A word about Decadence

Simply Cinful Muffins by Decadence

A few posts ago I gave you a teaser about Decadence and where I hoped to go with it in the future.  I honestly haven't been doing much with it this past year. Emil had 4 surgeries, one on each of his shoulders and both his Achilles. It was a lot of time and recovery. I have still had orders but haven't actively advertised and worked to get business. Other than holidays I've only had a order or two a month which was fine for where I was at at the time. 

Easter  Cookies by Decadence

However, I have a dear friend that is hoping to opening a cafe with her husband this fall and they have asked me to do all the desserts and whatever else I would like at their cafe. I'm excited and scared and my mind is racing with so many ideas!

I have so many recipes I want to try and things to create.

I mean, these aren't mine but I would love to make them. Can't you just see these in little bags tied with ribbons for Mother's Day gifts?

Or what about these? How adorable for spring????!!! 

I do love the cookies but what I will be doing more of is probably things like the muffins above which I did make and are freakin' amazing!!! And I've got a recipe for BoBerry Biscuits, which are a sweet Blueberry biscuit that I literally can not keep for longer for a day because Emil M. and Noah devour them.

The Lorrie by Decadence

So this is where I hope to be going with the business in the fall. If things go according to the plan you'll be seeing me in a cafe near you.... (but only if you live in Currituck!)

Emil's Graduation

This was taken after Kirstin's last soccer game. You can see her on the left. So cool!

You know the Monty Python bit about Shrubbery?

Where Shrubbery is a bad word that you aren't allowed to say?

 I know where that came from. I was out the other day doing yard work and noticed that ours needed to be cut desperately. Emil had been saying he was going to get to it for weeks but he had been enslaved inside doing wood flooring so I decided to tackle it one day. It took me 4 hours and my back was aching so badly that night from being bent over for such a long time all I could think was -

SHRUBBERY!!!!!
(The english are brilliant!)

So Emil finished his thesis after 3 semesters and was finally able to graduate this month. (Did I mention it was a busy month?)

He already had his Bachelors degree in Biology from Old Dominion University

It served him well as he taught for the first 4 years of our marriage. He was an amazing teacher but you can't earn enough raise a family and have only one person working on a teachers salary, at least not for the size family we wanted to have, so he went into web design 16 years ago and computer programing has been his work ever since. 

He decided to set a professional goal to get his Masters in Software Engineering in the fall of 2009.

 It isn't a jump in pay but it is something he wanted to accomplish. He did a distance program that East Carolina University has set up and only had to go to the campus 4 times during the entire degree. 

See if you can spot him. He's right in the middle!

Undergraduates and their caps!

I have to say I was quite impressed with all the decorated caps and how detailed they were. 

Emil's Mom and Dad brought the kids down for the department specific ceremony that night. Kirstin had a AP test that day that she couldn't miss. His first ceremony on the football field was at 9am and the department specific one that night was at 8pm. So we went to see a movie and just hung out in Greenville. Mom and Dad and the kids met us for dinner at 5pm.

Our family! Noah has started wearing fedoras. Hmmmm. Wonder where he got that from?

 It isn't easy to work on a college degree when that's your entire focus, much less than when you're working a full time job,  supporting your family, working hard in a church calling and trying to find time to surf! We are so proud of you Love! Congrats!

Raven's Roost

The first weekend in May Emil lead a group of 4th years in a climbing trip to Raven's Roost.

This was our group activity for Girls Camp. Only the 4th years get to do a special team building activity. It's one of the advantages of being the oldest girls at camp. They had a blast! Here is the view from the top.

 The girls repelled down the rock face which is a 100 ft drop. It was quite an accomplishment for some of them. It can be hard to let go and trust your equipment and leaders as well as look down and see nothing but rocks below! Some of them were so light they had to work to get down by feeding the rope through the equipment. Oh to have that problem!

They also had the chance to climb up the rock 80 feet. 

I was down below helping the girls get set up and making sure they were in their gear nice and safe.

We had a very nice trip and I'm  sure we'll do it again. All the girls said they loved it!

Floored!

The flooring we chose was Hand scraped Burnished Acacia. It's dark and yes, it does show every single dog and cat hair but I love it even so...

Even before Kirstin's Prom we had started working on the downstairs flooring. It was a long process. Our house is built on a concrete slab so nailing in the new hardwood floor like we did for the upstairs rooms wasn't an option. 

We chose to put it down in a floating like method. Basically it's like adhering the planks to fly paper. It was a lot harder than what we've done before and not nearly satisfying in some ways. In the end we just went with the mindset that the look we were going for was "classically rustic."

We started with the study so everything had to come out of there. And this is what the entryway looked like for a few days. I was in agony!

