I only hope some day that I have a kitchen as big as the ones I had in college :-) I love Provo! Jessie's roommates posed for a quick picture while we told them about our shopping adventures. What a gorgeous group of girls! I'm sure the guys are breaking down the door to ask them out!
Goal of the weekend: Find a wedding dress for Elise and potentially find bridesmaid dresses and a maid of honor dresses for me. Here are a few pictures from our weekend of fun! Elise arrived on Thursday night and tried on several dresses during the day on Friday and found the one! It is gorgeous!!... so that left us with the rest of the weekend to shop for bridesmaid dresses and have some fun.
Friday night Elise, dad, mom, and I headed to TGI Fridays for appetizers/dessert. I inhaled a salad and some appetizers and Elise and I split our favorite dessert- the Brownie Obsession! Elise, mom, and I then kicked off girls weekend by staying up late chatting. Mom got so slap happy telling us stories about when she was little that we both got the giggles and laughed until we couldn't keep our eyes open any longer.
Saturday morning Elise, mom, and I went running and then Elise raced off to finish taking engagement photos at the Busath studio in SLC. Dave (the awesome photographer that took my wedding photos) took some incredible pictures of Elise and Dan. I can't wait to see which one they pick to put in their invitation!
After checking out their pictures we headed to Hatch Family Chocolates in Salt Lake City for some delicious hot chocolate. The couple that runs the place is darling and the hot chocolate was the exact sugar rush we needed to help us get started on bridesmaid dress shopping.
Jessie got to model different dresses while Elise lounged in a chair.
You can tell the chocolate was starting to wear off.
Mom posing with some of the dresses.
It's about time for a diet coke and a trip to Mrs. Fields!
Twinners again! (2nd day in a row!)
After several stops with no luck, we decided to head for the mall to refuel.
First we stopped for "real" food...
Baby Buskirk really needed some potatoes... (currently the only food I like all the time!)
Then we headed to Mrs. Fields!! They made us HUGE cookie sandwiches- our favorite! Yes, it sounds disgusting to some, but we love it! Two huge semi-sweet cookies filled with delicious sugary frosting. We almost asked if we could buy a bucket of it to use for Elise's wedding cake. :-)
Cookie twinners! Can you tell we're all in a much better mood now!
After we decided we were shopped out, Jessie, mom and I headed up to Sundance to check out the wedding reception sites. There was a reception going on, so we snuck up close by and tried to look at the decorations to get some ideas. Jessie and Mom hid in the bushes so they wouldn't get caught :-)
All in all, it was a successful weekend. The best part was when Elise found her dress! Jessie and I will keep looking. I'll be about 6 months pregnant by the wedding, so when we have our next Girls Weekend in SF in November, we'll find me a prego maid of honor dress.
nothing better in the whole world than getting to run with my sister. We have such a good time chatting and we run at exactly the same pace! It makes me miss our days at BYU when we'd go running together... sometimes at 2am after parties and sometimes at 5am before work. Those runs were so fun! Especially in the dead of winter when the snow was falling and muffled all of the sounds, so all we could hear was the crunch of snow/ice under our feet!
learn more about Dan during Rob's interrogation :-) Ruth Ann also had the most amazing cakes from The Prolific Oven and the chocolate one had a cute baby rattle on it for Kevin and I and the carrot cake had a cute wedding design for Elise and Dan. It was such a nice surprise and so cute!
This weekend we were excited to discover that we got the BYU vs. UCLA football game on our TV- part of some free preview by Versus. We got some chips and dip, fired up our BBQ grill for the first time this summer, and invited some friends over. I also made some delicious Ghirardelli double chocolate chip brownies and Bruce brought over Cadbury chocolates- so it was looking like a perfect night. Unfortunately, the game didn't turn out like we'd hoped... although BYU did stage a comeback for a bit. Hopefully they'll play better against Tulsa next weekend. It was fun to finally have people over again. It gave us a great excuse to clean up our place, since it's been covered with dust and grime from all our remodeling junk for over a month.
He also laid out all the cut tile on the bedroom floor so that we could access it easily when we started putting it in place in the bathroom.
Then we finally started laying the tile. Yay! I got to be the runner and bring the tile from the other room to Kevin so that he could lay it on the floor (it was nice to be able to help in a small way).
Here's the floor once we put all the tile down with the little spacers. Next we just had to wait for awhile for the thin set to dry.
After the thin set dried, Kevin mixed up the grout and we started applying it to the floor. It was really fun to see the floor get so dirty and then look awesome once the grout got cleaned off. Kevin applied the grout and then I followed behind him doing two stages of cleaning- first I cleaned the grout with a big sponge and dish detergent and then I did another sweep with the sponge to clean off the tile again using just water. We had to move quickly since the grout only lasts for an hour once it is mixed up!
