The Very Unofficial Start to Our Kitchen Renovation

Our kitchen is very special. We have brown cabinets set against orange counter tops.  We have our fridge in a hole that is way too big. There are 3 different light switches used to turn the lights on. The appliances take me on a trip back in time to probably before I was born and are probably half the size of appliances people would buy today. I really feel like I've crossed into the Twilight Zone when I remember my kitchen and bathrooms have carpet but the living areas have tile and marble (???).

I mostly got used to all of this and most of the time am not even phased by the color scheme. The one thing I could never get used to is the dishwasher.

Not only is the inside tiny and somehow the rack doesn't line up to easily put dishes in, but it is pretty much the biggest liability we have going on. The door is a deathtrap. It's super heavy and will come crashing down, almost to the floor. This makes it very scary and annoying to fill since the bottom rack will come sliding down.

With a small dog and a baby that will one day become mobile, this thing had to go. We took advantage of a President's Day Sale and bought our first new appliance!

I told my dad it's the nicest appliance I have ever owned, which is true. He told me that's sad. Maybe it is. I realized it's actually the first appliance I have ever bought. That might be sad too.

I really will miss the wood paneling, but it's the price we have to pay to get rid of the death trap.

Nursery Fit for a Princess

When it finally hit me that I was actually having a baby (when I was around 3 months pregnant), I got right to work on planning the nursery... meaning I started a Pinterest board. We found out we were having a baby girl and after ordering some furniture I realized I would actually really have to start planning the nursery. While I played around with baby names, I joked that the baby's name was Genvieve, a name from my high school French textbooks, and she was French. From there, I decided on a France themed nursery in which to raise my French baby.

We were renting at the time and knew we'd be moving sometime in the next year, so we didn't alter the floor or walls, but prepared for baby to evict me from my office.

I think we did ok going from this:

To this:

After not even 5 short months in that room, we had to pack it all up and move. Of course upon moving into the new house, we had to get straight to work on the most important room - the nursery!

Unfortunately, we didn't quite have a blank slate. The room we were working with was covered in wallpaper with bright red carpet and a black chandelier.

We took down the wallpaper, pulled up the carpet, painted, and got our hardwood floors refinished while the baby was in a temporary room with even worse carpeting ("the vomit room") and even spent a few days living in the dining room.

All the work and moving from room to room was worth it because in the end we created a beautiful nursery for our little French princess.