I'm Grateful For...

I read my friend, Ashley's blog and I borrowed this idea. I've been so overwhelmed with work recently that making a list of what I'm grateful for seemed like a good way to put things in perspective. So here goes:

• I'm grateful for my amazing husband and his super handy ingenious ideas. No matter how annoying the phrase "We're making progress" is when I ask how a project is going. I'm actually grateful he puts up with me!
• I'm grateful for a fulfilling (and busy) job, even though it's stressful now I'm grateful to be employed, enjoying my job, and learning new things everyday.
• I'm grateful for our house. While I think I may always be a work in progress, I take so much pride in doing improvements ourselves.
• I'm grateful for my husband's job, as stressful as it is. He always works hard to keep a roof over our head and plan for our future.
• I'm grateful for our dog, Shelby. She's just the best cuddle bug!
• I'm grateful for our amazing friends who are always a great source of support and entertainment. Between dinner parties, happy hours, beach weekends, random hula hoop contests, festivals, wedding showers, weddings, baby showers, and kid's birthday parties we're so blessed to have amazing friends!
• I'm grateful I get to be an Aunt. It's such as blessing to be a part of my nieces and nephew's lives. I love them more and more everyday!
• I'm grateful for my family and Brett's family. We may not always see eye to eye but I know there's nothing we wouldn't do for each other. 
• I'm grateful for my parents and everything they've done and continue to do to support me. They never pressure or push, they offer advice and support and expect nothing in return. Truly amazing examples of selfless love. 
• I'm SO grateful I took a leap of faith and moved to New Orleans to attend Tulane, where I met my amazing husband!
• I'm grateful my husband and I are healthy. We know too many people who have to struggle with various health problems and we are so blessed to be healthy.
• I'm grateful my Mom and Grandma are coming to New Orleans to us visit for my birthday! I couldn't ask for a better birthday present!
• I'm grateful I get to attend my niece's 2nd birthday party today! We are so blessed to have a happy, healthy and super cute niece!

Whew, that definitely put me in a better place! So thankful for my life!

Cabinets are how much!?!

Being a home owner has made me appreciate how hard my parents worked to keep a roof over our heads.  I really just had NO idea how much home improvements, furniture, and other decor costs! I mean everytime I turn around we are faced with another set of expenses and unfortunately, I'm a numbers person so I quickly start adding everything up, adding in tax, cost of installation, etc. That's about the time the room start spinning, walls start closing in and I feel lightheaded!

This latest pricing panic attack came while figuring out how to finish out our kitchenette. Since we want to install cabinets around and above the washer and dryer we got into a debate about what to do with the rest of the kitchen. Should we finish the kitchenette the way we want the whole kitchen to look? Should we wait and remodel the kitchen at one time? What about granite, we need to install all the granite at once not piecemeal......ahhhhh!

It's no secret that I would LOVE a new kitchen, but that wasn't really top on the list of repairs/improvements. Nonetheless, I decided to do some price comparisons. I figured if nothing else it would give me a goal to work towards. Well, after shopping around I learned the kitchen remodel was going to be a big goal to work towards. I think my exact words when I saw the quote we, "Are you kidding me? It's just pretty wood!" The guy working at Home Depot clearly new I was a first time home owner!

Basically, for a new kitchen including cabinets, installation, countertops and some creative construction to make one wall of cabinets fit we are looking at $17,500. Ugh! I guess it makes sense, people always say you spend the most money on kitchens and bathrooms and unfortunately that's what our house needs. I know that we could trim the price of the kitchen by doing installation ourselves (which we were planning to do anyway) but it's still overwhelming.

Enter the resourceful husband - Brett spent much of home depot trip inspecting the kitchen displays and he's pretty confident he can build us custom cabinets. Honestly, since we were going to have to do some creative construction anyway, having the custom cabinets would make the most sense. For the time being we're going to leave the kitchenette unfinished but it is good to know when the time comes to upgrade the kitchen we have some better priced options.