Summer is so close i can taste it.

***updating to join Home by Heidi"'s project link up!****




The boys are feeling it.

I am feeling it.

It's around the corner.  

Don't you wish employers gave you summer off - wouldn't that be divine - i am totally convinced that if we had 3 straight months off in the summer i would be MUCH more alive during the working months.  


A girl can dream.


It didn't help that we jump started the season by the big dig...so every day we watched a little more progress being made toward our biggest project to date...the POOL.


I think this is the last progress shot i shared...

Well, it's changed some, and defintitely for the better.  

 

Due to a lot of hardwork by a lot of people.  My neighbors who actually built the pool (gotta love that)!  

 My husband who did the planting in the beds...yes, that's a large mulch bed. over 10 feet in width.  You can see foxtail palms, rosemary, mexican petunia, blood orange tree...and it all looks dwarfed because the bed is huge LOL.

 Vance brought this home one day last week...it's a purple banana plant. I'd never seen one. It's so vibrant, i think it's my new favorite plant!

My dad worked his hiney off putting furniture together - thanks Dad!
 

 Not to mention, putting a pergola together so we wouldn't melt this summer - no back porch, y'all.  Not cool.  Literally.

and my husband's favorite thing (and probably Nate's) - the outdoor shower.  Door still needs that turquoise paint job...I love the fact we saved this dang door and drug it between houses for over a year for this purpose.  love the jagged bottom. yes, i'm weird like that.

That flowering vine you see planted is mandeville - it will be half way up before the end of the year, and probably overtake it by the end of next summer.  It's flowers are so pretty.

 So...that's where we are...not much blogging going on...but a lot of swimming :)  I'll take it!

Linking to the Picket Fence... for Inspiration Fridays...

See you there!

Temper Tantrums

Yep.  This was me today.  now.

I woke up at 5:30 and forced myself back to sleep, only to then oversleep and have 30 minutes to get the boys up, dressed, fed and out the door to school.

This was of course the morning that one couldn't find a book he needed for school, and the other couldn't un-do the knot in either of his shoes.  Also the morning where they were on each other's nerves continuously.

Throw in me, rushing around like a fool, and walking into the sliding door frame with my bad shoulder.

The pain about put me on.the.floor.  And i think i even yelped.

The rest of the day, i felt like i was underwater, people were on my nerves, and i just couldn't kick the brain into gear.  And i totally forgot a dr's appt.  Awesome.

Cut to later tonight when the little one couldn't find his rough draft that we worked on for his mini-research paper and he had to re-do the entire thing.  Seeing his eyes water up about started my own waterworks factory.

I am spent.

But I am happy. And I am blessed.

• I may have one frozen shoulder, but I also have one that works :)

• We might have lost the first research paper, but Nate did much better work on the second one and we got to work on it together.  And laugh.  And feel him hug me and thank me over and over again for helping him put it together.  And i got snuggled on a lot.

• I got to spend a quiet hour during sunset watching Walker swim, while my mom, bless her heart, cleaned my kitchen.  And I got to hear about Walker's day and hear him laugh.

 Life is good. Always.

 

 

My Kitchen

Some of you already know I have this fascination with crisp. and with kitchens.  I also have this thing with the color (absence of color?) white.  and lately some industrial (no idea.)  But I don't think I ever showed you what we started with in our own kitchen.

This is the kitchen from the realtor listing pre the Kibler-Simasek invasion.

I'm not a huge fan of yellow.  Especially when the sun beats in the house the way it does here. Just look at that fireball coming at you in the front door window. HOT.HOT.HOT.

I think I was leaning towards blue just to cool it down in here.  

I have been saving pictures of kitchens that just scream out to me - and you should know, they are not HGTV kitchens, or Candace Olsen kitchens, or even Sarah's kitchens.  They are, instead, YOUR kitchens from blogland.  The crisp, fresh looks that i keep going back to. Lissa, Ashli, Flea Market Trixie, and Canadian Cottage.

 

I have no idea when the white cabinet thing is going to kick in here at casa Kibler, so i have to make do with what i have right now. And that's ok.  My biggest issue is that here in Florida, the builders seem to want to give you all of these nook or shelves to decorate, and i'm not a fru-fru tchotchkes kind of girl.  I'm a farmhouse fresh kind of girl stuck in a tchotchke shelf house.

