Since our furniture was going to be so delayed (2 weeks) we decided to make the best of our completely empty living and dining rooms and paint our TERRIBLE kitchen cabinets.  While I don't have anything against oak, when it is used in combination with a yellow floor, yellow walls, and yellow backsplash, it is not the best looking kitchen in the world. Here is the story of our newly painted kitchen cabinets!

Here they are before:  

We took them all down and laid them all out on the floor.  Luke took all the hardware off of them while I started sanding the part attached to the wall.  

 Here they are!  Notice the super pretty and stylish track lighting.  

After a light sanding to get the glossiness off of them, we wiped everything down really well, allowed it to dry for a couple minutes, and then primed everything.  

Then it was time to paint! We decided to do the upper cabinets a snowy white (how punny of me) and the lowers a blue gray to try to pull more blue out of the countertops than green.  We put two coats on each side of everything.  This definitely took a bit of time because of the drying time in between coats, but we got it done in about a week.  We would do one coat per night and then flip and do the other side the next night.  Luke had a blast (not really, he hates me).

Here is the finished product! How could you not love that!?  It is definitely much better than the originals and only cost about $200!  We decided to keep the old brass hardware on them to save money, and they really don’t look that bad. 

First project down, many, many more to go and I am so excited about it!  I love having projects again!  All of our stuff is also here to the kitchen is completely moved into and finished (for now). Next up (after unpacking all the boxes) is painting the walls and seeing if we can DIY knocking out the silly boxes the people put into the ceilings.

If you have any questions about painting your kitchen cabinets, let me know! I definitely learned a lot while doing these and am happy to share my wisdom ;)

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!!

Last weekend Luke and I celebrated our first St. Patrick's day as Chicagoans!  We saw the river dyed green (oh my goodness, it is actually bright green) and then went to drink our share of green beer.  It was a fabulous day!

 See, it really is green!

 

 Green beer and happy face!

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Wedding Weekend: Rehearsal Dinner

The rehearsal dinner! Oh my goodness where do I begin??

Sage and Louis (Luke's parents) hosted the rehearsal dinner at Hardywood Brewery and it was SO MUCH FUN.  We danced, ate, toasted, drank beer, exchanged gifts, and just had a really awesome time. It was the perfect way to kick off our wedding weekend and we are so thankful for the memories made! Here is the only picture I ended up with of the brewery:

 

When we started planning the rehearsal dinner with Luke’s parents there were many, many [MANY] ideas passed around about what to do.  In all the ideas two things were the same: 1) beer had to be part of the theme. 2) it had to be casual and fun.  For Louis and Sage’s rehearsal dinner they rented a school bus and drove their bridal party out to the best BBQ joint in Austin.  After stuffing themselves full of amazing BBQ they went to a hole-in-the-wall bar and celebrated.  They both remember that night as one of the best nights of their lives and were so sweet in wanting to recreate it for us (and let’s be honest, so they could relive that awesome night again themselves!!) 

So to honor Louis and Sage’s wonderful rehearsal dinner [not so ;)] many years ago, we decided to go the beer and BBQ route and it was FABULOUS! We had Texas beef brisket, smoked turkey, green beans, baked beans, corn bread and, oh my, bread pudding that was to die for.  I promised myself I wouldn’t eat too much the night before the wedding (I had a terrible fear I wouldn’t fit into my dress) but I didn’t work very well once I saw the bread pudding. 

So anyway, we ate a wonderful dinner, then had a tour of the brewery so we could learn a little about how they make beer!  After we were sufficiently stuffed, we had toasts from Luke’s dad, my dad, Luke’s sister, my cousin- Jeb, Luke’s friend- Jake, and my friends- Olivia and Britt.  As you can see from our faces below (ok, mainly my face) they were hilarious, heartfelt, and absolutely perfect.  We are so thankful to have such a wonderful group of people in our lives that surrounded us with love and support all weekend (and all our lives!)

 After toasts….we DANCED and oh lawd was it fun.  It was the absolutely perfect way to end the night. Here are a couple of the dancing :)

Luke and I snuck off to exchange gifts with each other and our families in the middle of everything.  It was a really special time to steal and I recommend anyone planning a wedding doing the same thing.  It is so important to thank the people who raised both of you.  It was a very special moment for us. 

