Progress update

Last night was pretty exciting – I got home and one of our appliances had been installed. Granted, it was the microwave, but baby steps, people. This was some big progress for us.

The new office area; we have an actual office, but it's really small so
we decided to build a workspace in our kitchen. And to also hold booze.

All of our cabinets are now installed, and tiling starts today – it’s supposed to be a two-day process so we should have even more exciting pictures to share on Monday.

The main kitchen area. I am totally on board with the skylight.
It makes everything so much brighter.

After the tiling is done, the granite installers will show up. After they are done, the backsplash goes in. Then the carpet. Then we are done! (I’m sure there are 50 more steps, but it’s probably better if I just focus on the big picture, rather than the small things we still have to do, like order handles/pulls, find pendant lights, find a kitchen table and chairs, find a chandelier for over our dining room table…)

Oh, I had a quesadilla for dinner at the farmers market. I did not take a picture. Again.



Most of the kitchen. And a few of the 900 lights.



Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 10

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 28

Don't even bother reading this one

Ate some Eggos (blueberry) last night for dinner. Washed it down with a glass (plastic red cup) of milk. Then had a handful of fritos to round out the meal. I didn't take a picture. I'm sure you can visualize exactly what it looked like.

Tiling starts tomorrow - very exciting. And all of the cabinets will be hung, so I'll post a picture of that - also very exciting.

 

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 10

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 27

How many hands of blackjack do you have to win to pay for a kitchen remodel?

We’ll never know, because we didn’t win.

Sorry for the blog hiatus. We went to Vegas to celebrate ME. And frankly, the timing couldn’t have been better. When we left our house on Friday afternoon, there was an inch of dust (from the dry wall mud being sanded) on EVERYTHING. The particles floating around in the air stung your eyes, and we were virtually prisoners in our bedroom.

And then we came home on Monday. And guess what we had? Cabinets!

We were so nervous to come home and see the cabinets, especially after our contractor texted us a picture and they looked like shit. The good news is that we love them and the lesson is to never trust a crappy cell phone picture.

Before we get to the food, here’s the rest of the remodel update: appliances get delivered today. They will sit in the garage and hopefully stay in pristine condition until we need to move them in – probably about two weeks. The granite template dudes come today and then our actual slabs will show up in one week. At some point this week, the tile guy will start laying the tile. While we haven’t been told an “end date”, I would guess August 15^th based on where we’re at.

Now, on to the food.

Did you know restaurants in Vegas are almost always dark (i.e. mood lighting)? This made for difficult picture taking, as I didn’t have a flash on my phone, and probably it would have been annoying to see the flash in the restaurants. But here’s the picture of my favorite meal (it was course 2 of 4 – more on that below):

Friday night: Holstein’s in the Cosmopolitan. An “upscale” burger bar. I had a mini trio of Italian sliders and glass of prosecco to keep the class factor high.

Saturday night: Diego’s at MGM. A somewhat authentic Mexican restaurant. Jason had goat. He does not recommend goat. I had shrimp tacos. They were tasty. We got a pitcher of frida margaritas, and depending on who you asked, there was either a lot of tequila or no tequila at all.

Sunday night (my actual birthday): Sirio at Aria. This was my special birthday pick and I ordered the four course tasting menu. Although, to call it tasting was really misleading. There was so much food.

Course one: veal carpacchio

Course two: tagliolini with prawns and a pink vodka sauce

Course three: rack of lamb

Course four: some special birthday dessert. I don’t think it was very good, but I couldn’t tell you what it was.

Highly, highly recommend Sirio if you’re in Vegas. But bring your winnings…our dinner cost more than the amazing shoes I wore that night. Which is to say, it cost a lot.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 9

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 27

I like-a the Italian food-a

(You have to imagine reading the post title with an Italian accent)

Oh. My. God. You guys – we ate at home two nights in a row! That almost never happened even when we had a kitchen.

Those are Italian sandwiches. With a side of Fritos, because what goes better with Italian food than Fritos? And what makes these sandwiches Italian you might ask? Well, there’s olive oil, salami, provolone, oregano and red onion. Jason adds tomato to his, but blech, not on mine. The only way to make it more Italian would be to use capocolla and mozzarella, but you know, not my style. Also, we only eat these in the summer, and in our backyard, which is very similar to Italy. Do the math. It’s Italian.

A note to my loyal readers: I won’t be posting again until Tuesday the 31^st. I am not allowed to tell you why. But there are going to be some amazing dinner shots, so it will be worth the wait. Also, the cabinets should be in by then, so I'll post pictures of that too.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 9

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 22

A few words on lunch

Because I was so bored with what I ate for dinner last night (Eggos – but it was at home!), I didn’t take a picture. Go and look at the “Breakfast for Dinner” post, but swap out French toast for Eggos and there you have it.

However, I do feel bad that I didn’t post a picture yesterday (I probably lost a lot of readers) so to make sure it didn’t happen two days in a row, I took a picture of my lunch.

I’ve eaten this every day for the last 8 days and I am sick of it. Also, hungry.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 8

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 22

Busy Bee

I'm a busy bee (worky-worky) so no picture of last night's dinner (it was Herfy's).

We finally got our window in. The drywall guy's truck broke down so he didn't come yesterday. We ordered paint.

And that sums up Monday.

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 7

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 22

Mud-a-palooza

Lots of exciting things happened this weekend, starting with me not getting to sleep in on Saturday because the drywall guys showed up to do some mudding. I’ve been told there needs to be three to four more “mudding sessions” (I just made that phrase up) and then we can paint.

Speaking of paint, you can see our top four choices to the left of the fireplace. I think we picked one. We seem to change our mind a lot and the only way we’ll stop changing it is when the paint gets ordered, which is hopefully today.

On the food front, lots of variety (for me). Friday night we ate at Hop Jacks, a little burger joint by our house. I won’t tell you what we really call it because it would probably make my mom embarrassed and reading it isn’t as funny as saying it.

On Saturday, we saw the Dark Knight Rises and ate at iPic. My grilled cheese had bacon crumbled in it and was cheestastic. The movie was great – highly recommend it if you’re into that sort of movie. If you count Dear John as a good movie, then you probably wouldn’t like this one.

Finally, on Sunday, I had lamb kebobs (baaaaahhhhh – don’t eat me, Lisa). I LOVE lamb. I bet that’s surprising, but rack of lamb and lamb chops are two of my favorite things. No mint jelly!

Dinners eaten at home since remodel began: 7

Dinners eaten out since remodel began: 21