I found my kitchen style

I was poking around on HGTV.com, Lowes.com and HomeDepot.com last night.

I found a few things that intrigued me. I liked different elements of different styles.

Until I saw this one. I loved it. This one was on the Home Depot site.

I immediately thought "Yes, that is my kitchen!"

A brief survey of the people who know me best bears out that reaction.

I may go for yellow instead of blue on the tile. I may not.

And the layout will have to be different to fit my space.

But the overall style and feel is spot on for me. I love the simple lines. I love the modern elements like the stainless sink and appliances and the dark counter and how it all contrasts with the retro feel of the subway tile.

Now I just need the funds.

Time to start cooking up some ideas

Here is a simple card I did for an online swap. It is just the image stamped in the magenta then versamarked and embosses in ultra thick clear, then versamarked again and double embossed in the ultra thick clear. It gives it that glassy look I like.

Stamp is from Stampin' Up.

Anway, I had a busy, but good day today. I started by doing some errands (carwash, Target, bank, etc.). Then I had lunch with a friend and went to work.

I really didn't accomplish anything at home, but that is OK. There is always tomorrow. And the weekend.

I want to start looking into some ideas for my kitchen remodel on Sunday. I am so excited about this. It really will be nerve-wracking for me though. It is a huge deal and likely will end up being a good chunk of money.

I have a friend who recently redid a kitchen (among other things), and he is going to share his budget with me and what all he put into his remodel. You can check out what he is doing on his blog at http://intergalacticrehabs.blogspot.com/.

I am so looking forward to a new kitchen, but worry about the work time and being without a kitchen while they do the construction. I guess there is always paper plates and cooking on the grill if I get sick of takeout.

Once I get started on this whole adventure, I will post some before, during and after pictures.

So, anyone go through a remodel like this recently? Have any tips?

Keeping it clean

This is a card I made as a good luck card for a friend moving to a new state and a new job. I loved the textured paper, so that was the inspiration for the card.

The stamps are All Night Media (http://www.plaidonline.com/productSearchResults.asp?cat2ID=36&cat3ID=99.) It was one of those boxed sets with a theme. The inside is stamped with the symbol for good luck (and the words under it.)

The base of the card and the paper right behind the image are DCWV matte stack papers. The patterned paper came from one of those pound-of-paper packs that is just filled with all sorts of random scraps.

I kept the palette simple with the tone-on-tone paper and a simple sheer ribbon. I really wanted to let the texture and the image be the focus, so I didn't use extra embellishments or too much fussiness.

The image was just colored in with markers.

My friend loved the card. She said she framed it and has it at her desk at her new as a reminder of the friends she still has in California.

Awwwwwwwwww... sweet!

Playing ketchup, er, catch up.

First of all, no tire problems to note here. Whew!

I know I have not posted for a few days, but I had a busy weekend of chores and errands.

Here is a recap: Sunday we had our monthly stamper group lunch. It was fun as always. And the food was good as always. My contribution was dessert. I made a lowfat trifle with angel food cake, nectarines, strawberries and a sauce of part skim ricotta cheese and honey (instead of a heavy cream or custard). It was quite good and light. And the nectarines were fabulous in it.

After that I went home and did some chores around the house. I still have stuff to do. It never seems to end.

Monday was a good day. I found out I was approved for my refinancing. I was able to lower my interest rate and take out some equity all while keeping my payments the same.

Yay! I am planning on remodeling the kitchen. I also want to pay off a bill. But if I can stretch the moeny far enough, I may do some work on the guest bathroom.

That is going to be a very involved process for me. I have so many ideas of what I want in the kitchen. But the basic space and layout will not change. So I need to do some research and planning.

The notary came over that evening and I signed all the paperwork.

What else did I do Monday?

Oh yeah, I went to pottery. I was bummed to hear that the teacher I like won't be back in the fall and may not even be back for the summer class I have already paid for. I guess they will get someone to take that over if she leaves. I hope they don't cancel.

I decided to skip the Thursday class next session. Two days a week was too much. I like that Thursday time for chores. If I get the chores done Thursday before work, I don't spend so much of my weekend on them.

The rest of Monday I puttered around the house and did some cleaning.

Then I went to the late showing of "Knocked Up." It was a cute movie. Overall I enjoyed it. I could definitely tell it was from the "Anchorman" "40-Year-Old Virgin" people. So many of the actors were the same and the writing style is the same.

I don't buy that a smart, gorgeous successful woman like Katherine Heigl's character would hook up with a schlubby stoner like Seth Rogen's character. But hey, it is entertainment. Sometimes it requires turning off your brain and just enjoying the jokes.

As always, Paul Rudd was great. I think he is underrated as a comic actor.

Today I met a former colleague for lunch at a Japanese place in Torrance. It was washoku style food, which is Japanese comfort food. It was unusual in some ways, familiar in some ways. But very, very good. Even the stuff that was a little funky for me was at least interesting. My only experience with Japanese food is really sushi and the various dishes you might find in a sushi place. It was fun to try something new.

The name of the restaurant is Yuzu. It is in Old Torrance.

I had a lunch special of grilled halibut. It came with salad, miso soup, rice, tofu and a couple little dishes of pickled and stewed vegetables.

That is the art for this post. That was taken in dim light with a camera phone. Trust me, it looked MUCH, much better in person. And it tasted fabulous.

