Rimmel London ScandalEyes

I've gone through my share of eyeliners over the years and they have all just been "okay". I'm not a pro at lining my eyes either so liquid eyeliners aren't my favorite. So when I received Rimmel Londons Scandal Eyes complimentary in my Frosty VoxBox from influenster I was really excited to give it a try. Let me tell you, it's probably the best eye liner I've ever used!! It goes on so smooth and is almost creamy. Great product that I will definitely be buying again in the future. 

Taste of winter

I've always "imagined" being that mom who drinks coffee in the morning. I guess I don't really know why, my mom always had to have her coffee and all the commercials for coffee always seems to have moms in it. However, as it turns out, I'm not a fan of coffee! I am though, a tea fan. So in my influenster Frosty VoxBox I received complimentary a sample of this Celestial Seasonings Candy Cane Lane green tea. I have to admit though to me candy cane and green tea seemed like an odd combination. But to my surprise, it's delicious and is definitely a great winters drink. 

Mean Muggin' Santa

So the past few months Lincoln has developed into this bashful little thing. Instead of just hiding his face (which he does also) his reaction to people he isn't familiar with is to give them dirty looks. We call it his mean muggin' face. He does it GOOD. Granted, hes pretty much been doing it since birth, he just never did it as a reaction to being around new people before. It's pretty hilarious...sometimes. Other times I feel awful and apologize because I don't want the people to take it personally.

Well, now onto Santa. We are big, and I mean BIG, Christmas people around here. We usually decorate the first or second week in November because Christmas just makes me happy, I LOVE it, and with as much effort as I put into my decorations I need to enjoy them longer than just 30 some odd days. So we have been decorated over here for a couple weeks now, and I knew I wanted to take Lincoln to visit Santa soon. Mainly because I knew the lines would be shorter. Bass Pro Shop has had Santa for about a week now and we made the mistake on going the FIRST night. My thinking was "perfect, first night no one will be there". WRONG. Every person in Southern California was there. Apparently they had a whole event that night and so we had to turn around and come home. I was super bummed. So we decided to make the trip down there tonight hoping for a small crowd, and that's exactly what we got! A whole FOUR people in front of us. With a toddler a short line is a must. Especially Lincoln, he is SO energetic and never stops. Ever!

I was worried for poor Santa though. I knew what would happen if we tried to sit him on his lap. I didn't want to do that to Lincoln either. Sure, crying pictures with Santa are hilarious...10 years down the road, but I wanted Lincoln to have fun, not cry. We attempted to have him walk up to Santa and there it was...the mean muggin' face. My Dad picked Lincoln up and decided to just take a family shot instead of forcing Lincoln to get on the big scary red guys lap causing melt down central.

We got to look at the photo after it was taken, and there it was. The mean mug. A slightly less dramatic mean mug, but a mean mug none the less.

I asked the girl if that was the only shot they took, she said it was the best one and once I got home and saw it on the computer screen I realized MY EYES ARE CLOSED! CLOSED! I was so bummed. It was a great shot, but oh well. 

We then went and road the carousel after Santa which he really enjoyed and then went and had dinner. It was a great night! Mean muggin' face and all.  

The kitchen, the beautiful beautiful kitchen.

The kitchen is a huge focal point in our home. It's basically in the dead center of the house and it's part of one big room with our family room. When we purchased the house the kitchen was a huge eyesore. The sellers painted it the worst brown possible and it was just FILTHY. We contemplated just painting the cabinets and maybe just upgrading the appliances but it just wasn't going to work. We were already going to have a contractor come out and repair and paint the inside and outside of the house and we decided to have him re-do the kitchen as well. 

Here is the original kitchen to refresh your memory:

It may not look as bad in the pictures but trust me. TRUST ME. It was gross. 

First step was gutting the whole thing! 

We were making some slight changes in the kitchen. First, getting rid of the double oven and getting a slide in oven/stove combo. As much as I LOVE the idea of having a double oven I decided having a larger pantry is something I wanted more since I would only need a double oven a handful of times throughout the year. We also decided to move the dishwasher to the opposite side of the sink so it wasn't so close to the oven. Also the kitchen had some random lighting. Two fluorescent lights placed very strangely and I believe 3 can lights also not placed evenly. So we got rid of them all and had 5 new can lights put in. 

