Our pretty new floor :)

When Will and I were house hunting, we first stepped into our house and we both just cracked up. The entire house had a black marble floor. Living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, hallway...and we just thought it was funny looking. We also saw another couple that looked at the house and they laughed at it as well. We decided we could look past the ridiculous marble for the time being and we bought the house.

Now, we have actually received a lot of compliments on the marble. People come into the house and the first thing they say is "Wow! What a beautiful floor!" or something along those lines. A lot of people asked if we put it in. I kind of find that a bit offensive. Not only is it hideous, but it's put in horribly, not to mention stained and just gross looking. I mean, really, don't people think we could do better than that? Okay, I'm not *really* offended, but...seriously.

 

I have a hard time comprehending that people like it, but here are a few of my speculations on it:
1. It's so eye catching - I mean, you REALLY can't miss it - that people's first reaction is surprise. So they must comment. And then, since they commented, they compliment it to be kind. "Oh, is this real marble? It's very nice!" Basically, they compliment it because it's different, not because it's actually nice looking.
2. People that come to visit us simply have bad taste in flooring.
3. We simply have bad taste in flooring.

Those are the only things I can think of.

We bought the laminate sometime in January, but we waited a while to install it because we had to tear out all the marble, plus a thick underlayment, and the original wood floor, and we knew it was going to take a while. You might ask why we tore out the wood floor too - it was so nasty. Urine stains, bad patch work, stinky, just altogether gross. Thank goodness the subfloor was still in pretty good shape! Will had a 4-day weekend, so we started on Friday. I thought for sure it would take at least a couple of weekends to finish, even with the long one. However...Friday we got all the marble out and started on the underlayment and hardwood. Andy and Steph came over to help for a couple of hours on Saturday, and we got the rest of it out. Their couple of hours was SO helpful!! I couldn't believe how quickly it came out. Then we got all the nails out and cleaned the subfloor. On Sunday we vacuumed it and got it ready to put the laminate on top. We also fixed a few pieces in the hallway where we did our "practice" installation to test it out. On Monday, we REALLY got started on putting it in. It went fairly quickly, and we got it all done probably around 3ish.

We were (and still are!) so tired and sore from those four days, but it is SO worth it! Last night Will and I kept randomly wandering into the living room just to see it again. We both love it so much.

Doesn't it look so much more home-y and inviting? Black, cold marble doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside, but I think this does!! Now I just have to wait another long time till we can buy new furniture and I'll have the living room I truly want. But this is such a huge step and I am thrilled with it! Here are some more pictures if you want to see.

Valentine's Day

I'm such a sucker for holidays. I love decorating and celebrating for basically ANY reason! This year, I did something fun for Will - I gave him two weeks of Valentine's. They were everything from yummy treats to notes and gifts. I wanted to do something a little extra for him because he's been working so hard and doing so much for our little family on top of his job. I promise I did things other than make pretty looking junk food, but that is all you're going to see. ;)

One day, I made him homemade donuts for breakfast:

Another day I made Rice Krispy Treats! He saw these and said "You lots of Rice Krispy Treat hearts me??"

One day we decorated sugar cookies. I've decided I'm horrible at making sugar cookies. They always turn out weird. They tasted pretty good, but I can never get the shape right. They puff up like balloons and then fall very flat. These were my first "heart" cookies.

Uhhhm, yeah. Lovely. Below are our decorated cookies, and there is a cookie in the next picture that may be considered a "PG-13" cookie, just to warn anyone who is sensitive. I randomly came across it on a blog and it made me laugh. I just HAD to do it.

For Valentine's Day evening, we had a really fancy dinner. We put Kaylee to bed a little early (luckily, she didn't fight it, too much...) and ate late. We had a salad, chicken cordon bleu, potatoes, asparagus with cream sauce, rolls, chocolate covered strawberries and cream cheese brownies for dessert. It was SO GOOD!

Aaaaand now that we've both probably gained about 20 pounds, it's definitely time to slow down with the treats. :( But we had fun!!!