Ireland in Pictures

 Our trip to Ireland was wonderful and it is another beautiful place in Europe to visit. It was as green, friendly, and rainy as they say it is. The scenery was spectacular and very humbling. We are so glad we chose to conquer Ireland on our own because it was much easier than Italy would have been. I will try to summarize our time there in photos but like I always say....they just don't do the justice Ireland deserves.


There were a lot of pubs.....

A lot of beer drinking......

A lot of tea time, scones and B & B's......

A lot of castles.......

A lot of driving in this small car on the right side and left side of the road.....by day 2 it was easy.

A lot of scenery...best part of the trip

And a lot of "taking it all in".... every day we had to remind ourselves that we were in Ireland. This was another trip that made us feel like a very small piece in a very large puzzle.

Every time we travel we have very deep conversations about the rest of the world and where we would like to go next. This was another opportunity for us to grow culturally and realize that there is a whole big world out there and the American way is not the only way. We love America but we also love to expand our horizons. In Ireland we crossed paths from people all over the world, mainly from Europe but this is what I love about traveling the most. At any given moment we were surrounded by so many languages that I wished I knew them all.

I can't wait to see what journey we can think of next.....I'm feeling the tropics calling my name.

(If you want to see all of the photos leave your e-mail address in the comments)

Cabinets

Our kitchen cabinets are for the most part finished. We are waiting on more hinges and knobs to get in and we can finish the rest of the doors. It felt really nice getting the kitchen put back together this weekend although we did get use to having the doors off for easy access.

So here is the before pic again......


And here is the transformation!

We went back and forth over our options before doing this:

• New custom cabinets $10,000- more than we were willing to spend at this house
• New pre-fabbed cabinets $2,000- still more than we wanted to spend on cabinets at this house
• Sand and stain ourselves- we attempted this but the grain of our wood made it look like Tiger stripes when we applied the stain and that would drive us nuts
• Then Matt heard about Rust-oleum Cabinet Transformations. After reading several things on it and finding out if would only cost us $120 to do our whole kitchen we were sold.

This is a kit you buy at the store and it's like painting your cabinets but they look stained and you can still see the wood grain. After we tested on the first door we knew this was the most logical thing for us. You leave all of the cabinets on the wall and just remove the doors....therefore our kitchen was still fully functional. It can probably be done over two weekends as there is a lot of drying time in between. Also it takes a lot of patience and a steady painting hand.

Now that the cabinets are done we are going to start thinking countertops, backsplashes, and paint.

Oh and I really hate my WHITE stove now!

Top of the Morning!

We are going to this beautiful place in May! I was hoping to announce the news on St. Patty's day but we were really dragging our feet with making plans but it's official now.

We are going to Ireland for 10 days and doing it on our own this time, no fancy travel group to fall back on. We still have a lot to plan but at least the flights are finally booked.

Photograph by Jim Richardson/National Geographic Stock

First

Here are some pics I was able to get of the kids at Carmen's First Birthday party. Happy President's Day......I'm going to enjoy my day off now :)

Random

Random thoughts from today:

• We got moving very early this morning so we are accomplishing a lot of things.
• We have gone back and forth on kitchen ideas but are finally diving in today.
• It makes me sick how fast money can be spent.....45 mintues of work = $600 for new tires.
• I am soooooooooo ready for summer to be here.
• We are going to our youngest niece's first birthday party tomorrow. It makes me sad that there are no more itty bitty babies around. They have all grown up too fast. Attention sis-in-laws......we need another baby in this family :)
• Ok I need to keep moving before my energy levels crash.

Under Construction

It's been really quiet around here lately, just how we have been wanting it. We pretty much spent the month of January laying low and getting some R & R on the weekends. We planned on jumping in to our next house project but some unexpected truck expenses and new car tires had me hold off for a while. After evaluating the financial situation we are good to go and are starting our kitchen remodel. This will be our biggest and most expensive undertaking which is why we are doing it last. It will take several weeks as it will happen in phases. The cabinets are up first. I know they look fine in the below photo but they are very worn and starting to show their age. This will not be a major overhaul that involves redesigning, just a kitchen update. The appliances will stay for a while longer because they work perfectly fine. Although they do not match I don't plan on buying new ones until we put this house up for sale. Oh besides the fridge seen below. We did have to buy a new fridge last fall because our old one was on the outs.

Good-bye kitchen. Please come back to me soon!

Viva Las Vegas

My best friend turned 30 this week and she wanted to celebrate by going to Las Vegas. We discussed this trip a year ago and I'm glad we were still able to go and embrace 30 with a big party. We walked around and saw the sights, lost our money gambling, but most importantly had a great time visiting with each other. I went to Vegas when I was 14 but wasn't able to do much and only have small memories of it. I had a blast playing the slots with Sara and laughing at each other when we got excited about winning a couple dollars. The boys played the tables but were unsuccessful in making us rich :(

The Strip

Our Hotel

Inside the Venetian

I was amazed at all of the different hotels and how they represented different places like New York New York, Paris, Ceaser's Palace, or my favorite, The Venetian.

The Venetian did a great job of reproducing Venice, Italy. The outside architecture was great, the ambiance inside with the Grand Canal and gondolas was romantic, and the italian food and gelato was delicious.

Ceaser's Palace

The Stratosphere

View from the Stratopshere

Happy 30th Birthday!