Kitchen Design Advice

We've been working on a kitchen refresh, and are close to being done! But now I'm in a design quandry, and need advice/input from all you family and friends.

We've got new countertops that are dark chocolate, fairly matte finish (made of a cool product called Paperstone). The appliances are mostly black (double oven, cooktop, and fridge) except the dishwasher (won't replace until it breaks). The sink is dark grey granite. Cabinets are honey-ish oak, and floors are oak with a darker brown stain.

My design indecision comes down to the tile backsplash and wall paint color. Walls are current eggplant (I know it sounds weird, but it looked good with prior tile/counters). I feel like with all the brown, we need a splash of color. We have good lighting in the space, although it gets a little dark under the cabinets.

Here is current state (taken on the iPhone, so kinda blurry....Bill has the good camera).

Option One: 1" glass tiles in a mix of almost black, mocha brown, slate blue, and super light light celery green.


Paint would be either a light celadon, or a slate color.

Option 2: mixed tile - various sized, and composed of different shades of browns with some reddish tones and a beige granite. I like that it brings together many of the other shades in the kitchen, but fear it may be, well, toooooo much more brown! Walls would be neutral/light.

Option 3: mixed tile - various sized, and composed of blue, greeny-grey, and a beige granite. This one is nice because it introduces different sizes, and also material texture. Wall color would most likely be blue (note, blue paint chip is softer blue-greyish than the photo implies)

Here is options 2 & 3 against counter/cabinets, for context.

So.....what do you think? Now is your chance to influence the Nyland kitchen? Leave us a comment here on the blog, or on Meg's FB wall. Thanks!

Xmas pictures

We had a great time with the family at the beachhouse for Christmas. Highlights include:

Walk at the state park on Hood Canal in the fog.

Excellent appetizer spread on Christmas Eve.

Lots of Video game playing.

Standing Rib Roast Christmas Dinner

Scrabble and other board games

Crafts including the rundown gingerbread shack that the kids made before we got there.(picture on previous post)

Jess and I had an excellent xmas day kayak around the island at sunset.

White Elephant present exchange with many strange presents.

We came home on Saturday and went to dinner at our friends, the Knutsons. Jess is spending a couple of nights at Malik's house. On Sunday we are going to Mukilteo to have dinner with all the DesJardiens. Monday we get our new refrigerator and on Tuesday the boys will be heading North for a few days in Bellingham while Meg has to work.

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Xmas coming soon!

Well, the kitchen is looking better but we still have some work to do. The new sink, counters, and stovetop are in and everything is working. Now, we need to buy a new fridge, remove one of the cabinets so the fridge will fit, paint and then put on a new tile backsplash. But all of that is going to have to wait because our social schedule is kind of full with the holidays.

Last Saturday was Meg's birthday so we went to Seattle to have Dim Sum to celebrate her birthday as well as Ann's (7th), Paul's (10th) and mine (2nd). After that, the boys left with for the night with Grammy Ann while Meg and I spent the day shopping around downtown. We again practiced our priceline negotiator skills and got a room at the downtown Sheraton. We met a lot of old friends at Elysian Fields and stayed until they kicked us out around 11:30. Lotsa fun.

Sunday we picked up the boys and then went to my nephew Max's birthday party in Tacoma. It was kind of a preview for the christmas festivities. Jess and Joe and Max and Henry left for the beach with Nana. They have "cousin camp" doing a lot of baking and crafts until Christmas. I have to work 3 days this week and I will head out on Wednesday. Meg has to work Thursday morning so we will have to take 2 cars. We will probably stay until Sat or Sun. On the 29th, the boys and I are heading to Bellingham for 3 days staying at a cabin. Meg has to work that week so we won't see her until Meg's cousin wedding in Bham on New Years Eve.

Big Day in the Nyland Kitchen

Sunday was demo day. The boys and I tore out the counters, the sink and the cooktop.