So this is what it looked like before...

 and at the start of laying down the wood 

and the finish!

It feels larger to me. We still have to finish off the bookcase. We are going to trim out the base and top so it looks like a built in unit. Maybe add some library lights on the top as well.

Next we moved to the entryway.

This was not Emil's most favorite project. I pretty much worked him like a slave. But it had to be done because I couldn't stand looking at the pile of wood in the dining room for very long. I  may have been known to be impatient for projects to be done- which I think would make me a fine foreman if I ever decided to go into construction- which I wouldn't because the projects take too long. Now! Isn't that much better?

Then the hall way before 

 and after!

Lastly the dining room. Which was our staging area for most of the project.

 

 Ahhhh! look at those clean lines. Love, Love, Love it!

We're still not done. We have to finish a small portion along the right side of the dining room where there is a leak that has to be resolved before we put the last section in. We also have the stairs and thresholds to put in. I worked on staining them this past week along with the thresholds. Most of the floor took about 3 weeks to do. I do love it but you do see everything on the floor but as my kids are older it's not so bad. Mostly it's cat and dog hair but I love knowing I can just run a dust mop over it and it's clean, not hiding in the padding like when we had carpet. I'm hoping it will help with the allergies both Noah and I have.

What do you think?

Prom Season

It's Spring and Prom is in the air....

A couple of weeks ago Kirstin had her Junior prom. She invited Matt Penalba, a friend from Great Bridge, to go with her.

How cute is that?! I love that I caught him stealing a look at her!

They are good friends and so whenever I'd attempt to get a serious photo of them this is usually the reaction I got. Lots of jokes and laughter. 

We did have some fun with shrinky dinky photography. I couldn't figure out how to make the small people in focus at the same time. Melissa? Got any suggestions?

I was able to get a couple of them that were semi serious.

We borrowed her dress from her old baby sitter. It was beautiful and she loves it.

She said they had a blast at the prom and went to a friends house for a bonfire afterwards. She'll be doing it all over again in a month when she goes to another friends prom at his school! 

Oh to be young!

Soccer & Wood Floors Revealed

Kirstin has been playing soccer on the high school team. She's enjoying it and I like that it's getting her out of the house and moving. 

They're playing her more and more each game and she likes it quite a bit. I love watching her play. Much more than softball, I must admit. They're a good group of girls. 

So for the past 3 weeks I've been busy with flooring and Girls Camp. (Yes it's that time of year again!)

And I'm happy to announce we have finished the wood flooring in the upstairs!!!!

(I feel like I've given birth or something!)

We started in Emil Michael's room the week of spring break. I figured it would be the easiest since he's not home yet. I wasn't going to paint the room but once I moved all the furniture out and realized it hadn't been painted since we first moved in and still had the rockets I had stenciled for him when he was ten I thought "maybe it's time". 

I'm so glad I did. I love the color I picked. It's called "Rivermist" from Lowes. I have this thing for Blues. It's clean and bright and while trimming out the doors I discovered a new painters tape called frog tape, that works great. If you're painting soon give it a try. It is more expensive then the typical blue tape but if you're only painting once every 10 years go for the splurge!

 I pulled up the carpet and padding and had Noah help me move that from the upstairs. It wasn't too bad because I cut it up in small sections.

Emil has been working feverishly on his thesis and wasn't available for much help but he did get me started and help me finish. Noah helped a little one day lining up the planks and Kirstin helped me finish to here.

 I cut and measured and stapled the planks in with that stapler against the far wall but when you get this close to the edge you have to use a nail gun and that's where Emil came back in. 

And ta-da! The finished product!

Because of the lighting from the window the room looks fairly dark but it's actually very bright. Here's some other views. 

Did I mention I did that! I'm so proud of myself! Here's a closeup of the planks. Aren't they beautiful?

Body aching but feeling a sense of confidence I decided to tackle Kirstin's room this last weekend. I had her move out most of her furniture. 

(Same issue with the windows backlighting here)

 I'm not crazy about her choice of wall color. I call it School Bus Yellow. (it hurts my eyes) She has a yellow, black and white theme going on in there.

It's very bright, but she loves it. 

Thankfully there was a break in the closet which is still white. 

Ahhhhh. Better.

Before & After

 

Emil helped me a lot more with Kirstin's room. It's more angled and the closets which are always hard were even harder here but it's done!!!! Happy Day! 

Also Emil's thesis is done too! Tomorrow he will go to East Carolina University in Greenville to defend it and then graduate on May 10. It is so nice to be closing chapters in our lives on long worked for goals. 

Remember my goal jar from the beginning of the year? The slip I picked for April was a "free" month. 

(I had to re-pick twice before I got it but I figured the flooring more than covered my productivity status.)