black & white wednesday.......Having "Faith" in your dreams......

Yes, I am a day late again! Seems to be the story of my life right now with trying to get settled in our new home! Still not quite there yet!
I'm really enjoying these black & white Wednesdays though so better late than never, huh??

I am entering a photo this week that I did not take, but was the very first photo (our very first glimpse) we ever saw of our Faith. This photo literally took our breath away the moment we saw it..........

I never thought about converting it to black & white until now. I have a color print of it framed that sets on my dresser, but thought with that lovely white gown she is wearing it would look so pretty given an old fashion look. I cropped the photo and added some sepia tone to it............

The quality isn't the greatest as it is a scanned print, but I love the look. I may play around with it some more when I have some time, but this will definitely be one I will be adding to my wall of black & whites!
To see more lovely photos go here!

black & white wednesday

I am so happy that Lisa has started "black and white" Wednesdays!! It is helping me to go back through some of my favorite black and white photos that I never got around to framing and get them organized to get hung on my wall!

Here is my pick for this week! This is of Faith when she was 3 years old! I actually took it the day of her birthday. I love the softness of it and the sunlight shining on her...

I love it even more in black and white......

Chandelier confusion...... *****(Update below)***

I should be busy packing things up right now, but I have been staring at chandeliers all morning trying to decide on one for above our kitchen island. See! You wonder why we aren't moved in our house yet! :) I'm just so excited about getting some lighting above our island. The granite on our island is so beautiful and it needs some lighting shining down on it. My problem is I just can't decide what I want. I did narrow it down to going with a chandelier instead of pendant lighting.

So, what do you think? I could use some help! I found these on over stock and narrowed it down to only six........

At first I really liked this one! I wasn't too sure about the black color, but I think it would go nicely because of our black counters.

Then I saw this one. I like the color of it and thought it would go nicely with the antiquing in our cabinets.

Then I saw these next 3. They are very similar and a total different look from the other chandeliers. I like the simplicity of the one above and the way the lights go down.

I liked the bronze color of these.....

Then lastly I saw this one!! Something totally different from what I was thinking, but I think it is really pretty and has character.

Soooooo. Now I am just confused! Not sure what to go with??????
Better get back to packing now!!!!

Update!!!! Thanks everyone for sharing your opinions!!! Loved reading them all! I have decided to go with the chandelier that originally hit my eye first and go with the first one! This was also Dale's favorite, which being that he loves to cook, want him to be happy too!;) Will take an updated photo of it hanging in our kitchen, which hopefully will not take too too long!

black & white wednesday (okay, I'm a little late!)

I really wanted to participate in Lisa's Wednesday's black and white photo challenge over at "The Long Road to China" so I am hoping she will forgive me for being a couple days behind! :) Lisa is a very talented photographer and captures such wonderful emotions in all of her photos. She was motivated to start this in hopes of filling one of her walls entirely with black and white photos. Black and white photos have always been my favorite and while I have them scattered through out my home I too would love to do a wall of them in our new house. I am also hoping this will encourage me to go back through my photos and make prints of some of my favorites that I just never did get around to printing and getting framed.
This has always been one of my favorites of the boys. This was taken almost 10 years ago in our backyard in Spain. They spent hours back there together just "hanging out."

The fun begins and our new kitchen!!!

We rented a u haul this week-end and cleared out the garage! The boys were wonderful helping Daddy with loading it all up and unloading it at the new house. I was really proud of them, never did they complain once. (Okay, maybe just a little:) Let's just say Faith and I were there for moral support ;) By the time we were through, this was completely full! (Yes, we have way too much stuff!)

Ruby had to make sure that she was not left behind!

So the moving has begun!!!! We plan to rent a u haul again this week-end and hopefully get most of our house hold items moved. Then the following week-end we are hiring someone to move the heavy furniture. Our goal is to be sleeping at our new home in 2 weeks!

Our kitchen is now complete and we are sooooooo happy and excited about it! Here are some photos I took while it was in the middle of being torn apart.......

We had the kitchen cabinets and island resurfaced, granite counters and tile back splash put on, and we repainted the walls. We also put the flooring in. Our upstairs hall and master bedroom has Brazilian hardwoods floors and we wanted to match it as best we could. I love this flooring!
We were on a really tight budget and we are just so tickled with how wonderful it turned out!

And here it is!!!!! Our new kitchen!!!!!

I LOVE how it turned out!!!
(We plan to put a french slider door in where the window by the table is)

The island is our most favorite part of it. I love this granite color. We plan to get a chandelier to put above it.

I'm also really happy with how the back splash turned out.

We have had most of our furniture since we have been married. Which means it is all almost 20 years old!! We are so ready for some new things, but also trying to budget. This was our dining room table we bought when we got married. It converts to a small round table so we decided to use it as our breakfast table. The seat cushions were getting really worn so I redid them and gave them more of a kitchen feel.

I also love the apple tree outside my kitchen window. It is always full of pretty birds and I love that I'll be able to watch them as I do the dishes.

I still want to get different valances and eventually we want to get stainless steel appliances. We did get a new stainless steel fridge which is so nice.

We have grapefruit growing in our backyard and I couldn't resist picking some....they smell soooo good.

So there it is! Our new kitchen!! I am so looking forward to spending my time in here!

i heart faces...Best face photo!!!

This week's theme at "i heart faces" is your best face photo. It must be a photo focusing only on the face and one taken within the last couple months. This photo is by far my favorite photo that I took over the holiday season. During Faith's visit to see Santa I was so happy they let me stand to the side to take some photos. Although the photos that they take are always pretty cute (not to mention you have to pay a fortune for them) they are always so poised. I wanted to try my best to just capture this exciting moment of wonder. I love the way Faith and Santa are looking at one another in this photo and the pure wonder on Faith's face.
I still have so much to learn about photography, but I am having fun with it and really enjoy learning so much from everyone over at "i heart faces".

Diving right into 2010!!!!!!

I have neglected to post here over the last few weeks as I really wanted to just slow down and enjoy the the holidays and the kids being off from school. We have also had so much going on with getting our house prepared to move into. We are just about finished with the painting and our kitchen back splash tile will be put on tomorrow. There are lots of other small projects we want to do, but they will have to wait for another time. With the holidays over we are so anxious now to just get settled into our home! Our goal is to be moved in by the end of this month. We are renting a u haul this week-end and getting the garage moved first. (Or Dale is getting the garaged moved I should say;) We have so much "stuff" we want to get rid of and not bring with us. I have been so overwhelmed by it all. With all of the years having the military pack and move us I guess I never seemed to mind all the stuff. I would just unpack and find a place for it. Now with us doing it all ourselves I realize we hung on to too much way too long. I want to declutter and get better organized.

I need some help from those of you that have swimming pools or know someone that does. We are having a tough time deciding on a fence for around our swimming pool. I definitely want one around it. Dale does not feel we need one, as we do not have toddlers, but he knows how strongly I feel about it so we are trying to decide what to go with. I would be happy with a mesh fence, but Dale really does not want one of these. He would like to go with a rod iron fence which I really like too, but they are more expensive and would not be so easy to remove if we choose to one day. I'd love to hear from some of you that have swimming pools or just anyone that might have an opinion. We love our pool. It is what sold us on our home. We look forward to using it a lot and enjoy sitting out by it and eating out there. The water fall is so pretty all lit up at night. But. I will be honest. Having a pool does make me very nervous too. So I will feel so much better once a fence is put around it. Feel free to email me too if you would rather do that.


And just because I can't not post at least one Christmas photo, here is Faith pretending to be Santa...............