23

I celebrated my birthday with my favorite person in the world ... although the weather outside was storming ... we decided to brave the rain and head to San Francisco.

Our day started out with some gorgeous - in your face architecture

… and some antique shopping {note that I use that word lightly since many of the antiques we saw were worth more than our yearly income!!!} … yet still so gorgeous and would look sooo PERFECT in our entrance … Love vintage chandeliers, but think we are going with something a little more modern in our foyer.

Next stop … the beach … we made friends with the seagulls & had a lovely picnic in our car since it was too wet to eat at the beach.

By the time we finally made it to the Pier, it was really starting to rain, but definitely didn’t stop us from taking some pics and exploring all the old ships & boats!

Our day ended with some delish crab pasta at Francisco’s and lovely presents including a new Iphone 4G from the hubby {finally! My screen has been cracked for far too long} … a couple of cute PINK outfits and nude stilettos from my sisters and beautiful vases & a gorgeous white fur rug from my mommas!

Had such a blessed day & can’t wait to see what else this new year brings!

Beautiful Time

One lazy afternoon, one yellow convertible mustang, and two mountain bikes later ... two very lucky sisters spent a beautiful moment having an improv photo shoot in the middle of a bike trail.

Lunch Time

I had an interesting lunch yesterday ... instead of my usual chicken salad, chocolate oatmeal bar, and fruit punch Capri Sun ... I had a large order of beautiful white Calcutta and a side of glamorous shell mosaics!

With all the bad weather that we've been having lately, we didn't get a chance to pick up our slabs till yesterday afternoon ... but now that they're paid for and off to the fabricator ... I'm anxiously awaiting their arrival in our kitchen!

The fabricator stopped by our house last night to make final measurements & templates ... he ended up tweaking our bar a little bit, but other than that everything seems perfect and ready to go with the countertops!  This gave us a chance to dry fit our extra large, extra perfect ;) farmhouse sink, which I'm absolutely lovin'! {incase you can't tell by now}  Everything is coming together so beautifully and I'm finally starting to see the full picture {even though there's still plenty to do in the kitchen before it's fully complete}

Now lets play a little game of "what's the big freakin difference"!  Here's a pic of our kitchen from last week & one from yesterday {and NO the bad photo quality is not the only difference}

As you can see, hopefully quite clearly, we finally got the doors on our upper cabinets up ... unfortunately this process was a lot more complicated and pain-staking than we originally planned for ... it all started when we first picked out our creamy white cabinets from a long line of kitchen cabinets in various shades and styles ... Once we had our vision planned out to the very last drawer  ... we realized that our specific cabinet style only comes with one type of glass door....

Not to say that this is a bad choice, but it was definintely a little more "country" than we were willing to go ... Lucky for me ... I have a very handy hubby who was able to take a solid door and cut it out ever so perfectly to get it ready for custom glass installation!  As you can see from our kitchen picture above ... one of the doors got damaged in the process {a first attempt} but now that he got the technique down it should be smooth sailing from here.

We still have no clue what we are doing for the back splash, but spotted these beautiful shell mosaic tiles while waiting for my fabricator at the tile place.

My plan is to wait until after the marble is in ... so it can "speak" to me ... funny yeah I know ... I think I need to find some back splash inspirations to share later, but for now off to the house to finish grouting in the master shower!