If you give a mouse a cookie

Today I felt a little like the mouse in the book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie". If you haven't read it recently, the gist of the book is that a little mouse is offered a cookie, then needs a glass of milk, and before long he's doing things like cutting his hair and drawing a picture. A whole days worth of activities comes from that one cookie. A week from today is my birthday, and Will decided to give me my present, and Kitchen Aid stand mixer, early! The stand mixer was the cookie :-)

 He took me to Bed, Bath, & Beyond because he knew I would want to choose my own model and color. He knows me so well :-) I chose this beauty, the Artisan model, in "white on white"

When we got home, I thought maybe I would bake some chocolate chip cookies, but first I wanted to pick up the kitchen. Our kitchen is tiny, and kitchen storage is pretty limited. So my plan all along has been to turn a basement closet into a pantry of sorts, where I will store extra food and all of the pots/pans/kitchen gear that I don't use on a daily basis.

yep, that basement closet

 As I started to pick up the kitchen, I realized I'm really getting to the point where I need that pantry! Will laid down to watch tv and take a nap, and I told him I was going to go to the basement to clean out the closet I wanted to make into a pantry. Well, I don't think I was realizing what a BIG job I had ahead of myself. Before we even moved in, we had to scrub the walls with bleach and prime over some areas where there was old mildew damage. Somehow this closet got forgotten, so what I initially thought was going to be a quick clean up turned into a huge mess. The closet was gross, and this is the place I want to be putting food and cooking materials!

  

So gross. It was filled with cobwebs, dust, dead bugs, peeling paint, and this gross old tile covered the shelves. Annnnnd it smelled. Yep. This is the place I thought I was going to be doing a quick cleaning of and then filling with my food and baking dishes. I don't know what I was thinking!

So I scrubbed all the surfaces with bleach water, pulled up the old tiles from the shelves, and got to work priming the entire thing. 

definitely not done, but getting there!

 

It still has a lonnnnnng way to go! But there is a coat of primer over everything, and it's a start. The glue that was holding down those weird old green tiles seaped right through the primer, so that's why the shelves look so gross still. I got new vinyl tiles to go on the floor, cork contact paper to line the shelves (which is why I'm not overly concerned about how the shelves look right now), caulk to fill in all of the edges, and chose a really pretty shade of very light greenish-blue to go on the walls. So still lots of work to go, but I'm hoping to finish tomorrow! Then maybe I can get to those cookies!
It's crazy how much work can come out of a stand mixer coming into the house!

Dearest Will, if you give your fiance her birthday present early, you may just end up with the vacuum, a bucket of bleach water, and a paint tray of primer coming out. Next, she'll end up going to Home Depot for things like sticky tiles, adhesive, and paint. So be careful what you give this girl, because she can't stop once she gets going!