Summer Week Eight

This weekend it was my birthday!! We spent the morning having brunch with my family and then we went out with some friends for the evening. That meant that Sunday, we mostly recovered from our late night {you know... midnight} shenanigans. BUT we did move around some furniture which was only the slightest bit exciting.

The family at brunch!

Nora had her last dance class for the summer this week so we took a picture with her sweet teacher and high school friend of Justin & I's, Miss Devin! She is a tough cookie to take on a group of two year olds. Nora is signed up to take more dance classes this fall and will hopefully get to do a little bit of tap dancing in addition to her ballet.

We ran some errands this week but had more time at home to play. The girls started a new game where they walk around and sing songs together, while simultaneously banging on their IKEA pots & pans with plastic utensils. It's cute, really. But very noisy!

Two peas in a pod singing and banging together...

Janie with her breakout moment.

We took a trip to the Perot Museum in Dallas this week. I love that they let teachers in for free! Children under two are free, so I only had to buy Nora a ticket. It always amazes me how there are so many different things in the Perot Museum for visitors of all ages. First, we went to the children's area on the lower level. This is really for kids who are five and under and both girls had a good time in the different areas for playing & building.

Both girls really liked the water area.

Janie put together a fierce potato head.

They also liked playing with a little camping area set up and a pretend farmers market. Janie liked a flower area where she could move around some fake flowers from place to place.

The museum itself has 4 other areas to look around in: a Birds Exhibit floor, a Life Then & Now floor (dinosaurs!), an Earth & Minerals floor, and a Life, Humans, & Engineering floor. There were lots of things we didn't even have the chance to do or look at because either the girls were not interested or there were other kids using some of the different things. And we really couldn't have spent a whole lot more time in the museum because we were losing the girls quickly. I just like that the museum seems to offer more and more for the kids as they get older. After eating a snack, we ventured into the different floors of the museum.

Our picture at the tippy top!

When we had done about all we could, we ate lunch in the cafe and then went outside to the girls most favorite part... the outdoor water area! I brought changes of clothes as I learned from the first time that we visited to come prepared for them to get wet. Last year, Nora fell right on her bottom in the water. This year, Nora did not want her clothes to get wet and Janie didn't seem to care in the least as she just flat out sat in the water on purpose. So we played awhile until everyone got tired and then made the trek back to the car.

It was 100 degrees when we left the museum at 1:30. SO HOT!! The temperatures have really been  picking up these last few weeks.

I had more great help in the kitchen as we prepared some yummy treats {Tasty Tuesday link here}.

Pizza night!

Janie, Official Taste Tester of the Peipert Family

And Ford celebrated his birthday! {separate post here}

Cuties wearing their dachshund dresses!

August is tomorrow & school is on the horizon. Next week will be our last week at home together and also when we start having work done in our kitchen. I can't believe it!!

Happy Birthday Ford

Ford is celebrating his ninth birthday this week!!

Nora & Janie love their Ford!

We decided to get him when we were in our third year at UT and even though we had gone to get a different dog entirely, he was the one that we took home with us! I don't remember how we settled on the name Ford, but we have enjoyed his sweet, soft, cuddly self ever since.

I can remember how Justin would get him to sit inside the pocket of his sweatshirt while he was studying around the apartment. So cute! So cuddly! So tiny!

Ford has his moments, that's for sure, but he has been a great dog for our family. Since the girls were born, Ford has shown us that he is just as sweet with them as he is with us. Even though Janie likes to occasionally grab onto his tail and try to swing him around, he {though terrified} doesn't even bark at her. And the girls don't seem to mind too much when Ford takes their Olaf toy and tries to play with it. (He tends to like the Frozen toys, for some reason...)

The girls giving Ford some of his special treats.

To celebrate Ford's birthday, the girls wanted to wear their doggy dresses. We bought him some special treats at the store. Someone asked if the girls were twins. I guess it was the matching outfits?? Nora wanted to also get him a birthday hat, but that wasn't happening.

Janie has a special place in her heart for Ford. She likes to give him lots of love but also can be a bit rough on him. He almost winces whenever she comes over because he's never sure if he is going to get hugged or whacked in the face.

We baked Ford some pupcakes so he could have a birthday treat. He ate it alllll up!

We had fun making Ford's day a little more special. Happy Birthday Ford!!

Tasty Tuesday: Dirt Cups

This week, our Tasty Tuesday didn't happen quite on schedule. I had a hair appointment on Tuesday so we made our special snack on Thursday instead!

I wanted to make dirt cups with the girls. Now, I didn't really check the recipe when it comes to making dirt cups so I didn't realize that it was a bit more elaborate than I anticipated. By elaborate, I mean there was one more ingredient and one more step {so... not really}.

Anyways, I assumed we needed pudding, chocolate cookies, and gummy worms. So I picked up what we needed and thought we were good to go. Well, if you want the authentic dirt cups, I would suggest that you also get Cool Whip and not just any chocolate cookies - get Oreos.

But here goes our unauthentic dirt cup taste test! What we used to make our dirt cups:

Instant chocolate pudding

Milk {use as directed on the pudding package}

Chocolate teddy grahams

Gummy worms

Nora has had some experience with pudding before so she knew the drill and was looking forward to making it! We mixed up a small package of chocolate pudding while our dinner was in the oven. The box calls for two cups of milk.

We crushed the chocolate cookies in a ziplock bag with a rolling pin. We used about half of the box of teddy grahams. I put about one serving of the pudding aside since I didn't think we would need it. We then mixed about half of our crushed chocolate cookies into the chocolate pudding.