Anyway. 

Here is where we are now...i love the way that even in the middle of the house, it's still sun-lit. The cabinets bother me less now that the walls are not 'walkonthesun' yellow.  And I think I'm going to paint that kitchen table white, since my bar stools just got here and they are the exact same chair as the table, but in white.

My Sarah came home this week, and did a little project for me too, for this space.  I am totally smitten with zinc letters right now.  However, at $30 a piece or more I was starting to lose that lovin feeling.  So little miss "I can make anything" did just that.  Gotta love having a daughter that majors in design.  Up over the pantry they went. (see what i mean about stupid niches/alcove spaces)

I'm not really sure that picture does them justice either - they truly look like zinc IRL.
 

 And i have no idea what to stick up there along with that crab can either.  Obviously, it's a much longer process than i planned. :)

Copycat (like that's a bad thing)

I have no original ideas.  I steal ideas everywhere.  Let this be my formal apology to Ashli. 

Ashli. I'm sorry.  I'm a thief.  But thanks to you, the living room is coming along quite nicely. Keep up the good work!  Try not to go so super fast though with your decorating - it is very hard for me to keep up!


So...this is Ashli's room that has been featured on numerous posts lately...isn't it great? The best word (and compliment) that i can come up with is that it's CRISP.  I love crisp. Maybe because with 3 children, a husband, 3 cats, 2 fish and 2 weird, gross tree frogs that my boys have brought in the house - crisp is always eluding me.

I heart this room. Absolutely everything in it I adore.  I went on a hunt for that darn clock and Urban Home doesn't sell it anymore... but i finally located one on amazon. Love me Amazon. That one click purchase option - that's going to bankrupt me for sure.  I've used it like 3 times this past week.  D.A.N.G.E.R.O.U.S.  

Anyway - i love her style.  I wanted to take it, throw some tropical vibe into the color scheme, being a Florida girl.  But it's taking me forever.  Here is where we are today.  Tell me - would you paint the clock white? or keep it dark?  And yes, it's off-center because my plan was to mimic this sweet child's look right down to the pictures on the right of her clock. I would just have 3 instead of 2.

So...does it stay bronze...or does it go white? If it goes white...the frames will be white.  If it stays bronze...the frames will match the coffee table/chest...

Need blinds in windows, throw rug on floor....hate the lampshade.  And yes, the clock is GINORMOUS. 50" across. Huge, i'm tellin' ya.

White...bronze....? Also..keep in mind i have barstools that are being delivered today that are white that will be just to the right of where this pic cuts off, and we're putting white crown in the room.  

Bin Laden Family Compound Pictures - right down the road from where I grew up.

With all the news this week surrounding the death of Bin Laden, this story was bound to re-surface surrounding his brother's estate in Clermont - a bedroom community just west of Orlando, and one town over from where i went to high school.

The story goes that just days after 9/11, Khalil Bin Laden and his family just up and vacated the estate - evaporated into the ether so to speak.  

I remember after 9/11 getting word that my old boss and co-workers from the bank were being interviewed by all sorts of government agencies surrounding another of his family members ties and associations to our bank.  I can still remember one of the wives - not sure which one - coming in the bank bringing each of us a Christmas gift and a box of candy. I remember going to her husband's office to go through some of the banking software and him questioning the credit card transaction rate we were charging him.  It's just surreal, those memories.  I was so young, first real grown up job.  No idea who i was dealing with. 

When those family members made news here - it was all over central Florida news - some of the people being interviewed all had the same reaction i did when i heard the accusations:

"Them??" 

"But, they are so nice...you must be wrong"  

"He is so kind to everyone - there has to be a mistake."  


I wanted it to be mistake.  I didn't want to fall into the trap of fear.  Then, all of the sudden, the news stories stopped and I don't know what happened or how it turned out.  Again, just surreal.


But here is one of their homes - my friend, Kayc, is a property appraiser out there and shared this article with us yesterday - the link to the article (and more pictures) is at the bottom.

Of course, the house stalker in me wants to see this up close and personal. It was built in the 20's, and has a great old Florida Spanish feel.  I hear that these pictures are from '09 and it has since been vandalized many times over.

Here is the link to the article and more pics - 

http://www.abandonedfl.com/?p=198&sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4dbff198b977c57c%2C0