how we spent our 4th!

Actually, this post should be titled, "How we spent our 4th of July weekend" For my birthday, my mom gave me her time and skills to help me paint one room in my house. I've almost painted them all, but since our kitchen remodel, we needed to repaint the kitchen, so that's what we did! And it didn't take that long. Mama and I know how to knock out a room in no time! So, since we had more time, this led us to also replacing the god awful original light in the kitchen. This was a big deal for me. I didn't know how to do that so for months, it had not been done. Here's a picture where you can see the light, and a bunch of other mess!

The light is from good ol' Home Depot. It's vintage looking so it looks like it actually came with the house. And it's called Estelle, which is my grandmother's name, so it was a perfect fit! I love it installed even more than I did in the store. It gives off amazing shadows.

By far, the best part of the weekend was putting up this display. A few years ago, Bradley's Meme gave us all these old, rusty choppers and graters. I immediately saw them hung in our kitchen, but we didn't have room in the apartment and this kitchen was a wreck until now. It's so exciting to see this idea come to life! And I love that it's not just things we collected. They're from his family. So it's nice to have that with us. And it's in my favorite room of our house, so it really just brought the whole space together.

We laid it out on the floor, first. Moving things constantly until we got it just right! Then came the hard part of transferring it all to the wall. Slowly, but surely, it was up and we were in love! Oh my god, so much love!

We also picked out the pendant lights for over the peninsula. They're from Restoration Hardware and are probably overpriced, but I did at least get 20% off with their July 4th sale! Can't wait for them to get here! Also, we're waiting on our stools from World Market. Unfortunately we have to wait until September. Boo. They make the chair in barstool height, but we need counter height. Turns out a lot of people want this- just look at the comments on the site. People want counter height! And they have for years. Good thing the wait is almost over!

The next day, we finished the fence. The fence that we started last June. As in June 2013. Yeah, that's right. Honestly, it still wouldn't be done if our neighbors wouldn't have started building their own fence! They hired someone and he was booking it, so I said "We have to finish ours before they do!" Sure enough, that got us into gear and we got it done. All we need now are some adirondack chairs and some lights strung in the tress and we'll be good to go!