Birthday Dinner

Waiting for our table at Matt's El Rancho

This is how he always looks
Delicious Fish Tacos with spicy cole slaw and rice
awww
Dad and Mom
I don't know what we are doing here
TThe Carpenters
I had to hold her up she was so drunk....just kidding
The Manager bought me a Mexican Martini to celebrate turning 25 for the 9th time
Come on babe....you know you want a sip

Like Father like daughter

Voracious

My hubby can't just eat one honey peanut butter and banana sandwhich, he has to make it double decker. Or sometimes he eats 2. Really that's nothing compared to the times he ate 2 hamburgers like it was an appetizer. The boy can eat! A lot! He claims he's a growing boy. I claim he's gonna be a growing boy all right if he keeps eating like that!

The New Do

I can't even remember the last time I actually had a professional hair cut. It has been years. I have been letting my hair grow out for quite some time now and on the occasions I felt like parting from my split ends I did the chopping my self or let my mother in law ever so slightly trim it. I must say those methods worked out just fine for a while. Then the other night, since I am so confident in my hair trimmimg ability, I thought I could cut a few inches off here and there and shorten it up just a tad. Snip snip. Okay maybe just a little more here......okay now a little more on this side....Oops. Not good! If I kept going at that rate, to make it look even, I would eventually have no hair and my long hair loving hubby( he doesn't have long hair...he loves long hair) would probably see me and weep. So I just stopped. So today I made an appointment at Avant Salon which is a big deal because the last place I went for a cut was super cuts! And before you say....you can't even tell I got it cut, just know that I did. She cut about 3.5 inches and I think I cut about 2 so that's a big difference. Personally I would have gone a little shorter (and I still might) but I have to take baby steps to ease the hubby into a shorter look. Maybe I'll go back in 6 weeks and cut two more inches. And maybe some day I'll even get brave and get a style other than this. Or maybe bangs, or high lights. Maybe.

Design Dilemma

So we are having our counter tops installed next week.....YAY!!! I'm truly excited. All along I've had this look in my head of what I wanted our kitchen to look like but it's going to be a several step process. What I envision is painting our cabinets a white or off white color in the future but that will probably be the last step in the remodel process. We are installing black granite counter tops and with the white cabinets and black counter tops I envisioned a slate back splash. Can you see it?? The slate back splash is multi colored....it has a lot of color variation from earthy browns to ashy greys. I also have the design of how I want the back splash layed out. However I am starting to worry that my vision might not look right because my hubby seems to think we need to add some black into the back splash to pull it in with the counter top. While I agree it will tie it into the black counter tops I'm not really sure that it's necessary. I think it almost might subtract from the natural beauty of the slate. Sure it might dress it up but I just don't know. So you see, I have a dilemma. I know there are a few of you that read the blog that are designers( sara w. ) or that are into decorating ( amanda g. and elizabeth h. and you sister) out there that can give me their input. Even if you are not a designer or into decorating, I'd still love to hear your opinion. Thanks!




This is the one with black little tiles added to the slate ribbon that will separate the straight tiles from the diagonal.




This is the one that is just all slate tile with a ribbon of smaller slate between the straight tiles and the ones set on the diagonal.

Life

Life for the Clifton Family has been so crazy and busy the last couple of weeks it seems like there is something to do every single day or evening. Whew..... I am exhausted and I notice when I am exhausted I tend to be more anxious and stressed and my twitching flares up. I am definitely ready for Summer and to slow down! Soccer season has ended, my pilates class ended, my women's weekly bible study has ended, school is ending....Hello relaxing Summer. Or at least that's what I hope for anyway. I am so looking forward to sleeping in and not having to wake up and get Hannah fed and make her lunch and get her to school. Blah blah blah.... anyhow...you get the drift.

Ugly Bella

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NO, I'm not calling my beautiful, precious child ugly. I'm just saying........

