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3 new posts in one day people!!

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Kaylee's Birthday

Kaylee's celebrated her 12th birthday yesterday. Since it was also graduation for some kids, and Kory had to be at the Jr. High for the ceremony, he decided that he was going to go into her classroom and sing Happy Birthday to her before he went on over to the gym. Poor Kaylee. Her Dad just loooooves to embarass her, and when you're a tween, it's not too hard to do.

Anyway, I decided that maybe we should get her some flowers to go along with her Dad's fun little surprise-just to make it worth be embarassed over. Here's Kaylee with her 12 roses:

Since so many of our family members had graduation ceremony's to go to that night we just had a 'low key' family party.

In our family, we have a rule that our girls have to be 12 before they can wear make-up. So, guess what she got?


New clothes:

Shoes to match her new dress:

Flowers, make-up, clothes, shoes, cake and ice cream (oh, and subway for dinner-Kaylee's fav) what more could a girl want?

12 candles would be nice!! Oops, we only had 11 left, maybe Mom will be a little more prepared next time.

And what might Kaylee be doing today? The day after her birthday? She's shopping in Vegas with her Aunt and cousins! Thanks Grandma and Grandpa Burgess and Evans for the B-day money!!

Josh's 8th grade graduation

Josh graduated from Jr. High on May 27, 2010. It was pretty bittersweet for me. I have so loved his teachers, and they've been wonderful to him but, he has been talking about going to High School for at least 6 months now, so I guess I just have to face the inevitable!

Here's Josh with his teacher, Ms. Russo (in the purple), and one of his aides, Ms. Jameson:
(the date is totally wrong on this pic)
Josh getting an award from Principal Young for perfect attendance:

Getting his diploma from the principal (a man in our ward who is so good to Josh-we just love him to death):

Since Dad is on the school board, Josh got to shake his hand-then give him a hug:

After the ceremony, in his classroom. Grandma and Grandpa Burgess got to come!

He's officially a freshman now. Sniff Sniff. I'm getting old.

Too many lids, not enough bowls

After not being able to cram any more plastic ware into it's designated drawer I decided it was probably time to clean it out. Am I the only one who ends up with this many extra lids-with no bowls to match?
One good thing to come of it was that I figured I probably had other junk hiding in my kitchen cabinets and cleaned out almost all my bottom cabinets and drawers. Wahoo for de-cluttering!!
(It's one of those 'jobs' that my kids could careless to 'help' me with-so it went pretty fast).

Scroll down!

Scroll down to see the 'After' pics of the dining room!

Entry way-before and after

Here's the entry way after striping all the pink wallpaper-unfortunately I don't have a picture of it in all it's glory-wallpaper and all:

After my parents came to help do a ton of projects. This was in Oct. 2008:

Oh so pretty, no more nasty fingerprints:

And then, finally, after the beadboard:

TA DA!

Dining room-Before

Since most of my before pics are on our old computer, I'm going to have to do seperate posts for the 'After's'. Either that, or figure out how to e-mail the pics to myself, or download them to a disc, and I just can't be bothered with that right now. It's too much work.
So, here we go. Before pics of our 'formal' dining room that was being used as a craft/computer/catch-all room. This is just off our entry way. Isn't it lovely?

Yes, the walls are horrendous. We had ripped the top half of the blue and pink wall paper off, but the bottom half was not coming off very easily. So, I decided we'd just put up bead board-later. Which translates to 2-3 years later in Burgess time.

Loved that this was the first room (after the entry way) that our guests were able to catch a glimpse of. A little 'white trash' look going on there:

My chandelier is cute though, oh, and the blinds were fairly new:

The pic below is sort of a 'half way' after. When my parents came to visit a couple of years ago we just painted the top half because, as you know, I was going to get around to putting up the beadboard 'later'. That computer armoire housed all my scrapbooking supplies. I do love the baseboards in this house. I'm trying to point out the good things. It's a little hard to notice against the pink carpet!!

You all are just going to have to wait a little bit for the real after pics because, wouldn't you know it, as soon as I get up the energy to actually do this fabulous 'before and after' post, I can't find my camera to download the new pics I just took. I'll have to wait until my kids get home so I can ask them where they put it!! This way I'll keep you on the edge of your seat, just waiting for that grand reveal . . .

Dining room-After

What brought on the whole 'it's time to finish this room' project was that Kory's mom gave us her old dining room table and hutch. It's not exactly my style, but it was free-so we made it work.
Anyway, now that we are actually going to be using this room to eat in, the 2 scrapbooking cabinets had to go. So, I had to empty them all out. Onto the dining room table:

This is true Burgess remodeling fashion-complete mess and chaos:

Here's my first helper. I say 'helper' because I actually had to do most of the work-since Kory ended up having to work the next few Saturdays after we started this process. Kory did one wall, and a few trim pieces, and I had to do the rest.

Here are my other 3 helpers, complete with 'safety googles'-since they were helping me hold the paneling while I was cutting it:

Another shot of the half finished walls, and notice, no trim around the window:

Ugly walls:

First wall done. This is the wall Kory and I did one Saturday afternoon on a whim-before we had to move the china cabinet in front of it. We didn't want to have to move that cabinet twice!

Then only a couple weeks later, after many cuts, glueing, caulking, nailing, sweating, multiple trips to Lowes, filling in nail holes, and painting, here we go-the finished product:

I loooove a cute basket:

Not so sure about the vertical hanging of this peg shelf. But, I'm too tired to mess with it at the moment:

Here's my attempt at 'countryfying' my china cabinet. I quite like it if I do say so myself:

Some close ups. I just love the white and the red together. And I'm totally loving the pitchers. I think they are my newest item to collect:

The tea pot was originally a cream color, so I spray painted it red. The ribbon in the plate and vase was baby blue with polka dots, so I changed it out to red-of course. I'm so crafty like that!

Roosters:

A view from the kitchen door. Notice the framed out window? Yep, I'm good.

I'm not loving the backs of the chairs, so I plan on making chair covers, a table runner, and a window valance-one day. Which translates into 1-2 years from now. Especially since it will require a trip to Vegas to get the fabric, and then a trip to a repair shop to get my sewing maching fixed.

But for now, I'm just enjoying the fruits of my labor. Because sooner or later I'm going to need to address the bare walls on the right, and that carpet's totally going to need to be ripped up!