It's been a productive weekend

Friday night we had a beer at work (a perk of being self employed and living only 2 miles from the office) when dad stopped in to visit. I called my mom about something and she was disappointed that she wasn't included in our little get together. I packed up and went to share a glass of wine with her (dad & Chris followed awhile later) and the whole thing turned into a Bon Voyage party! Why, you ask? They are on the boat as we speak (or as I type and you read) headed to the Caribbean! We are extremely jealous because of the low temps and lots of snow we've had lately! My dad was nervous (he hates water), but I'm sure it will all turn out to be a blast! I'm so excited for them and their adventure! Their first shore excursion is in a Jeep doing a jungle tour (how cool??)

Yesterday we ran some errands and one of those we did was to get a fan for our fireplace upstairs so it can run without drowning out all other sounds upstairs! The fan that came with our fireplace is only an extremely high setting so we don't use it because it is so loud. My fear is that we'll get this whole fireplace front redone and won't use the fireplace due to the fan. . . My husband assures me that won't happen, so I hope he's right because we also got the new flat screen for above the fireplace. We have to have the TV and mounting bracket for when the stone guys come ~ I'm not sure if they put the bracket up or just want to know the sizes of things. . .

Today we removed items off the walls and started filling holes for the painter. No, we still haven't met with him, but want to be ready for when he can come and paint! The walls look extremely white with nothing on them! Chris loves it, but I hate it :~) He sees "clean" I see "boring. . ."

The one other thing I want to change on the fireplace is the gold around the door on the front. I hate it and since you can't just paint that a different color and the black on the fireplace is a shiny black, we have to paint everything. Chris prepped it today and removed all the things he could so we can have it painted and ready for Wednesday!
Here are all the pieces he could paint in the garage. We only have one can of high heat paint, so hopefully not too many coats are needed.

Chris taped over the glass of the fireplace ~ we could remove it but I didn't want any over spray to get inside the fireplace. I know ~ Chris said it wouldn't do anything, but I didn't want us to regret anything later! This is the monster TV we took out from the opening above the fireplace ~ man, that thing was heavy!!!

Chris getting the plastic all down and the components above the fireplace covered up above.

Chris was trying to perfect the paint job on the fireplace when I reminded him that most of it will be covered up with stone once the front (mantle, stone, hearth) is complete.

I'm glad we were able to get all of this done ahead of time and don't have to work on it during homework time and stuff this week! I'd better go get my bread mixed up for supper. Did I mention that I have everything for that all ready too?! Greek-lemon roasted chicken, herbed beer bread, fruit salad and waffle cookies (they are actually made in a waffle maker ~ first time on those, but the batter was good ~ hehe) YUM YUM!!!