nursery pics

Figured since I was at it, I would get the pictures of the baby room up too! Still a few things to do, and it already looks a little different since I took these pictures since I moved some things around yesterday afternoon, but for the most part it's done! :)

The rest of the frames will eventually have pictures in them, but I want to put some pieces of patterned paper in there for now. The frame on the floor behind the lamp/table will be on the wall, when Paul gets around to it. :) Between the chair and the crib we are putting a little book holder that I found at a craft sale last summer. I am still looking for a blackout panel to put on the window, under the valance. Not sure what color I should get, and if I can find one that looks right. Other than those few things, all we need now is a baby boy! :)

my kitchen!

I decided to join the linky party over at Love Stitched and show off our kitchen!

We bought our house about a year and a half ago, and since then we've done a lot of cleaning and touching up...we've painted every room except one. I honestly don't think the people that owned the house before we did knew what cleaning was. As in, there were outlines on the walls from where their furniture was. Yeah. Ick. Luckily we had lots of family willing to come help us out, so it went pretty quick. Once we painted the wood paneling upstairs, we put in new carpet that we love! We got in on that tax credit, so we used that to put new windows in the whole house, but we haven't been able to afford to put trim on them yet. That really doesn't bother me since we're saving so much on heat now. Hopefully it will happen in the next year or so.

Back to the kitchen... I'll start with showing you pictures of what it looked like before:

It wasn't too bad, just a little outdated. And here it is after we made some minor changes:

Amazing what a little paint and elbow grease can do! Just painting and changing out the cabinet handles made a huge difference! At first we weren't planning on getting new appliances all at once, but the local store happened to have a great deal (5 years no interest!) that we couldn't pass up. The old stuff was in pretty rough shape, so I think it was for the best! Eventually we are planning on putting new flooring in, but again, have to wait until we can afford it. I am in LOVE with our island from Ikea!! Not sure where I would have put our pots and pans without it...not a ton of cabinet space. :) I actually made a special trip just to get it...we don't get to Ikea too often since the nearest one is sadly 3 hours away! But I loved it so much one of my girlfriends and I made a road trip. :) FYI we fit both boxes in the back seat of her Pontiac Grand Prix...it was interesting trying to get them in there LOL. Totally worth it though!! :)

So that is the story of my kitchen. Sorry it got kind of long! :)

This is my first time posting to a linky party. I am kind of excited! Make sure to check out everyone else's kitchens too!