The next step was picking out granite, and the cabinets! 

We went with white cabinets. I've been pinning like crazy on pinterest lately and I love the white farmhouse kitchen look. 

It was so exciting to see it in progress. I knew it was going to look amazing. 

Then this morning we went to check out the progress and it was DONE! (With the exception of a couple cosmetic things.) We were blown away. It looks so beautiful. Just perfect!

(Lazy Susan that way the deep cabinet is more easily accessible)

As slight "ledge" was created that way it would block any possible liquid from going into the windowsill. 

We are in LOVE! It's so crisp and clean! I still would like to add some knobs to the doors but we will revisit that at a later time. For now, it's perfect. 

 

The Painting Predicament

One of the first decisions that needed to be made for the new house was picking a paint color. Sounds simple right? NO! I had no idea how hard picking a paint color would be. 

Our contractor uses Behr paint, and I am NOT a fan of Home Depot. But since that is who carries Behr we made the trip one evening to get a swatch. I am going for a farmhouse style and I love light earth tones. 

So I found the above swatch and thought the middle color was perfect. We got the paint sample, along with one very similar I thought would also go nicely. 

We go to the house, and when it gets painted on, IT LOOKS 100% WHITE! Both of them. WHITE! So back to Home Depot we went. We got more samples and I frankly just wasn't happy with any of them. One of my best friends had some leftover samples from a project she did so we tried those on the walls. One of the two I actually really liked. I was still hung up that it was too dark for the home though. The house doesn't get a ton of natural light so it's fairly "dark" and I didn't want a paint color to make it darker. But after what ended up being FOUR stops to Home Depot I just caved and decided on one of my friends colors. 

(Color we chose was second in from the right)

My dad noticed though that her sample was enamel and we wanted a flat paint. It was also a Valspar paint so we had to go get it color matched with Behr along with getting it in flat. We had painted the enamel sample over a board so we could take it to different spots around the house and so when we finally got the flat version my dad painted HALF the board with the flat over the enamel. 

The next day we went back to the house to show my sister and brother in law the house for the first time. I see the board and am shocked. It's DARKER, I didn't realize flat is darker than enamel. I knew instantly I didn't like it. So it was BACK to Home Depot we went. 

(Flat on the left, enamel on the right) 

So we picked out THREE more samples (I think we are up to 11 colors now) and I say a prayer to the paint gods to PLEASE let one of these work. It was about 2pm at this point and we needed an answer by 7pm to tell our contractor. I ended up getting two light greys, one with a tinge more beige and one general beige, just in case the greys turned out white like my first samples.

(Top 3 were the new samples)

Unfortunately I took the above photo when the paint was still semi-wet so it's hard to get an idea of the actual color. 

On the across wall by the window we painted the two greys. My husband and sister loved the grey close to the window. I liked it as well. But I kept thinking if it was going to go well with my antiqued furniture. I knew however it would go great for our master bedroom because our bedding has grey. 

This was the beige that I picked. As it dried (to me) I definitely felt that I could see a grey undertone to it. But all these colors were so hard to tell what they would really look like with such small squares on the wall and in every room it looked different because of the lighting. 

That morning Lincoln refused his first nap and was in such a grumpy mood. It has rained the night before so while we were painting the samples we let Lincoln play in the puddles outside. 

He ended up slipping in the mud and getting SOAKED so we had to strip him down. Eventually it came time to say goodbye to Auntie Kelly and Uncle Josh. 

The next couple hours Louie and I agreed that even though we both loved the grey we thought the beige would go better with our antiqued furniture and our decor. The decision had been made. FINALLY! After 11 colors! 

Overall even though it wasn't the color I was necessarily picturing in my head, I think the two colors will go perfectly in the house. The baseboards and trim around the house will all be painted a fresh bright white as well so I think once it's all said and done it will look so crisp and clean. 

I have to end this post with two photos. The first was the sweetest little note that we discovered in front of our driveway today welcoming us to the neighborhood from one of the kids. 

They left the chalk so I couldn't resist and had to write "Thank you!" It warmed my heart. 

The second is a picture of lincoln dressed  up as Peter Pan for halloween. It's just too adorable not to share :)