December...

Welcome to December in the Buffalo area. Imagine driving home from work or running errands on Wednesday night and getting stuck in traffic due to snow. Then slowly realizing that the traffic isn't moving and the snow isn't stopping. Hours pass and you haven't moved, you're suck there overnight and well into the next day.



This was the reality on 7 miles of a Buffalo highway from around 8pm Wednesday night until roughly 3pm Thursday afternoon- and even then the road did not open until Friday morning. Crazy right?

This stretch of highway is only about 5 miles from my house with around 2 feet of snow falling in a 24 hour period. The neighboring streets and towns were also buried, with residents spending many hours digging from out the heavy wet snow.



Now you're thinking, did you shovel yourself out? The answer is no because we didn't get any snow. Weird right? Gotta love our crazy weather, but I know we'll get ours soon enough so for now I'll just enjoy it.

Tourists & Tiling....

We have had a very fun and productive weekend here in Buffalo! Not only has the kitchen made leaps and bounds toward completion, we also had family visit and we were able to spend a day as tourists.

Friday evening Matt made some major progress in the kitchen by applying the tile back splash. We were originally going to use a new product, SimpleMat, which allows you to hang the tile and grout in the same day. However we ended up going the traditional route of using Thin-set Mortar because the product received mixed reviews- and we don't have $$$$ to do this twice.

Here's a photo montage of the project:

Cabinets & Counters covered in plastic.

Tile unpacked.

Thin-Set mixed.

Rail installed to cap the tiles.

Ready for tiling.

Matt applying thin-set, then tiles.

More installation.

After an hour or so it looked like this, requiring 24-hours dry time.

Saturday morning my mom, step-dad, brother, and friend came to Buffalo to celebrate my birthday with me! We decided to go the tourist route and check out Niagara Falls. I've been to Niagara Falls several times over the years, but I've never really taken part in the attrations. We decided to go on the Maid of the Mist and get a view of the falls from the bottom- which I must say was quite amazing! The sheer power of the water was thrilling to see from the bottom, and at one point it felt like it was raining when it really was not. I snapped a few pictures while on the boat, but kept putting my camera under my poncho periodically.















After my family left, Matt and I passed out. For some reason we were exhausted. We ended up napping from about 4pm until 8pm or so. I can't believe we slept that long, but the good thing was that after waking up we had the energy to finish up our tiling job. This time I help out by applying the grout, while Matt took care of the sponge action and buffing two hours later.

Pushing the grout in.

Wiping off the excess 20 minutes later.

Looking good after a final buffing.
Absolutely beautiful...


Matt is still busily working on the kitchen today, but you'll get an update on that very soon! I must go now and feed the husband because he is working really hard.

Happy Birthday wishes to Kathy (my MIL)!!!!!

Yummy!

Tonight we took a stroll down to another Buffalo festival- Buffalo Italian Festival. It was too hot to cook and I don't have much for food, so we went down to have something to eat. And ended our stroll by sharing fresh made cannoli.

Now I'm off to possibly finish my book....