David and Ashley: 6 months...What Have We Done?

So yeah. Summer happened. And fall is coming to a close here pretty soon. So, what did we do??

Since I teach at a year round school (hopefully we'll go back to traditional), I taught up until the first week of July (gag). I said good bye to my teaching partner of three years (tears), and geared up for the new school year (which just so happened to start two weeks later (double gag). Ugh..seriously. I've liked the whole year round thing, and having my breaks spread out has been nice for Trey and I, but not having an actual summer away from school sucked big time. Plus, I just really hate what it does with the dynamics of the school.

I had two weeks before I needed to be back to school, so we set out for St. George with the Bland's, because I sure as hell wasn't spending my break at home. It. was. glorious. We didn't really do much of anything, but I loved it so much. We stayed in this awesome condo, did some super simple hiking, went swimming, shopping, went out to eat, went to Tuacahn, watched fireworks. It was so great.

I started my new school year with a new partner (love her!), and changed my schedule around a bit. I'm still part time, but I work one full day a week and get off one full day a week, while working half days the rest of the week. It's so nice. Dave also started a new job. So...lot's of changes. It's been kind of stressful, I'm not gonna lie. For example, my job.... (I wrote multiple paragraphs about this, and then decided to delete it for obvious reasons. It felt good to get it out though). Suffice to say, it has not been my best year.

Moving on. I finished my kitchen! It only took me 6 months (ha!), and I love it! It's exactly how I imagined it would be. However, I will NEVER do it myself again. I severely underestimated the amount of time it would take to refinish my cabinets. It's unbelievable how much work goes into that! Granted, I wanted to do it right, so I was extremely careful throughout the whole process, but still. With the amount of time it took me to finish (6 months!), I could have saved the money to hire someone to do it for me. Had I decided to refinish them a few years ago, I think it would be different. But being a mom means you have little to no time for extra activities such as refinishing your cabinets. Alas, it's done now. And I must say, it is pretty gratifying to walk into my kitchen and think "I did that." :) So, what exactly did I do?

Removed wallpaper and repainted the walls.
Installed a new sink and granite counter tops. I handpicked the slab of granite that was used and I love it!
Installed a tile back splash.
Installed new shutters for the window. (THAT was a fun one!) ugh.
Refinished the cabinets: removed all hardware, cleaned all doors and drawer fronts, applied de-glosser to everything, sanded, primed, and painted three coats to all doors, drawer fronts, cabinet bases and molding, reinstalled everything. (I could seriously write a series of blog posts on these steps).
Swore maybe a few dozen times... :)

Dave and I recently started a new hobby of painting miniature figurines. The figurines we paint are part of a tabletop game called Warmachine. I don't play the game, but it's been a lot of fun to paint. The miniatures are sometimes frustrating (most are less than 2 inches tall and you have to assemble them before painting), but they are incredibly gratifying once finished. We entered a painting competition this October and just found out today that I won first place!

I started making a quiet book for Trey for Christmas. I may be just a little in over my head with this one. I have no idea what I'm doing, but hundreds of people on Pinterest make it look easy, so it must be, right!? :) I'll post pics of it when it's finished. I'm a total hack and just used free templates online to make the pages, but I'm pretty proud of it so far. It's going to be really funny when Trey has no interest in it whatsoever.

Oh! And we celebrated Halloween..yesterday (look at how on top of things I am!).