batch down.  It was already looking better and more "home-y".  We had the help of my mother, my brother in-law, and Daniel's mom and step-dad.

We realized that it didn't go as far as we hoped and had to order two more pallets.  So on Wednesday, we got the new ones.  We started placing them and half-way through, the sod was looking rough; not as green and less dirt on the bottom.  They really looked as if they'd been cut days ago and they weren't used and they thought they could just put the good sod on top and no one would notice...well at least that's how we felt.  But regardless, we laid it down anyway. 

OH MY, how much better it looks!  Having grass actually makes my yard look smaller.  Go figure.  But, it looks more like a yard with purpose.  No offense to the former owners, they had some nice plants, that I've moved around a bit, but they just didn't have much of an order or purpose and it was a bit overgrown.  I think it does now. 

NEXT UP, kitchen or bath remodel!

Jungle Removed

So, after two and a half long, tiring months we have finally begun to see the potential of our yard. We dug and raked, and hauled so much I am just completely exhausted. I can't wait until I can just set out the sprinkler, trim a little, and sit and enjoy my lovely backyard. Look at what has become of our yard. Scroll back to the last post to see the before pics. Oh yeah...all that empty space will have grass in it's place TOMORROW!!!

Those big plants are azalea.  They were just out in the middle of the yard.  We moved them back to the fence to open up they yard, then added some hosta and hydrangea in that bed.

The front of the pool house.  I added a small bed in front of the window and a cute bird feeder!

I made a new potted plant with some coleus, pinta, and white lantana with pretty lantana in a hanging basket to the back of the pool house.

I even found a place for the other potted plant I took with me from our old house.

I can't wait to get the grass in.  I'll certainly take pictures and show you!

A Big Jungle

Yeah, sorry it's been so long since I last blogged. It's been kinda crazy around the Maguire household between the move, Daniel being sick, and us trying to make this new house our home. It has been a lot of hard work, especially with the back yard - a complete jungle!



see what I mean?!







I've had a lot of work cut out for me...stay tuned for updates of the jungle-removing process.