Kitchen makeover!

For Mom and Dad's 26th Anniversary they decided to take a week long trip to VA. With Dad being George Washington in "Let Freedom Sing" he decided that that would be the perfect time to visit his gorgeous estate, Mt. Vernon, and the other historical monuments the DC area (hopefully more pictures on that soon).

The dream of painting the kitchen had been in the back of Mom's mind, for quite sometime...and so while they were gone, and with the help of many friends, we made that dream a reality! And we had SO much fun while doing it!

The first step was decided what we were going to do to "transform" our kitchen. We knew that Mom had been wanting to paint it red, so that was a start, but she hadn't said a whole lot moret...so we called up our favorite decorator (who happened to be skilled in just about every area that we needed: ) Abby, to help us!!! A whole day spent shopping...and we were ready to get started!!

We never knew quite how dirty the walls were, until we began to clean them...

We had lots of willing helpers...right John?

The painting process was so rewarding to watch! We have such wonderful friends that will come over and help! Luke N. came over and painted the red and cut in the white for us! He is a very skilled painter when it comes to red...after painting his grandma's bathroom in 7 coats of red, he found out the secret and did our red in only 2 coats!! He was so fast that we hardly got any pictures of him..but I did manage to find this one! Thank you, Luke!

Not sure how Noah U. fits into this...not sure why he was over...lol...but he did a very little bit of corner work...(did you, or were you just holding the brush while you paid someone to take your picture?)

Josh heard we were painting and came right over...well...not exactly, but we needed someone tall and he just happened to be in the right place at the right time! *smile*

While we were busy painting Abby and Anna N. were busy arranging the pictures that were to go on the big red wall!! And after a little arm twisting we got Caleb to screw in the pictures for us! He did a marvelous job!

Picture hanging is always a precarious job..."right, now left...no, too far now...up a little,...down just a bit, now to the right again." It was a happy thing when they were all hung and looking pretty!

Finally it was all done!! The "finished pictures" didn't turn out very well so feel free to come on over and see it for yourself!

Mom's reaction was just what we had hoped for! A lot of pleasant screams irrupted when she entered the kitchen!

A HUGE thank you for all of you who helped!!!