Staying Busy

Coffee Tasting Wheel - Work In Progress

I don’t do well when I’m bored. My head is clearest when I have nine projects going at once and 4 of them are in disaster mode. I feel the most in control when our apartment is total chaos, with the contents of the kitchen cabinet strewn all over the living room, watercolors laying open in the middle of the floor, and a couple X-actos laying blade-up on the couch.  The last few weeks have been stressful (understatement of the century) with Brian spending 99% of every single day glued to his laptop working on his Masters Project, so I’ve channeled my stress into what feels like a million projects.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, OUR KITCHEN IS FINALLY SEEING SOME PROGRESS. omg.
Our landlord stopped by with the plumber on Saturday morning to take a look, and told us how to prepare for when he comes back on Tuesday morning to move the sink. I spent Sunday afternoon tearing out the old countertop, sink, and lower cabinets and then rebuilding the new kitchen cabinet with Margaret. It’s still a complete mess, but we got to lay the new countertop on for the first time and it looks amazing. I cannot wait for the sink to go in!

Kitchen Renovation DIYbefore…

Kitchen Renovation DIYmid-demo

Kitchen Renovation DIYcabinet frame built and ready for the plumber!

Since we were already low on counter space due to the aforementioned construction, I figured it was also a good time to reseal the counter on the island. It’s coming along nicely, but we now have 85% of our counter space compromised in one way or another, so that blows. Thank god I’m not in charge of baking/cooking for Thanksgiving.

Brian found an illustration by one of his favorite coffee roasters (Counter Culture) and asked me to recreate it for him for Christmas. Again, with limited apartment space and a million messy projects going, I whipped out my watercolors and Microns and got to work. It was a really fun project and nice to use my fine motor skills instead of power tools and a blunt object. We’re going to hang this on our newly empty wall in the kitchen… once I find a big enough frame. Check Instagram for the finished product in a few weeks!


Coffee Tasting Wheel - Work In Progress

Among other things, I washed the inside+outside of the windows, put up the shrink-wrap window insulation, and swapped our summer/winter clothes in storage. It was a perfectly busy weekend.

SnailMail 2016

SnailMailMyEmail 2016

Sadly, this is the last year for SnailMailMyEmail, which means no more getting to snoop on strangers’ mail 😦  Just kidding, that’s only half the fun. The other half is finding fun ways to illustrate their (usually adorable) messages and sending them around the world.

This year, I definitely had a theme and I love love love how they turned out!

SnailMailMyEmail 2016SnailMailMyEmail 2016SnailMailMyEmail 2016

Last year, 2/3 were going to other countries, but this year mine were all staying in the U.S. Oddly enough, Margaret even knew ‘Eric’ from the middle note, and hand delivered it to his mom in Elmhurst! Such a small world.

To read more about Snail Mail, check out the website and look at more pictures on social media.

SnailMailMyEmail.org

#snailmailmyemail on Instagram 

#snailmailmyemail2016 on Instagram

(check out who’s been holding strong to one of the top popular spots 😉

veronimama kitchen reno – a brief introduction

veronimama kitchen renovation

Hi! If you follow me on instagram, you probably know that I’m redoing our kitchen. Like full-on tearing out the countertops, stripping and painting the cabinets, moving the sink/plumbing, and installing a new tile backsplash. Our little kitchen desperately needed an upgrade from the current green particleboard countertops (!!), so we’re SO excited that our landlord is letting us get started. The only catch – we’re doing all of the work ourselves (minus the plumbing). It’s a big job but I’m loving it so far.

I’m working on some much more detailed posts about our process and a full step-by-step DIY post for anyone else looking to redo their kitchen, but for now I wanted to give a quick update. Our rough plan is something like this:

veronimama kitchen renovation to-do list

Right now, we’re in the thick of it with the cabinets, with everything primed and ready for final coats. I’m aiming to get the doors finished and mounted by the end of the weekend, but that’s going to be pushing it since we’ll be out of town all day Sunday. I’m just dying to get the 19 cabinet doors off of our living room floor so we have space to walk!

I’m going to keep updating the status of the reno on instagram for now, and save all the good film and DSLR pics for the detailed posts. Follow along on insta, or maybe just stop by and help me paint for a few hours????? Just a suggestion…

veronimama kitchen renovation