Made a quick birthday card for my baby girl, Savanna, who turned 19 on St. Patrick's Day. We are getting together tonight to celebrate my father-in-law's 80th which is next week, so made them both alike. Close enough to St. Pat's Day for me. At a standstill on the kitchen until the floor is in. The electrician stopped in yesterday to see what he needs to do so hopefully by next week-end, it will be completed, but Jim's (my carpenter) surgery is scheduled for Tuesday so he may not be able to come to install the island and the trim until the following week. But soon, I will have a new kitchen! It is really gorgeous so far and I have most everything put away in the cabinets and will love it when my rack for pots and pans is installed above the island.

Well, the plumber comes to hook-up the dishwasher in an hour and the flooring guy comes Monday to start laying ceramic tile. Once he is all done, Jim and gang will come back and put the island in and finish trimming the bottoms, then we'll have the electrician come and change the ugly lights for us. It is amazing how diferent it looks! It is gorgeous so far! We are very happy with all that has been done so far.

The flash did something funky to two of these and made them yelloyish, but the warm brown is the true color. Of course, the paint cans, rollers, dishwwasher parts, newslpaper to protect the surfaces, etc. are all still there to add some clutter! LOL

Here's how it all looked after Friday. Got a lot more done on cabinets, countertops are on, and the plumber came and put in the sink. Yeah, we have water again! They also started filling in the bulkhead above the cabinets. My faucet and the hardware for cabinets and drawers is antique copper. You can see the new lazy susan a bit here.

Thursday night, I decided to get my painting of the accent walls started so I didn't have to be so careful. I couldn't go all the way over behind the stove as the drywall compound was still wet from them mudding the new two-foot section of wall we added there, so will have to paint that and above the doorway later this week. It need another layer of mud and then to be texturized to match the rest.

Sorry about not updating. Got five moles taken off my face on Thursday and been super busy since. So here are the kitchen updates for Thursday. This is how it looked when the guys called it a day on Thursday. Then that night, I decided to get most of my accent wall painting done so I didn't have to be so careful.

So here's how my kitchen looked yesterday and then last night. What a mess. The garage is really a disaster but should see some great results by end of today,I hope. My carpeter's wife, who is a friend of mine, is on her second bout of chemo for breast cancer, and we found out yesterday that the problems he's been having and testing he's had last week, are confirmed prostate cancer. Can they have any worse news! I am praying that both were caught very early and can be successfully beaten! Such good people and such a talented carpenter. These are the old cabinets shown here during removal. The new framing structure you see at the top is part of the bulk-head he is building for above the cabinets. Out with the old and hopefully, in with the new!

Sweet and talented blog-friend Lori has honored me with the Sunshine Blog award and I now have to honor six other blogs that I love. There are so many that I go to nearly every day but here are some of my favorites:
Hels http://pinkleart.blogspot.com/
Shelly- Stamptramp http://shellyhickox.blogspot.com/
Wendy Vecchi- Studio 490 http://studio490art.blogspot.com/
Lyn Stevens- Trash to Treasure art http://trashtotreasureart.blogspot.com/
Sherry Cheever http://sherrycheever.blogs.splitcoaststampers.com/
Wanda http://artbywanda.blogspot.com/
They all have marvelous blogs and share their gorgeous art; some of them daily. So go have a look at all of these and I'm sure you'll agree with me.

Well, we are finally getting around to remodelling our kitchen. We decided that doing this would be our shared Christmas present last year and have finally gotten an acceptable bid to get what we want done. Jim is custom-building all the cabinets and the island for us. We are also getting new countertops, sink, faucet, dishwasher, hardware, and a ceramic tile floor. We were going to get a wood floor but decided that the tile will probably hold up better and longer. I have never had a dishwasher in my life so this should be a real treat for us!!! I am posting some "Before" shots here of how it looked a few days ago. I have everything out of the cabinets and lazy susan, just need to empty the drawers tonight to be ready for them to come and tear out the old. some of them will go into the garage for organized storage and some down to my craft studio! Yeah! I don't think I have room for very many but whatever will fit nicely, I am going to use. Will post the after shots very soon, I HOPE! The floor will be the last thing in and then when everything is situated again, we will get an eletrician to come and change out the ugly lighting and put in some cans for us. I think I am going to get one of those big hangy-things for my pots and pans too and get a new set in red.

In my ATC's Are Us yahoogroup, we are doing a name swap. Each month, all of us that signed up make an atc featuring the name of two of the gals in the swap assigned to that month so it doesn't get overwhelming to make them all at once. This month it is Jean and Grace's turns and I am showing their cards here. Hope they both like them.

Got my swaps already to go out in tomorrow's mail for my overseas atc group. This month my selections were: Spring, Alpha Y, and Die-Cuts. They were fun to make and I even pulled out my Flower-Soft and used it on the Spring one. I love monochromatic so that's how I did my Y is for yellow atc. Used a new Stampin' Up punch for the die-cuts one.

Here are my Inchies for my swaps for March. This month the themes were Letter O and Lion/Lamb. I decided on O is for Owl and I used the Lamb because Lord knows we've had enough Lion weather for a while. I much prefer the mild, although I do like lions. I played with my stickles on both sets of them, alcohol ink polished stone and mulberry paper, watercolor pencils and blending pens. They were both fun to make.

Finally getting around to adding Victoria's birthday party pictures here. My precious granddaughter has turned nine now! I can't believe she's half-grown already. The one photo is of all the new Sizzix dies I got her for her birthday this year. she's getting quite a collection already. I am also adding a picture of her little brother AJ at his wrestling tournament over the week-end. It's fun to watch him wrestle but what a long day it makes with all the in-between matches time!