we went to africa.

We had the amazing opportunity to take a trip to the northern part of Africa for a week and see our best friends, Chris and Emily.  The trip was a whirlwind of wonderfulness and I'd love to tell you about it in person.  It's difficult to do on the blog, so I'll just leave you with some pictures!

We started the trip off with an 8 hour layover in NYC.  So we ditched the airport and went exploring!

Overseas flights are exhausting but beautiful, not knowing if you are witnessing a sunset or a sunrise.  All you can do is sit back and take in the beauty.

And then we landed!  In the desert...for real.

Below is the view from an apartment we stayed in that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea.  It was amazing.

Boats anchored outside a castle on the sea:

Beautiful view from a delicious seafood restaurant:

A glimpse at local life...the night market!

A man handed me a baby duck while walking through the night market.  It was all cute and cuddly until I realized it would be raised to be someone's dinner.  

Juice stands.  AMAZING.

The reason for our trip!  Reunited with my sweetest friend EMILY! (And my future daughter-in-law, Ella!)

Man, we've missed them.  We got to enjoy a day on the Mediterranean beach.

Our first view of the pyramids!  See them?  

The Nile River:

The national museum of Egypt:

Where we illegally took a picture of King Tut's mask!!!  craaaaaazy.

And then I rode a camel:

I was chosen to get on the camel first because I appeared to be the most nervous...thanks.  And yes, that was me who screamed. 

This is my "oh my gosh I'm on a camel" face:

And yes, that is a head scarf hat thing on Brandon's head.  He bought it for like $2 so his head would be protected from the sun.  Now thankfully it graces most of our pictures.

A pretty insane view from atop my camel:

We got to go inside this pyramid:

It was cramped and a little bit smelly, and I was basically hyperventilating the entire time because they kindly told us that they only let a certain number of people inside per day because "there isn't enough oxygen."  Awesome.  

Brandon respectfully doing pushups inside one of the tombs inside the pyramid:

And then I collapsed into a piece of heaven, aka a real bed. This king sized slice of goodness was in an amazing hotel we stayed in before flying home and was a much welcomed site after sleeping in not-so-American beds all week :)

There was a pretty unbelievable pool:

That overlooked the pyramids.  No kidding.  Ah-mazing. 

And that is just a portion of the insanity.  

lucas, meet lloyd.

I committed the cardinal sins of new mothers.

I cut Lucas's hair.

And I screamed after the snip of the bangs.

Shortly after the "incident" we went to Target.  And this is when I realized the severity of the situation. I had made my son look like Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber with one snip of the scissors.  Instant regret.

So what did I do?  I called Farrin.  

Ashley:  I did something bad.

Farrin: What did you do?

Ashley:  I cut Lucas's bangs.

Farrin:  [silence......] you.did.WHAT?! No...

Ashley:  [trying to rationalize actions....a string of incoherent panicky words......then texts Farrin above picture.] 

Farrin:  NO.  Ash.  How did you end up with scissors in your hand in the first place near your child's beautiful blonde hair?!

Ashley:  But he was so still....and I thought I could....and.....

Farrin:  Where are you?  Are you in public?  Are you in TARGET?  Go home right now and put a hat on that child.  NOW.  

It's love, really...her honesty.  And home we went, my head hung in shame.

Lesson.  Learned.  

100!

Friends, can you believe this is the 100th post of our blog?  As I look back over the last 99 posts, I'm so thankful that I have things documented in words and pictures to remember all of the details of our crazy little life.  I hope you've enjoyed following along with us and being patient with me as I try to keep up with posting.

Now, I am asking something of you.  If you're following along and checking our blog, I want to know who you are!  The blogger site allows me to sort of see my 'audience' but not anything specific.  So, come out come out wherever you are!

Please take the time to leave a quick comment on this post letting me know who I'm talking to!  I know that people are visiting from 10 different countries (which still confuses/amazes me) and that in the past year, we've had 5,528 page views to date.  And that just amazes me.

So please let me know who you are!  Don't be embarrassed...I'm a self-professed blog stalker too.  So if you have a blog, I probably follow you too :)

Anyway, happy 100 y'all!

annie sloan chalk paint: kitchen cabinets [part 1]

When we moved into this house, I fell in love with the layout of the kitchen.  However...the 42 inch dreamy cabinets were u-g-l-y.  They were some kind of yellowish wood with brass knobs.  Lots and lots of blingy brass knobs.  We knew we needed to do something about all of that wood, and thought we could just have someone paint our cabinets for us.  Do you know how much it costs to get someone to professionally paint your cabinets? A few thousand dollars.  Yeah.Right.  So, we ordered some pretty knobs and drawer pulls off of Amazon and decided to do paint them ourselves!  