OK, now this is just getting silly

No art with this post. I didn't have anything handy to illustrate the absurdity of my morning...

I went out to my garage today, got in the car and backed down the driveway.

Fwup. Fwup. Fwup.

You have GOT to be kidding me.

Another flat tire.

At least this time is wasn't the front passenger tire. Again. That is the tire that was flat a couple months ago, then flat again Wednesday night.

So I was leaving to go to work. Thinking I didn't want to wait for AAA, I drove (slowly and with flashing lights) to a service station about 1/4 mile from home.

I thought I would just get air in the tire then head to the tire store. Again.

But this was an actual service station. Shocking. Even more shocking: It was open.

Which is a good thing since the tire wasn't going to hold air. There was a hole on the back side of it.

So I had to have the guy put on the spare.

Now when I had the two front tires replaced Thursday, I thought they would leave me the better of the two as a spare.

NO! They left me the tire that won't hold air for more than a few hours!

So othe service station guy filled that one up and put it on the car. I was off to the tire store again.

Yes, the same tire store that gave me a flat spare. But I figured anyone can make an honest mistake. I mean, it had air in it Thursday when I went there. It just won't hold the air.

And I was going to be much more careful about checking that spare before I left.

Besides, I figured I could wrangle a discount out of them. Which I did. It ended up being about $15 off the total. Not bad.

So I now have four brand new tires. Let's hope that is the end of it for a while.

The whole situation made me two hours late for work. And I still managaed to come in ahead of all my deadlines.

Yeah, I was feeling this way last night/this morning

I was in such a good mood last night as I was leaving work. It was about 7:30, so a little earlier than normal. A favorite colleague of mine who had been off work for a couple months after a car accident was coming back to the office today.

So I decided to welcome her back by making a couple giant pans of chocolate bread pudding. I was going to hit the market on my way home, then start baking after a quick dinner.

Now I live 37 miles from work. It's kind of a pain, but I deal.

Unless I get a flat tire on the freeway while doing about 70 mph and I am only on the second of my four freeways (about halfway home.)

Yeah. Nice.

The really bizarre part is that while it happened, I was on the cell (hands-free, thank you very much) talking to a friend who was describing a tire blow-out he had on the way to Vegas just a few days earlier.

Then suddenly I felt something odd. Like my tire was filled with bread pudding instead of air.

It wouldn't have been so bad except that I had a flat a couple months ago when I came out from work. Luckily I was still in the parking structure and AAA came out and put on the spare tire.

Of course, since I am SO busy with my life, you know making cards and bowls and generally a mess, I never went to deal with getting a new spare.

So I am sitting at a Shell station in Garden Grove, halfway between work and home, at 8:30 last night waiting for AAA to show up.

I know I have no spare. I know I don't want to leave my car in the Grove. I have no way to get home if they can't fix the tire somehow.

So they show. The tire that went flat on the freeway was the brand-new spare that was put on a couple months ago. It has a gaping hole on the backside of it. No chance of fixing that one.

We pulled the other flat tire, the spare flat tire as I called it, out of the trunk.

Yay! It held air.

So I drove toward home, stopping at a market on the way. I'll been damned if I wasn't going to make that bread pudding.

People had heard about it. People were planning to skip lunch to have some.

So I did my baking and went to bed around 12:30 p.m.

I got up today knowing that I would have to deal with the tire. And sure enough, the tire was flat again.

So I called AAA out again (yeah, I am getting my money's worth out of that service). They aired the tire and I was off to Costco to get a couple new ones for the front.

Costco where you usually wait about an hour. Well... I guess when they have a tire sale it must be good. Because it was a FOUR hour wait.

Um, no thanks. If I hung around a Costco for four hours, I would spend so much money.

So I headed to a local shop and got a couple tires put on the front.

Whew. What a saga.

But man was that bread pudding amazing!

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_36519,00.html?rsrc=search

(I skipped the rum sauce and had fresh mixed berries and homemade almond whipped cream!)

Oh and the photo is another from the Santa Barbara trip in March.

Time to get creative again - already!

It seems like only a couple weeks ago that the stamping group met.

Oh wait... it WAS only a couple weeks ago.

The thing with the group is that we don't always meet on a set Sunday, say the third Sunday of the month. We meet on the Sunday that is the best for the most people. So sometimes they come one right after the other.

I was going through some cards I did for some recent Splitcoast swaps. The one above seemed to be well-received and it was quite simple.

I may do that. But since I am doing premade cards instead of sets that we make during our gathering, maybe I can get more elaborate.

I like to keep the ones we make at the gathering simple. I feel bad when I make people spend so much time on a really fancy card with lots of little doo-dads and techniques.

Anyway, the image and sentiment on this card are Stampin Up, as are the inks. I used generic patterned paper for the stripes. I like a lot of layers and I like a lot of texture. So I used my paper crimper on the pink backer paper. And I turned the stripes horizontal since I mostly see vertical stripes on other cards. It also is a good contrast to the vertical crimping. Then I used the extra strip of orange behind the "Heartfelt" to make it stand out more from the vellum.

I inked the flower with my markers to get the mottled look and then added a coat of glitter glue to give it some sparkle.

Sounds like a lot of steps, but it really is an easy card.