This morning the counter installing guy came in and put in our new "paperstone" counters. They are a mix of recycled paper and epoxy. The sink is in and the stovetop venting installer will be here next Friday. Now we need paint and then install a tile backsplash.

We got a little carried away with the permanent markers

Meg is in Vegas for the weekend with her girl friends. So, that means it is boys only at the Nyland house. New counters are coming on Monday so the boys got a little creative with the markers.

Thanksgiving and wine trip

Thanksgiving was at our house. We had our family plus June, Ann, Paul, Kara and Marge. Didn't take many photos. The next day, Nana took our boys to the beach house. Meg and I took off over the mountains for some wine tasting. We tasted our way from Yakima to Tricities on Friday and Pricelined the Red Lion for Friday and Saturday night. On Saturday we went down to Walla Walla. We stopped at the Whitman mission site before we got down to tasting in Walla Walla. We bought quite a bit of wine and had a pretty good dinner at Cedars on Saturday night in Tricities.

Phoenix trip

Last weekend Jess and I used some frequent flyer miles to go down to Phoenix and see the Seahawks. The game was a lot of fun even though we lost. It was nice to get away from the rain for a bit. We did some putt putt golfing, saw a movie (Christmas Carol 3D), and went to the Science Center. The first night we stayed at a cheap hotel that was not very accessible to the awful transit system they have in Phoenix. We switched to a nicer hotel near the stadium on the 2nd night. They have a real nice outdoor area kind of like Downtown Disney that is right next to the stadium. We ate at Margaritaville there after the game. I didn't take the big camera but Jess took some pics with his phone. He sent the picture of downtown Phoenix at 6pm to the blog. Phoenix was kind of a depressing sprawling city with not much happening away from the stadium. I don't think we will go back except for maybe a trip to Spring training some day. Next year, it will be Joe's turn to pick an away Seahawks or Mariners game.

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Lots of traffic at rush hour in Phoenix, Arizona

Beach house full of kids

We spent this last weekend at the beach house. We took my nephews Max and Henry along with Jess and Joe and Joe's friend Mason. On Saturday, my cousin showed up with his family including his 3 girls. That totals 8 kids which was just about the limit for the house. We had a lot of fun even though the weather didn't let us out much. A lot of cards, board games and video games.

Next weekend Jess and I are going to the Seahawks game in Phoenix.

Santa Died

Joe Nyland as the Skeleton Santa.

Jess Football pics

It was the last football game today. The team only won one game but they got better each week. Jess was able to juggle football, scouts, trumpet and still was able to get all A's on his first report card so we took him out to dinner at the Claim Jumper tonight.

Jess at Fall Band Concert

A couple of pictures of Jess in the jazz band at the Kilo Middle School Fall Concert. Jess really enjoys the type of music he can play now that his skills have improved. He says he will stick with the trumpet in high school. He is also going to play his last Middle School football game on Tuesday. He says he will also try out for the 9th grade team in High School next year.

This weekend, I took my nephew Henry to hockey game on Friday. Joe went to a friends house and Jess had some friends over to our house. Saturday, Jess went to a friends house, Joe went to Gerrit's and we are going to a halloween party in Lake Stevens in a couple of hours. Meg is Paula Deen and I am a Scotsman. pictures to come soon. On Sunday, we are racking our grape wine, making some beer and carrot wine and watching football. We might find some time to research our upcoming kitchen improvements.

Winners of the Amazing Race

The Polar Bear Patrol of Troop 366 ended up winning the Fall Camporee. It was themed for the Amazing Race and our boys did all the tasks in under 4 hours and beat 26 other patrols. The weekend started out pretty miserable on Friday night with slow traffic and then trying to set up camp in the dark and heavy rain. The rain continued during the race on Saturday as you can tell by these pictures. The toughest challenge was when the patrol and myself had to cook and eat 16 hot dogs and about 5 pounds of chili with just a couple of spoons.

