Vacation Recap Video: Barbados and Palm Island

My husband had to go into the office for a few hours today, so I'm bored on a Sunday afternoon and doing some research for our vacations this year. Mostly just some in-state long weekend getaways with friends, a couple of out-of-state weddings, and a big vacation, for which I still have a ton of planning to do. But looking over my vacation plans made me think about our last big vacation, to Barbados and Palm Island, so I dug up my video from it.

Usually I come home from trips with several hundred photos, but this was the first time I'd attempted to also make a recap video. It was actually a lot of fun, although a lot of work to do all of the editing. But I like how watching it makes it so easy to feel like I'm there again, and I think my family enjoyed it a bit more than looking through hundreds of photos with captions. It's not the greatest video, but I'm pretty proud of it for my first attempt at video editing, and I wanted to post it here, since I've got so many of our other travels documented on this blog.



The video includes scenes from Barbados: Infinity on the Beach (on Dover Beach), Oistin's pier and fish fry, Calabaza catamaran trip to snorkel with turtles, Welchman Hall Gully, Hunte's Gardens, Bathsheba beach and Barbados Wildlife Reserve to see the green monkeys. The video also covers the second half of our trip: landing in a tiny plane on Union Island in the Grenadines before boating over to Palm Island, and scenes from around Palm Island Resort (which was a long-time dream destination for me!), Happy Island (an amazing island bar in the middle of a harbor, made by building up conch shells on the sandbar, and once visited by Anthony Bourdain), Mayreau and snorkeling in the Tobago Cays Marine Park.

We've still never gone on the same vacation twice, but watching this sure makes me crave another Caribbean trip, and another visit to Barbados and The Grenadines!

Carolina Panthers Super Bowl Party

No, I'm not back to regularly blogging in this space. I just got too busy with my job and life, not only to constantly be working on home projects, but to find time to write about them. And we all know that DIY home renovations and lifestyle blogs have lost a lot of momentum in the past few years, especially when Young House Love quit blogging. But I do miss having a place to store information about my projects, as I still often refer back to old posts for source links or to see how I did something. So I'm going to occasionally pop in here, just to document things for myself. 

Last weekend we had friends over to our house to watch the Super Bowl. And having lived in North Carolina for almost five years now, we were definitely rooting for the Panthers to win!

I'd been itching to do some crafting, since I had hardly had any time around the holidays, as I was busy making over our foyer and front entry hall before my in-laws came to visit. So I decided to break out my much-neglected Silhouette machine to make some garland and snack food signs for the big day, to go along with my football and Panthers-inspired menu:

Breakfast Nook Furniture Plans

As you all know, I tend to have project ADD. Which usually means I'm working on more than one thing at a time, or at the very least, always thinking of the next big project on the list while still working on the last project.

So it shouldn't surprise anyone that I'm already planning out updates to our breakfast nook. Although our nook is right next to the kitchen, so technically it could be lumped into our current kitchen update (if you think like my husband anyway). To me though separate space = separate budget = separate project!

Here is a look at our nook area as it was last Friday. We now have new tile (but not yet grout) up above the kitchen peninsula, so ignore the bare patch of drywall in the photo. Also, kindly ignore the strip of uneven wall and baseboard to the far right, since that is still leftover from when we took down the half wall railing that used to separate the nook and the family room. We'll be fixing that after we're done with the kitchen stuff.

Basically our nook is now just an open space between the kitchen and the family room that features a large window. It isn't a huge space, and it also is part pathway between the two rooms, so it can't be overflowing with furniture. But it can definitely stand to get a little love.

Short Term Kitchen Update: Goodbye Pelmet and Backsplash, Hello Recessed Lighting and Updated Electrical

What we've been up to the past few weeks, working on our short-term kitchen update!

First, we took down the 1970s scalloped pelmet above the sink, and the crown moulding that ran in front of it.

And revealed the lovely bare bulb light fixture, and some rogue popcorn that we neglected to scrape when we did the rest of the kitchen ceiling.

Both of which were promptly removed.

The Finale to Building a Fireplace Facade: Covering the Brick, Adding Shelves, a Cabinet and Trim, Painting

This is going to be a picture heavy post, but I want to wrap everything up once and for all. Scroll to the bottom if all you care about is the "after" photos! :)

So here is where we last left off, with a bulkhead along the top (so the shelves will have something to attach to) and the top of the mantel installed.

Next it was time to install the bottom side of the mantel. And again, we used blocks of 2x4, to give us something for the underside to attach to, spaced off of the ledger board. This is because we wanted to leave a hollow space in the mantel for running our TV cables.