Thursday, February 13, 2014

BEST. GIFT. EVER! ! !

It's funny what excites us and makes us happy.

Me? I'm a pretty practical person...I'm not a girl who's into lots of jewellery or expensive nick-nacks. As far as gifts go, I like things that I can use... so to some I guess I could be considered a bit hard to buy for around Birthday's and Anniversaries

Not really. Not if you know me...and MONT knows me well.

He came home this week and produced this out of his work truck...



 WOO HOO!!!!

This is the sort of gift that really makes me smile because I know it's going to get a LOT OF USE!


There's nothing like a new addition to the DIY box! I can't wait to take it for a run...
 .

Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Making home work

Discussions and planning of the kitchen re-vamp are coming along nicely. No firm decisions have been made yet but we have come up with some potentially good ideas that we're pretty excited about

Now I deliberately used the word  "WE"  because MONT has been active in these discussions, which is fabulous, because he's not usually all that interested in the finer details of these things.

For example, when I was painting and putting together the master bedroom and asked what he would like, his response was "I don't care". He is a pretty easy-going sort of fellow...but deep down he does care because I know if I presented him with a room full of cabbage roses and pink frills, he'd certainly let me know what he thought!

Anyway, as I was wandering around the web, I came across Lauren Conrad's blog...and her post on decorating tips for couples.

You can check out Lauren's tips right here

She has some good advice on what you should consider when there are a couple of people who have a lot in common in some areas...and not so many in others, namely decorating choices.

Which brings me back to my little kitchen


I showed you this photo of one section of my kitchen  in my last post.. One of our ideas is to turn the area into a smallish butlers pantry.

We'd erect a wall where the bulkhead is, install a bench and cupboards where the fridge currently is and put the sink and dishwasher in there. The wall could then hold a lot of open shelving for all the pantry bits and pieces (thanks for the idea Natalie) ...and the fridge would be moved out to where my mixer is (on the right).




The other idea that Natalie suggested is to move the oven underneath the existing cook-top. This idea was also suggested by a friend of ours who is a builder, but he took it a step further and said we could gain more bench space by getting rid of that corner area where the oven currently is and squaring up the bench.

He also thought our idea of getting rid of that small ledge that divides the kitchen and dining room and extending the bench was a good one...I've even thought about putting a small sink in the new bench as well...but that's just an idea floating around my brain at the moment

So, that's where we are at the moment. Some of other "out there" ideas, like eliminating the built in robe in the second bedroom to give us more floor space in the kitchen and knocking out part of the wall into the dining room have been knocked on the head...

We've got two more "kitchen" people to talk to and hopefully they'll come up with even more, fresh ideas

Here's hoping