Rachel Lake Hike

I took the day off on Tuesday because I had so much flex time. Hiked up to Rachel Lake just over Snoqualmie Pass.

pictures and updates

I haven't been updating for a while. I did download a lot of pics from our Whistler trip and they are now on Flickr. Lots of good pics. I also went hiking to Rachel Lake yesterday but I haven't downloaded those yet. Last weekend we went to a birthday dinner and play with my parents. We saw 39 Steps at the Rep and it was pretty funny. It was a great idea to do something with my parents for their birthdays.

All the wine for this year has been crushed and everything is now maturing in carboys except for the Zinfindel. They all taste great and it is going to be tough to wait for a year to get them into bottles.

Jess is doing well in football. He is a starting Defensive End on the J.V. team. the team hasn't won yet but they are getting better. 3 more games left. All on Tuesdays at 3:40 pm if you are interesting in watching.

This weekend we will be heading to the beach, and the next weekend we will be going to the fall Camporee at Hahobas.

High atop Whistler

Yesterday morning we drove from Vancouver to Whistler. We spent the
day strolling the village, then did a fun wine tasting/tapas tour of 4
different restaurants. This morning we caught the gondola up to
Whistler mountain, and just finished a nice steep hike up to an
awesome lookout. Now we're going to take a different gondola across
the valley to Blackcomb mountain and more hiking.

Mystery Trip, day one

First surprise of the trip: we are aboard the Norwegian Star cruise
ship, leaving from Bell Street Pier. We haven't actually left the dock
yet, but we've walked around the ship and had champagne cocktails.
It's a one night cruise, we disembark in Vancouver BC tomorrow morning.

So far, Bill may be winning the "best anniversary trip ever" award!!

Grape Crushin time

Last week it was Syrah, Friday we will crush Merlot, Saturday will be Cab and the next weekend will probably be the Zinfandel. The cab will be in late Sat. which is a problem because we are leaving for our anniversary trip at noon so we may have to drive to Yakima and get our grapes early in the morning. We are really looking forward to our secret anniversary trip. Meg is very frustrated that she does not know where she is going.

School has started again and we getting really busy with scouts and Jess is doing football.

Last weekend I went to Mount Rainier before the sun was up and got some good pics at paradise. I then hiked to Van Trump park and Comet falls. Good pics on Flickr.

School Starting

I haven't posted for a while...and I haven't taken any pictures for a while...not sure why. We have still been busy. Last weekend Joe went to a friends for the weekend which included a trip to Wild Waves. Meg had to work on Friday night and Saturday so Jess and I went to the beach all by ourselves. We mostly just played video games but we did ride bikes to Allyn and I got a good kayak around the island. On Sunday, Meg had the day off so we went for a drive on Vashon Island. We always dream about moving there but neither of us could deal with the commute.
School starts Thursday so we are trying to get ready for that. We got school supplies finished but I still need to get the medical paperwork done so Jess can play football. Meg is super busy at work and is putting in some late nights. We are hoping she gets off most of Labor day weekend so she can come to the beach with us. The grapes are almost ripe so we are thinking that the crush could be any weekend now. Just hoping it isn't the same weekend of our anniversary trip Sept 19-22.

Yellow Plum Wine

Last Winter during the snow, I was wandering around the fields near our house and I found this old basketball hoop in a small clearing in the trees. It was really surreal. Here is the link my post on it last December.
http://nylandblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/december-snow.html

So last weekend, I was out in the same field picking blackberries and I found myself at the same basketball hoop. It was surrounded by yellow plum trees and the plums were really sweet. Yesterday, I picked 10 pounds of plums and made a couple gallons of wine. I figure that the actual wine cost will be about 40 cents per bottle.

Jess is at Young Life camp and Joe is at Grammy Ann's this week until Thursday or so. Tonight I am going to ride my bike downtown to meet Meg for dinner or something.