Have you heard of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint?  It's fantastic.  No sanding!  No priming!  Just paint it on! And y'all, honestly we didn't sand or prime or anything!  We just cleaned the cabinets and started painting. But the thing about chalk paint (not to be confused with chalkboard paint, not the same stuff) is that you have to put something over top of it.  ASCP is designed primarily to use with a wax on top, but we chose to use ASCP lacquer on top instead.  It seemed a little more user friendly for us, and the lacquer is supposedly more durable than the wax (it's designed for use on painted floors!) which will hold up to the wear and tear of wet hands, flying food, and other insanities that happen in my kitchen.  You can't buy ASCP at normal paint retailers, you have to get them from one of their stockists that are usually set up in the cutest little shops.  We got ours from the Melville Trading Post in Mebane.  I could have spent hours in that store, drooling over beautifully distressed pieces of furniture painted with ASCP.  But I left with my paint and lacquer and began coming up with a game plan on how we would tackle this project.

The good thing about our kitchen is that we have tons of drawers and cabinets.  But it made it really overwhelming to think of actually starting to paint them.  Once you start, there's no going back!  It's not like we can just take all of our cabinet doors off and start painting...a wild and crazy 14 month old puts pretty strict constraints on how to execute a project like this.  We decided to start small with the island.  Our color of choice:  ASCP French Linen.

Notice that the can of paint is small.  ASCP comes in quarts, and because of the thickness of the paint, a little goes a long way.  We used a little over half of the quart for the entire island. 

This is the color of the wood that we were happy to cover up:

Yikes.

Between the brass knobs and yellow wood, it made our wood floors glow yellow. 

Step one...take of all of those knobs!

We cleaned the cabinet doors with a wood cleaner from Lowes, then we took the doors off and painted them with 3 coats of French Linen.  To paint 3 coats took no time at all, because one of the magical things about ASCP is that it dries SO fast.  By the time we were finished with the 4th door, we could loop back to the first one for the next coat.  

And then I stopped taking pictures...woops.  Next, we brushed on one coat of lacquer, then rubbed a dark mocha stain into the grooves of the doors and drawers, and finished it off with one more coat of lacquer. ASCP is designed to be distressed, most often you can sand it down in places to reveal the wood or paint underneath the chalk paint.  We wanted them distressed looking but didn't want the ugly colored wood to show through, so that's why we did a dark glaze rubbed in the nooks and crannies.  Then we added our knew oil rubbed bronze knobs and stepped back to admire our work!

[disclaimer: this picture was taken before we did the mocha stain rub in the grooves]

 Success!  Now we are in the middle of painting the rest of the cabinets.  Our color of choice for the rest of the cabinets is ASCP Old White.  It's a much bigger process since there are tons of cabinets, but we're trudging forward during nap times and after the little guy goes to bed.  So stay tuned!  It may be a while before we finish, but we WILL finish!

And I'd just like to say, this is one of the reasons why I love my husband.  He amuses me in these crazy projects and works his little butt off right alongside me.  You're the best, B.

happy birthday, B!

There are no words for how thankful I am for my husband.  Today is his birthday, and I'm so glad that 28 years ago he came into this world, he grew up, and he chose me.

B, you're my better half.  You put up with our craziness, show us grace, and point us to Jesus.  Lucas and I both think you are the best dad.  There's not much else to say except that we're thankful for you and we love you.  

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BRANDON!

mullets, firetrucks, and streakers.

Did the title of this post catch your attention?  I couldn't call it "Asheville" or "mountain trip" or anything like that, because I've had quite a few posts titled like that so I needed to shake it up a bit.  

So first.  Mullets!  Or farewell to a mullet.  Lucas got his first little mini haircut because he was in fact growing a mini mullet.  MiMi did the honors and took care of that for us, and we saved his little baby blonde remnants of a mullet that we'll put in a little baggie in his baby book.  

Next: firetrucks! We spent the day after Poppy's party exploring downtown Asheville.  First, we ate lunch at Pack's Tavern where Lucas loved playing with the shuffle board tables.

We stopped in the fire station and Lucas got to explore and climb in the big firetrucks.  Watching those big brown eyes soak in something so gigantic and heroic was so sweet.

Then we enjoyed the beautiful weather and walked around downtown. 

We walked up to the newly redone area outside of city hall known as "Splashville" and Lucas first enjoyed watching some of the kids who came very prepared with bathing suits.  Well, you know where this is going...Nana stripped Lucas down to his diaper and off he went!

He had a BLAST.

Check out our peanut gallery watch mom and I chase our little streaker and dodge the jumping streams of water...

Lucas was all smiles and loved spending time with family in the mountains.  He got to play hard, get dirty, and get spoiled rotten by everyone.

Until next time, Asheville!