Before, During and Other

I've been talking about this for almost two years now and I bet you all thought it would never happen. But we're finally ready for the next phase of the kitchen remodel. There's a before shot..... Now here it is during, complete with the mess of the contents of half of the cabinets spread across the counter tops. Since we are doing the demolition and re-construction in stages, I think I'll be seeing a lot of this.
And here's another "during" photo. The upper cabinets are installed, but doors and shelving won't be up until later this week. But what this doesn't show, are the completed lower cabinets, new microwave and the under cabinet lighting. So progress has been made! I'm hoping have most of it completed by Memorial weekend when we're expecting house guests. But since we've got a vacation planned for a few days before that - we'll see! Before the kitchen became a construction zone, I did a little baking. This is Rhubarb Crumb Cake using a recipe from Smitten Kitchen. We used to eat a lot of rhubarb when I was growing up. Especially Rhubarb crisp but this recipe combines the crumbly, sugary goodness of the topping of a crisp with a nice moist cake and not quite so much rhubarb. Yum!



On to the list of other random things here at the home front. Last year, the pink dogwoods were so beautiful around here that I decided to (have the garden center) plant one in our backyard.

Oops, someone planted a nice white dogwood instead! At least the garden center admitted their mistake and instead of digging this one up and re-planting a pink one, they gave me a good deal on a second tree. Hopefully, this one will be pink!

Sewing project this week was putting the binding on the little quilt that B pieced and I quilted for her little "peanut"! If anyone ever hears me say I'm going to put satin binding on a quilt, please, please, please, stop me! Maybe it was the combination of the Minkee backing and the satin, but I had the worst time getting this done and I'm not proud of my workmanship at all. But maybe little "peanut" won't care and he'll just enjoy cuddling the softness. I actually remember having a "blankey" with satin binding on it when I was very little and my mother had to replace the worn out binding because it was so well loved. I appreciate her efforts so much more now!

Hope you all have a great week. This will be a busy one around here!