fit and trim 1

no matter what we are doing, a mess always seems to be close behind...

the first piece of trim on the double door frames.

three pieces out of four.

tah dah! all four pieces of trim up- two door frames down!

mr. lincoln

at the last minute we decided to get a cake for the kids to have in celebration. the night before, i went to the grocery store and picked out what ever they had and they wrote the message on it. purple flowers aren't very patriotic, but we did what we could!

this large two and a half foot portrait of lincoln i brought from home. i had this thing hanging up in my living room for about three years!

art gallery 2

a look into the room with the paintings.

some guests talk while enjoying the artwork.
diana's dad did this one. a realistic painting of a street diana grew up on.
this is an abstract painting that diana's dad did. as someone who graduated college with a degree in art, i am really impressed with her dad's work- i could never do anything even close to this level of craftsmanship! it is so impressive to see the actual work, these pictures don't do the work justice.

art gallery 1

looking into the gallery, this is the room with the photography.

i was really amazed at how many people were there to see the works, over the course of about an hour, i have to guess there were at least two hundred people!

this is the room with the paintings.

everyone, including myself, enjoyed the little finger foods that were provided.

nintendo party

the kids are having a great time rocking out with rockband!

a couple of the boys challenging each other in mario: dance dance revolution!

they loved playing smash brothers: brawl.

a new floor 5

papa puts the last pieces of flooring into the corner of the living room.

after the new flooring was in, tim reattached the carpet for the rest of the living room.

the mess we created by throwing everything in the living room over to one side so we could work.

the finished product! it looks amazing! thank you timmy and dad, i owe you two big time!

now begins the process of putting everything where it needs to go, making it livable again.

a new floor 4

after much trying, we finally gave up on unhooking the stove from the gas main. that meant that the fridge and stove could only move a few feet. we finished the area in front of them, then rolled them onto cardboard and onto the finished part so we could get the area that they were on.

timmy and papa pushed the fridge in the way of the kitchen doorway, so i was stuck on one end while they worked.

papa, stuck between a fridge and a hard place...

timmy gets the last of the flooring behind the stove.

a new floor 3

using all these tools, timmy achieves what we thought was impossible: triming around the toilet!

starting to blend from the kitchen to the living room.

papa lays the differnt planks through the living room.

made it all the way to the front door!

a new floor 2

the first piece goes down.

as more and more pieces go down, new new floor starts to take shape.

we realized that we would need a heavy floor roller to run over the wood vinyl, so i ran to home depot and got a rental.

papa and tim doing some of the painstaking detail work.

a new floor 1

the whole living room was covered in carpet (that tim had layed down three years ago), but now we wanted the area from the front door to the kitchen to have the new wood vinyl flooring, so we tore it up. unfortunately the tile underneath the carpet in that area was really loose, so we had to remove all the tile.

i tore out the rest of the tile and cleaned up the pieces while papa and tim prepared the floor for the wood vinyl.

more clean-up

now that the kitchen and living room floors were uneven, tim had to make a gentle slope for the new flooring.

a clean surface to begin putting in the new flooring.

poco again

you can never have too many pictures of poco! the only problem is that he so rarely sits still, its like he knows someone is trying to take a picture of him. he sits still, right up until the camera actually snaps the photo!

painting, round 2. 2

i got everything taped up with that cool blue tape, then primed it up!

this is the final color along with the cool new shower curtain! it doesn't look much different in the photo, but it is quite a bit lighter. when diana saw it she was happy to see the new look.

painting, round 2. 1

the old paint was pretty gross. the color was ok, but i didn't get a good type of paint for a bathroom, so it was not doing so well with the humidity that comes from the shower.

diana liked the green, but felt it was too dark for such a small room. so it was time to brighten it up!

one year anniversary

diana send me a picture of the flowers that i had sent to her. they arrived at her work and she said she was really embarrassed, but in a good way!
i'm so glad i can do these little romantic gestures for her and she appreciates them.

off they go

here is the invitation itself, inviting you to the wedding.

this is the invitation in its decorative sleeve, wrapped with a white ribbon and a red heart sticker. the ribbons were actually a ton longer because we were supposed to make cute bows with them to accent the front of the invitation, but we knew that we would not be able to pull off a bow that looked anywhere near as good as the example, so we opted for the sticker instead... much easier!