Here are a couple extra pictures with Luke and me with our minister and his wife and my bridesmaids (minus Micah) and me.  

So that is the rehearsal dinner.  Thank you, thank you, to the best parents-in-law for throwing such a wonderful party for us!  We had a blast and I am fairly certain everyone else did as well. 

An open letter to the new owner of my house

Dear New Owner of my Home:

You probably just got to the attorneys office to sign the final papers and buy my home.  You are probably nervous and excited about this new opportunity, this new place to make your home.  Please love it, take care of it, and cherish the memories you make there. 

Before I bought it, a single man lived there and left it when he passed away.  He had cats to keep him company and a garden in the middle of the backyard to keep him busy (in the spring you can still see the outline of the garden in the back yard).  I was told he was something of a hoarder and that by the time he passed away the poor house was in desperate need of repair and TLC. A house flipper bought the house, replaced most of the drywall, all the windows, roof and kitchen.  The house was healthy again but had no love.  It wasn’t a home again.

When I drove up to it the first time 2 years ago I knew it was supposed to be mine and I saw the potential.  When I bought it it looked like this:

I love that house.  I love that it is old and the basement smells like dirt and must.  I love that I had to put inch-high blocks under two legs of my hutch because the house isn’t exactly level.  I love that when you put wine in the refrigerator it rolls all the way over to the left side. I love that in the middle of the night the screen door will blow open with the wind and then slam shut scaring you to death if you don’t lock it.  I love that the light switch next to my bed did absolutely nothing. 

That home has a piece of my heart. It is where I lived when I got engaged and married.  It is where I hosted my first Easter dinner.  I sent my fiancé off to Chicago while living there. 

I keep calling it my home, and to me it always will be.  But I know that you will paint the walls, hang drapes, fill it with your own memories.  And eventually... Make it yours.  

Take care of it for me.  Love it.  And welcome to your home.

 

Wedding Weekend: Bridesmaids Luncheon

I’ve decided to do a wedding weekend series and share one event a week with you all in hopes that by the time we get to the actual wedding day I will have the wonderful pictures back from my photographer, Lauryn Galloway, to share with you all. 

Friday was my Bridesmaid’s luncheon.  My stand-in grandmother, Tinsley, was so very kind and hosted it at The Country Club of Virginia.  I worked weddings there as an event intern many summers ago so it was very weird being back as a bride!

I knew the luncheon would be beautiful, classic, and feminine but I had no idea how perfect it would be until I walked in.  Everything from the room Tinsley chose to the gorgeous flower arrangements and pink napkins was so perfect I could have melted when I saw it! 

Here are a couple pictures of the set up with my gifts to my bridesmaids:

The delicious steak and spinach salad with grilled brie. Yumm!: 

These are my wonderful Bridesmaids.  Such a pretty looking group :)

And here is Luke's mom, Tinsley, my mom, Luke's grandmother, and Betsy. 

And the whole group! 

A million thank yous to Tinsley.  It was such a perfect event and I am so grateful for your love!

We made it to Chicago!

Wow it's been a busy two weeks!

We are now Mr. and Mrs. Luke Kohler, we packed up my house, loaded the moving van, drove to Chicago in the crazy snow storm, and officially bought our first condo! There are obviously a lot of updates that need to be made but I wanted to first share our first night in our condo.

On Wednesday we packed up my house and got in the car to begin our 12 hour drive to Chicago.  Hoping to beat the storm, we drove as long as we could on Wednesday night and only stopped once the snow got so bad we couldn't see in front of us.  We pulled off and stayed at a Quality Inn at 1am, and oh, how "quality" it was....I took my silver in and slept with it.

We woke up at 5am the next morning and started our drive again.  This time we were the only people on the road except for a truck that refused to pass us so we decided they were following us to be sure we didn't die.  How nice of him. This is the view from our drive.

We arrived in Chicago at 2, went to close on our house and then "moved in".  I put quotes around that because we moved our air mattress in and that's about it.

Here are some of our first views coming into Chicago!

We set up our air mattress, lit a fire in our very own wood burning fire place, ordered Chinese food, and just took everything in.  We are married, we own a home, we live in Chicago!

This was my fortune.  I think it's pretty accurate :)

So that is our first night.  I will start posting different wedding events, honeymoon at The Homestead, and pictures of our condo soon!