Halfway through the grouting process (around 9:45pm the night before my first day of school- not the best planning on our part) we realized that we hadn't bought enough grout to cover the entire little bathroom floor. So Kevin turned the grouting job over to me and drove mega fast over to Lowes to grab some more grout just in time before the store closed at 10pm. While he was gone I got to quickly do all four jobs- grouting, scraping, washing, and washing again. I ruined a pair of my favorite Lucy capris, but the floor looked great, so it was worth it!
After the grout dried, we re-installed our toilet and washer dryer. Yay! Jeremy came over again to help with this little project and I was so grateful! I stayed up practically all night washing clothes so that I could have a cute outfit to wear to Back to School Night.
The next night Kevin began installing the new cabinets. It was a little tricky because our piping was right where the drawers went. With a little creativity and Kevin's awesome handyman skills, he was able to cut holes in the plastic and wood parts of the vanity so that we could still use the drawers and the pipes.
Here is a picture of Kevin's great job with the pipes.
After the pipes were fixed, he installed our new beautiful faucets. A definite step up from the ugly old gold ones that were in the bathroom before.
Then he finally got to install the countertops on top of the cabinet. We think it looks so much better than the old cabinet/countertop. I am excited to go buy new towels and accessories to spice up the new room. :-) Caulking the countertops proved to be quite an adventure as well, since I'm not much of a muscular person and Kevin needed help carrying the granite countertop. In the caulking process, my clothes were once again victims and I think I ruined my favorite pink Urban Outfitters t-shirt that says, "The Best Girls are from NJ." Kevin was a sweetheart and felt so bad that he spent about thirty minutes trying to get the caulk out. We'll see if it works. I'm obviously not suited for this sort of remodeling work since I can't seem to pick the proper clothes to wear for these sort of activities.
Our next job is to install the drawers, cute knobs we bought from Restoration Hardware, and granite side and back splashes. After that we have to begin the hunt for a tall mirror and then we'll replace the light fixtures. After that's done, we'll start this process ALL over again in the other part of the bathroom! You can probably tell why Lowes and Home Depot are our new Friday night date night spots.
Here he is giving his talk in front of all the students.
Here is dad on the jumbo-tron high above everyone's heads.
After the graduation ceremony we had fun meeting some of the graduates and their families. We were especially excited to see our friend Regan Guth (My old roommate Miranda's husband) graduate with his MBA right after my dad's commencement address. Congratulations Regan!! Once the festivities were over, we went to a reception for business school graduates and then we got to enjoy a delicious lunch with the Deans and their wives in a small conference room in the Tanner Building. It was fun to get to know the people that my dad will be working with on a daily basis. We were glad to get to fly out to attend such an incredible event for dad!
Kevin removed all the caulk and took off the ugly white counters and nasty pinky sink. Yay!
Next he had to turn off all the water and disconnect some of the pipes. When he got stuck, I showed him the fabulous HGTV video footage of "Replace your vanity without Insanity" so that he knew what to do next.
After he disconnected the pipes, he took off the vanity and we threw it in the dumpster- a definite bonus for remodeling a condo is that there is a dumpster just downstairs in the garage.
Next we got to pick our new cabinets and tile. We chose this cinnamony vanity because we thought it worked well with the black granite countertop.
Tile selection was a little more tricky. We brought home about 15 tiles and tried to decide on one. We finally picked Desert Mist- kind of a beigey tile with specks of black, yellow, and other sandy colors in it. Unfortunately after the tile selection process ended we discovered that Lowes was discontinuing our tile. We searched several stores and finally gathered enough tile so that we could start tiling.
Since I'm not very much help in the lifting heavy objects department, our friend Jeremy came over to help out. Kevin and Jeremy disconnected all the hoses and plugs and moved our washer/dryer into the office. Kevin and I had to make sure we did a week or two 's worth of laundry before this process started since our w/d would be out of commission for a bit.
After they removed the w/d, they started tearing up the floor. Demolition is a lot of fun- and LOUD! Our neighbors didn't like us too much for awhile- especially since most of the demolition went on from about 8pm until midnight.
After they finished ripping up the linoleum and plywood, Jeremy and Kevin carried out loads and loads of trash. I got to help a little bit by sweeping all the staples off the floor. Jeremy finally got to go home and take a break! Thanks for all your help Jeremy!
Next Kevin cut all the backerboard to lay on the floor so that it perfectly fit around all of the corners. We finally finished this first stage just in time so we could head off to Utah for the BYU Marriott School Commencement. Notice behind Kevin that there is a hole where our toilet used to be. The downside of living in a small condo is that we only have one bathroom. I never realized how much I appreciated an indoor toilet until we started this project. Fortunately we have a clubhouse a few feet away for those bathroom emergencies.