Fruit Fly, Gnat. Whatever

For the past week or so we have had a problem with fruit flies. Gnat's. Those freaking little annoying bugs that fly around and for some strange reason that I can never kill. We had this problem last year and I thought I had remedied the problem only to find they have returned. Are they seasonal? I clean my kitchen at least 5 times a day and I spray everything down with clorox spray. I spray lysol on everything, I clean the disposal with bleach and hot water and also with those disposal cleaning packets (I love doing that by the way) that really gets down there and gets all that yucky stuff out. I even cleaned the trash can lid yesterday just to make sure they were not attracted to that. I do keep fresh fruit out on the counter but have done that all year and don't understand why they only now seem to be around. Hopefully it's seasonal but I sure am getting tired of them. I am even embarassed to have small group tomorrow for fear that these little freaky flies might land in someone's hamburger. Ooops. Sorry about that! Anyone else having this problem. They sure are bugging me!

All Good Things Must End

I really dislike when things I enjoy come to an end. Today was the last meeting for my weekly Bible Study I have been doing for the past 10 weeks. I so thoroughly enjoyed these lessons and learned a lot from it. Now I may not have perfected implementing it all into my daily life just yet but it surely is something I will keep working on. I KNOW I've grown in my faith and I am way more trusting in GOD than before we started. I think I have a better understanding of who GOD is and who I am. The lessons were so beautiful and eye opening and the lady that wrote the curriculum is brilliant! I also got to know a few ladies that go to my church but I've never really spoken to and gained so much from each of them. It was a great group of ladies. And now it's ending and I am a bit sad. And not just this but my Pilate's class that I have also been doing the past 10 weeks is ending on Friday. I have enjoyed the Pilate's as well and not only was it a chance for me to gain some strength in my body but also was a chance for me to sort of rekindle an old friendship. My best friend from junior high and high school( we were inseparable) and I took this class together. We had lost touch through out the years and reconnected through facebook! I enjoyed getting to see her every week and chat through our pain.......I mean Pilate's. Surely we will keep in touch but again it just sort of makes me sad when something has to come to an end. It's kind of like a chapter is ending and I don't quite know the title to the next one.

I am thankful for both of these opportunities and feel like I have grown in faith and body and I can tell I am stronger. I can't wait to see what the next few months will have in store. It is going to be Summer soon so I know it will be interesting. Thank you GOD for these 2 wonderful experiences I got to enjoy and I'm trusting you that great things are still to come. Happy Wednesday!

But I NEED it

Okay well I don't NEED it, but I sure, really do want it. Thanks to Amanda G and Karina B, all I can think about these days is getting me a new wallet. It just so happened that I was considering replacing my old one because it does not match my purse all that well. Now, not just any wallet will do. It has to be A Hobo International Lauren clutch wallet. I feel like that little boy from A Christmas Carol that wants that red rider bebe gun and it's all he can think about. But at least I won't shoot my eye out. These little thingys are amazing! And if you've seen the contents of my wallet and if you want to be right you will agree that I NEED one.

Out with the old

This is our current countertop in our kitchen. I'm not going to say white ceramic tile as a countertop and back splash is hideous because we all have our "taste" but it just doesn't work for me. The grout is dirty and dirt and stains show up no matter how many times a day I spray them with clorox cleaner. I did not like it when we bought the house and it was one of the things we said we were going to change. And I am happy to say.....It's time for that change!

This is also the sink that was in the house when we bought it and it's old and also stained and despite the fact that I too spray this many times a day with the clorox bleach cleaner, it just does not stay white and sparkling clean. So that's a changing too!

But I have to say that my least favorite part of the kitchen is the backsplash. I just laughed when I saw it when we looked at this house because the house we had before this one had the same exact tile backsplash ( except blue ) and we had to change that one out too. Bye Bye green tiles.

I can't wait to have our new and improved kitchen. We picked out our counter top and it's a beautiful black granite. Upon first glance you would just say it's black but it has some beautiful color variations that will go nicely with our stainless steel appliances. The official color of it is black pearl. The new backsplash will be slate tiles that also have lots of color variations that will pick up some of the color in the countertop. Here is the granite.

I ordered our sink online yesterday which is also a black granite sink. I unfortunately was not able to get either one of the ones I posted on but the one I did get was more similar to the top picture than the bottom. It also is bigger than the other 2 and we got it at a GREAT price with free shipping! Can't beat that. I am so excited to get started and see it all together. I hope it looks as nice in reality as it does in my head! I am sure there will be more posts to come about the remodel. Especially since my jack of all trades husband decided to do the demolition part himself to save us a little money. So yeah, he'll be tearing out old contertops and backsplash, and removing the old sink. I'm only slightly nervous.