February 13, 2018

Kids Birthday Party- 2017

This post is almost a year late but I wanted to get it posted and life is slowing down so it's time to play catch up.

In 2017 Max turned ONE! His first year went by so fast and he grew so quickly. Marley turned 9 and Mason turned 5.  We had one big party for all of them at my parents house so we could use their pool. I didn't take many photos but here's a few.






December 15, 2017

Our Kitchen Makeover

If you follow me on Instagram you already saw the reveal of our kitchen makeover. I wanted to write up a post to share my thoughts and experience incase anyone wants to give this a try.

We went with Rust-oleum Cabinet Transformation Cabinet Coating System that we picked up at Menards for around $70. We ended up needing 2 boxes.  We bought the light kit and got it in Pure White.


The kit comes with everything pictured below. There are 4 steps but one of the steps is the glaze coat which we decided to leave out as we just wanted a crisp white finish.


Here's what we were working with as a before. We live in a log cabin so everything is wood inside. It was just too much wood and has just that one window so it was very dark in there.




 We decided to work in sections, starting with the upper cabinets on the dining room side. We removed all the doors and hinges and laid them out on the counter with some paper down. A friend recommended some little triangles that hold your doors up so you can paint both sides, but we just used some push pins so when we flipped them over they would rest on the pins. Worked well actually.



The first step is the deglosser. It's essentially a cleaner. You just rub it all over following the instructions that came in the box. After the recommended drying time it's time to paint. The instructions say you'll do 2 coats but we did three just because I noticed once the second coat dried there was areas that didn't look covered completely.  



After the paint is dried you can do the glaze coat if you want. It gives it a more antique look to me so that's why we decided to skip this step. I wanted bright crisp white. The final step is the protective top coat. When I first put this on it had a slight yellow tint to it but dried clear. I let everything dry for a whole day just to be safe and then we installed new knobs and hinges and hung the doors back up.

The process is pretty simple and fairly easy. It just requires a lot of time. Each coat has a 2-3 hour dry time. So we would paint for maybe 30 minutes then wait for it to dry. I'll be honest and admit that it took me a month to get all the upper cabinets painted. I waited 6 months to start the bottoms and that only took me a few days because the weather was nicer so I took everything outside and didn't have to do it 2 or 3 doors at a time like I did the uppers. I definitely recommend doing it all at once if you have the space instead of in sections like we did. Just seemed to go faster that way.

And now for the big reveal!



Isn't it AMAZING!! It makes it seem so much brighter in there. It's been a few months since we completed it and it's held up great.

For fun, let's do a side by side comparison.


Overall, I am very happy with how it turned out. But now we need new counter tops because they look really bad now. Let me know if you've ever tried this or have been thinking about giving it a try.



*this post is not sponsored by Rust-Oleum, I just wanted to share my experience*



November 16, 2017

Spring Break 2017 - Cumberland Falls Kentucky

This year it just so happened that Marley was on spring break the same time Mike was scheduled for a week off work. We decided to take a little trip. We didn't want to go to far and Mike's not big on touristy places so we settled on Cumberland Falls Kentucky. It was about a 6 hour drive which wasn't awful and the kids did great in the car so that helped. We went down on Wednesday and came home Friday night. We were also going electronics free. No video games, no tablets, no facebook, no movies. We did have our phones to take pictures and in case of emergency though.


We rented a super small cabin at Sheltowee Trace Adventure Park which is about 5 miles from the falls. Sheltowee is a campground that has RV sites, tent sites and several cabins. Since it was off season and we went during the week, there was 6 other people there besides us which was awesome. Our tiny one room cabin fit us perfectly and was so stinkin' cute! It had bunkbeds, a full size bed, and a countertop with a microwave. That was it. The bath house was a minute walk away.


We arrived on Wednesday afternoon and checked in. Within 30 minutes of being there, maybe even less, Marley was already asking if we could come back next year. That made me so happy. I thought for sure she would be complaining because we were going electronics free. The kids actually didn't ask to use electronics one time. They played outside when we weren't doing other things and at night they read books and we played games.

On Thursday morning we headed to Cumberland Falls. I had no idea it was so big. I've never seen a waterfall like that. I am used to small ones from a small creek. This was massive compared to what I've seen before. We walked around the falls a bit before heading to the other side to do the trail to Eagle Falls. It took us a few hours to hike to the falls and back but it was an easy hike and the kids enjoyed it. After that we headed back to the cabin and loaded up the kayaks and headed to the Cumberland River so Mike and Marley could do some kayaking while the boys took naps and I read a book. Finding the spot to put the kayaks in the river was quite an adventure. First I backed into a tree when leaving the cabin. Then we drove around for maybe an hour looking for the spot to load them in. Asked a couple locals and they had no idea where the place was that we were talking about, but we finally found it. We drove past it several times and just overlooked it apparently.  They went off down the river and I drove to the pick up spot and waited.... and waited... and waited. About 2 hours later I had to go to a different spot and pick them up because it was taking way to long to get where I was waiting.  We loaded back up and headed back to the cabin. I made dinner while Mike and the kids flew the drone around. They did that for a while until the wind caught the drone and took it up into a tree and that was the end of the drone. It was getting dark and it was up about 50 feet so the drone is gone forever.






Friday morning we loaded up to drive home. We took a different way home so we could stop in Burkesville where I have family and my grandpa's old family farm is.  We made it there and stopped to collect some bombshell rocks as we call them. Then we continued on our way home. We stopped to pick up our dog on the way and made it home right at bed time.

It was a short trip, but one of the best ones we taken honestly. It was nice to just relax and unplug for a few days.  We will most likely take other little trips like this in the future.


March 8, 2017

2016 in Review

I wasn't very good at keeping the blog updated this past year but I'm really hoping to get back at it in 2017. Here's a review of all the exciting things that happened in 2016.


February- Mason did BMX and Marley did swim



March- Marley turned 8


April-  Mason turned 4





August- Marley started 3rd and Mason started preschool





October- Mason played soccer




December- Christmas