We filled 4 cups with the pudding mixture, about 1/2 a cup each, give or take. I told Nora that this would be like "crunchy pudding." We put a few gummy worms into each cup, making sure that they hung out a little bit and then topped them with the remaining cookie crumbs.

When it was all said and done, we had a little dirt cup snack!

I'm sure the authentic dirt cup version would have been even better, but we all enjoyed ours very much. A quick & easy snack for toddlers!

Okay, Janie may have enjoyed hers the most...

Kitchen Improvements, Part One

I am SUPER excited about the strangest thing: lights.

Our house was built in 1992 and when we bought our house in 2009, just about everything in that house was in great condition. Except it was all still from 1992. Okay, the carpet and slate tile were newer but literally everything else was straight from the 90's. And I love the 90's. That's my era. But... not in my house. Not anymore.

Well, we knew we had a lot of updates to do. We painted the whole house except for the two extra bedrooms. We changed out door knobs and light fixtures to help give it a little update. We should have scraped those popcorn ceilings then, but {sigh} more on that later... But the kitchen and bathrooms were in need of some serious facelifts. They had silly colors. They had wallpaper. Our guest bathroom even had linoleum. Linoleum. Bleh.

We decided to tackle the kitchen as one of our first big projects as it is one of the most lived in rooms of the house. And one of the most visible. It wasn't super pretty at first sight. When we bought our house, the cabinets were a strange kind of neutral brown. Kind of like the color of peanut butter. Only a lot less delicious. But not just that. There was a glaze on them. Kind of greenish? Because then it would go with the dark teal ceramic tile that existed as a back splash. The counter tops were a lovely neutral cream laminate material. We had a little stainless steel, a little black, and a little white all within the appliances. The walls were painted black {of all colors} and were completely flat because they had wallpaper on them at one time. We found remnants of that wallpaper behind the fridge and believe me, black was an improvement on those walls. Here it is in it's full glory:

WOWZA!

{I took these off of the Zillow website because I didn't actually take pictures of the house before we started working on it.}

We hired out for this big job - we used a granite guy and a painter to get the work done in the house. Our big improvements included the following ten tasks:

1. Get rid of that tile.

While you're looking, make note of that sink. 

A shallow double basin. 

Black faucet - the plastic kind, not the lovely kind.

2. Get rid of those countertops...

We decided to go ahead and get granite installed all the way up the back, mostly because the slate tile on the floor was busy enough as it was. We didn't want to add any more materials or patterns to the mix.

3. Install a microwave.

Did you notice? When we moved in, there was only a hood above the stove top. We decided to add a vented microwave above the oven to free up the counter space.

4. Paint the cabinets.

The cabinets are pretty standard, but also sturdy. We decided to lighten up the space by painting all of the cabinets straight up white.

5. Change out the hinges.

The old ones were brassy anyways, we ordered some nice new & shiny hinges for each of the cabinet doors.

6. Add above and below cabinet lighting.

We have some rope lights above our cabinets and puck lights underneath them. This is one of my favorite improvements in the kitchen!

7. Switch to a large basin sink.

We wanted a nice, big, deep sink to have in our kitchen so we went with a Kohler basic deep basin.

8. Add pulls to the doors & drawers.

I don't have a picture from when we did this, but we chose a basic stainless look to our pulls. I may decide to change these yet again to better match the style of our home now, but it is not high on the priority list.

9. Get new appliances.

We had gotten the dishwasher replaced (stainless model) before we started the remodel of our kitchen when it stopped working. It was probably original to the house, like most of the other things (air conditioner, water heater, seashell sinks, etc.) and just quit. I had really wanted to get a double oven, but most of the stand in double ovens have these high backs, which I didn't love. There was an Electrolux oven that I had my eye on at Best Buy that was exactly what I wanted!! Of course, it was pricey. And it never went on sale. And Justin said "no way" every time I brought it up. But then... they were having a floor sample sale and it was discounted... and we got it!!!! EEEK!! So, it came home and looked fabulous in it's new spot. We still have a white refrigerator, but aren't too concerned as the cabinets are white and it doesn't stand out. P.S. You can see the pull in this picture.

10. Texture & paint the walls.

We had our cabinet painter take care of this for us. I learned the hard way that adding texture on your own is no simple task. For me, totally worth the price tag. We painted our whole house essentially around these dang slate floors. I really like them - they're unique and add texture - but, they have been a little bit of a pain to work around. So, the walls ended up a greenish-beige to coordinate with the floors.

You know you wanted to see this picture of plain, painted wall!

You're wondering why I am posting pictures of our kitchen remodel from FIVE YEARS ago and have yet to mention why I'm excited about lights. Well, here it is...

When we had this work done, we did not tackle one little aspect of this kitchen: those fluorescent lights. Wait... you didn't see them?? Did I leave them out because I hate them?? Yes, probably. Go back to the top... all the way... and there they are. Bleh. We did take them down and paint the brown part white so they blend in a bit more with the ceiling. But... they're still there. And I never like to turn them on. We had some electricians come out and ask me if they were working and I couldn't give them a definite answer because I wouldn't even know!!!

Okay, here's a picture of them now in our kitchen as it currently stands:

Well, we are about to take care of this last project and complete the kitchen and I am BEYOND excited!! We are finally going to get those lights taken out, install some new ones, and get rid of that popcorn ceiling to bring this kitchen completely into the 21st century.

The past couple of weeks I have made appointments with two electricians and three painters and are hopefully about ready to get moving on this, which will give me the opportunity to present our final kitchen sometime soon. So check back for our big kitchen reveal!!