And here it is …

The past two days I have been painting like crazy, priming the ceiling and walls so that we can put on a topcoat of yellow before we leave for Thanksgiving. It’s amazing the transformation a coat of paint is. White never looked so good!

After the mudding and taping were done and sanded, the kitchen (and parts of the rest of the house) was covered in white dust. How lucky am I to have such a happy helper?

For more Wordless Wednesday: WordlessWednesday.com and 5 Minutes for Mom.

I finally made a selection for painting just in time. The gentleman who did the mudding and taping in the kitchen just finished around noon today. What took him 4.5 days would have taken us weeks so we are so thankful. The kitchen is looking better all the time! We have quite a bit of clean up etc. before we can paint, but we are hoping to at least get it primed before we leave for a week at Thanksgiving.

LG Hi-Macs’ Mocha Granite G74 and Benjamin Moore Chestertown Buff HC-9 (a historical color)

I’m still in love with the idea of red, but can’t convince Matt. So, yellow it is! I think it’s “safer” anyway, just in case we do end up moving in a couple years. And it will be the warm, inviting, bright kitchen I was envisioning when we started this project. I just got sidetracked by the dramatic, gorgeous reds I was looking at. Besides, we already have red in our upstairs bathroom.

As for the countertop, I’m 85% sure at this point. TCN has ordered larger samples to give me a better idea of what the hi-mac will look like.

The more I look at it, it looks the best with the cabinets (paint color can be changed after all). My primary concern for the paint choice is that there are gold flakes in the countertop that tend toward tan, not yellow. Good contrast otherwise and I don’t know how to describe it, but the tone just goes with it. Although it’s the darkest (though not really black, it might seem that way on screen), it’s actually more of a true brown than the middle one. The white cabinets have a lot of gray (making them warm) and the other countertops are more gray (making them cool) instead of brown … and it just seems to work. They are all great, I think. I’ve gotten a lot of different opinions, so even though I don’t agree with all of them it helped me to solidify my choice (the one I found myself defending)!

So, I decided that while the first countertop in my previous post is, by far, my favorite. It is just too pretty for my farmhouse-style house. So, I went back and took a look at some other options for the yellow. I am still holding out for red, but Matt is not as excited as I am about it, and I am having trouble finding a countertop that works. Here’s what we have now for the yellows:

This doesn’t rule out the red though:

I’m going color crazy! I love the idea of a warm, inviting, bright, yellow kitchen. But I am excited about a fun, dramatic, bold, red kitchen too. The downside to yellow is that the previous kitchen had yellow and white striped wallpaper and yellow/tan/gold counters with a hint of green. It all seemed so dated. So, my preconceived notions of a yellow kitchen scare me into thinking I might not like a yellow kitchen. I’m also not sold on the combination of white cabinets, yellow walls and gray countertop that seem so popular. Not sure what else to do with the counters if we paint yellow? The downside to red is that it isn’t seller-friendly if we end up moving in a couple years and it may be too dark since we don’t have as many windows as we’d like (but we do have lots of lights, white cabinets and extra-wide trim around the doors and windows to break it up). The red also doesn’t coordinate as well with the purple dining room (yikes!) and orange bathroom on either side. But it does coordinate with the counter I pre-selected (though I am not set on it). I have my color-connoisseur Michelle coming by, I hope, on Wednesday to help me make a decision. I trust her so we’ll see what she has to say.

As promised, here are photos of the finished drywall, which Matt finished yesterday. Next up: mudding and taping. We are hoping to hire someone to get it done this week so we can paint and at least get started on the floor before Thanksgiving. Cabinets are due right after. Time is flying!

Materials and delivery: $204.74

It must just about be winter. Almost every night when she prayed at dinner last year, my then 3-year-old daughter would say: “Dear Lord. Thank you for the food. Thank you for the snow.” It shouldn’t have been much of a surprise, then, that as soon as the leaves started falling from the trees, she was at it again. “Dear Lord, Thank you for the food. Thank for the snow … to come.” One night, with her eyes closed and arms stretched upward, fingers wiggling, she even added: “Because I really want it.” Having picked up some lingo from her friends in kindergarten, she also said to me once in the car, “I want it to snow so I can play in it. That would be supercool.” I just had to laugh. I hope when it gets here she is just as excited.

[Edited to add 11/7/2008: Today she also said "You did that, Charlie. You rock!" Was that from you, Jeff?!?!]

I guess the guys thought my stove made for the perfect work surface.

Why I’m voting for McCain today:

Finally, Obama just scares me. He’s just too risky for me, and I don’t like to take those kinds of risks.

OK, so maybe you are thinking it is too early to be sending out Christmas greetings. But, I’ll have you know, I have a friend from high school whose wife sends a nice postcard every Thanksgiving. I have had my idea for a “campaign letter” for quite a while and new I wanted to send it before the presidential election (cutting kinda close, actually!). So, I’m thinking I have ‘em beat, right? Ha. They sent something more than a month ago announcing plans to do missionary work overseas. I couldn’t believe it. Anyway, it feels good to have one thing out of the way before the holidays even begin. And it was a lot of fun to write. Enjoy!

See more ideas: Thursday 13: Ideas for Christmas letters.

The kitchen looks beautiful! What a sigh of relief. I am amazed at the generosity of our friends, with the leadership of our good friend Matt (not my husband obviously, a friend whose name is the same as his) who helped organized a group of 6 guys to hang drywall on Saturday. I had no idea how much they would get done (you know how it is!), but they were awfully close to getting it completely finished. There is just one 4′x8′ piece to hang, as well as one tricky one that involves cutting the plumbing, and just a few space fillers at the bottom (the walls are just a few inches over 8 feet). I’ll post more pics when it’s completely done.

Also this week, it’ll be my task to decide countertop and wall color so that we can paint without worries (no new floor or cabinets in the way)!

I love Avery’s face in this picture, as if she’s already embarrassed by her daddy’s crazy antics! And, of course, Charlie is as cute as a button in his tiger costume. The kids had a blast handing out candy to the neighbors and hanging out on a beautiful fall evening!

I am submitting this photo into the www.iheartfaces.com Blurb Book photo contest. I am granting I ♥ Faces permission to use my photo in a printed version of a book for commercial use and possibly advertising of a photo book on both the Blurb and I ♥ Faces web sites.