Catch - Up

In my phonetics class last semester, we often spoke about words or phrases that were spelled differently, but sound exactly the same. For example, if my title were phonetically transcribed instead of orthographically spelled, you wouldn't know whether this was a "catch-up" post, or a "ketchup" post. Clearly, this SLP humor alone should get me into a grad. program.

That paragraph had absolutely nothing to do with this post. I just thought it was funny :-)

So, hey, remember me?? I am in shock and disbelief that I posted 8 times in February. That is a record low for me, and is proof of the crazy month I had.

The following bullet points contain a lot of words. If you're not into that, there are also some sneak peak photos of some renovation progress at the bottom of the page, so you won't hurt my feelings if you scroll through this and just look at those :-)

Here is why life has been so crazy:

• If you're just tuning in, the downstairs renters moved out of our house at the end of January, and we decided to accept the challenge of renovating that floor, and moving into it ourselves, and then renting out the top floor where we live now. So basically every day has been spent on those renovations. I'm more tired than I've been in my entire life. But I love it. I love making progress so quickly and going to bed dog-tired every single night. It shows me that I did something during the day.
• I've been enjoying classes and my weekly clinical observations for class. Every day I grow more and more certain that this is where I'm supposed to be. My interview for Akron's graduate SLP program was a week ago, and I think it went pretty well! I could feel every prayer sent up on my behalf because I was totally calm and cool as a cucumber that day. This is totally unlike me! The interview consisted of four ten-minute sessions, each in a different clinic room. It was a group interview with four students in each group, and 2-3 professors in each of the four rooms. I did my best to mention things that would make me stand out from the other three group members. I tried to speak as clearly as possible because I'm sure that is a big part of what they look at in the interview as we will be teaching people to speak in our profession :-) Basically, I know God guided me through the interview, and it's in His hands now! I find out in two weeks whether I'm in or not.
• I've been deathly ill. I'm being a bit dramatic, but the dust in our house during renovations has set off some major coughing fits in the past month. I've been seeing an ENT doctor for my sinus/respiratory problems, and he wants me to have a minor outpatient surgery. I'm fighting that tooth and nail, because I've heard it's very miserable, and not even a permanent fix. I'm probably going to try a chiropractor first to see if there's anything she can do to help so that I wouldn't have to have surgery. Anyway, it's made life a little crazier and more difficult because I've just not been feeling well in a really long time, and it definitely sucks my energy right up.

So that's where I've been and what life has looked like in the past month. We are very close to completing our renovations, which ended up being pretty extensive. I'm not going to show any "after" pictures of the rooms until they're all done and we're moved in, because I love dramatic "Before" and "After" pictures. But here is a sneak peak of some new details and color choices. I am in love with it all...

Cabinets and drawers are all painted white and looking clean! New hardware has been added.

Living room has been painted! But I'm only showing you a little corner. The color is Glidden's cafe latte.

I liked that color so much, I used it in the bathroom as well. Below is a more accurate picture of what the color looks like:

We basically started from scratch in the bathroom with new lighting, a new vanity, new cabinet above the sink, and hopefully a new toilet soon (kind of a necessity!) The bathtub is the only thing that's staying, and that's only because of expenses. Here are some new lights above the vanity. They were inexpensive and I love them:

Speaking of light fixtures, we bought a super inexpensive pendant light at Home Depot to hang above the kitchen sink to replace the hot mess of the fluorescent light that was there before. I am 100% in love with it. It might be my favorite thing about the renovations so far. And I'm contemplating being brave and trying to make my own no-sew roman shades to go behind it. I found a tutorial, but Pinterest won't open so I can't show it to you. Anyway, I think it would look great!

We did decide to paint the beadboard backsplash blue, and I think we made the right decision:

And finally, that brings us to the bedroom. It was quite the ordeal picking out the right color for this room. After some major color mishaps on my part, we chose Behr's Clair de Lune, a warm, sandy, golden color. Again, this picture is not a great representation of the actual color. the gold tones are not showing up here. But you get the idea.

And that's all the updates I'm going to show today. Here is what our to-do list looks like for the rest of the project:

• Some paint touch-ups
• Buy/install a toilet
• build a closet in the bedroom
• finish sanding the edges of the floors, and varnish them.

And that's about it! We are in the home stretch, and I fully plan to be moved in by the end of spring break in two weeks. So hopefully next time I have a renovation update, it's because I am showing you some before and after photos!

Now I better sign off and get to work finishing up this project!