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Jess at camp parsons

Date night

So Jess is at Camp Parsons and Joe is at Nana's. We had a night to ourselves with nothing planned. I left work at 3 and rode my bike from the Renton plant to the Mount Baker light rail station. I intended to ride all the way downtown but I couldn't resist trying out the light rail. They had a hook on the ceiling to hang bikes and it only cost $2 to get downtown. Very convenient but it really isn't much different from any other cities light rails that I have been on. It just needs to get extended to make it more useful.

I met Meg at her work and we drove over to pike place. We had happy hour drinks and some appetizers at Zig Zag which is on the hill climb. We had some half price fancy cocktails that were really good. We then stopped at the wine tasting place in Post alley next to Kells and tried a flight of Rose. For dinner, we walked up 1st to Black Bottle in Belltown. It is a "small plate" place where we had boar ribs, mashed potatoes wrapped in prosciutto and brie leek flatbread. It was excellent and we wanted to try more except we were full. This is going on our favorite restaurant list and I am sure we will be back.

Tonight (Wed.) we have a wine making class and then on Thursday night I am going out to Parsons for the last 2 nights of scout camp.

Help- need bottles

In the last couple of weeks, I have bottled pear, blueberry, rhubarb, and pineapple wine. It has seriously depleted my bottle stock and I just realized that I have about 20 gallons currently in secondary ferementation (apricot, peach, raspberry, bing cherry, and lapin cherry) . That means I will need about 100 bottles in a couple of months and right now I only have 10 bottles. and I haven't picked any blackberries yet. and I am still thinking about more Peach. the stuff I made tastes really good and the peaches look really good right now.

So....I am putting the call out to family and friends to save their wine bottles. Just rinse them out and we will take care of getting the labels off.

A little nervous on this request because our family and friends really know how to drink wine and I could end up with a garage full of bottles.

As for what we are up to.....We just spent the weekend at Stretch Island with the Nyland families. Jess brought his friend Hayden and we spent a lot of time in the water. The cove was so warm I didn't need my wet suit. Joe is coming back from the Grange Camp and we will have a barbecue with the Traxels tonight. Jess has left for Scout camp at Camp Parsons so we will be missing our baby sitter this week. Joe will spend most of the week in Tacoma with Nana or Gerrit so we will be kidless. Thursday I am going to camp for a couple of days and then we will have Max and Henry next weekend.

Joe delivered to camp in Spokane

Joe and I left Saturday morning to go to Grange Camp north of Spokane. We started with the Denny Creek hike that Cub Scouts did while we were in Colorado. It was a nice day so it was packed by the time we started coming down. We spent the night in a Motel in Spokane and saw the 3D movie G-Force. Joe thought it was great but I wasn't that impressed. Sunday we hung out at Riverfront park until we could find a hair cut place that was open (Joe really needed a hair cut before camp). We went on the sky ride to see Spokane Falls. We had a great lunch with our friends the Traxels and then we delivered Joe and Jacob Traxel to Camp Bear Paw. It is going to be weird to not have Joe the whole week...especially because he is so far away. The Traxels are going to bring Joe back next weekend. Meg and Jess and Malik went to the beach house for Saturday night and then the boys went to Hayden's house on Lake Tapps for Sunday night. Meg wanted to come to see the Traxels but Jess needed some time with his friends.

Colorado pics

I took a ton of pictures in Colorado and a lot of them were pretty cool so I uploaded a lot more than usual to the flickr account. Here are a couple of them.

Delano family reunion

The Delano family in Green Mountain Falls, Colorado. This is Meg's, Mom's, Mom's family.

Delano Family Reunion in Colorado

Just got back from a weekend in Colorado at the Delano Family Reunion. We spent 1 night in Denver and then 2 in a mountain resort by Colorado Springs. This was Meg's Mom's Mom's family. We did a lot of visiting but also did some tourist activities. We wandered around Denver, saw several "cute" small towns, visited the Garden of the Gods, and drove to the top of Pike's Peak. I gotta lot of good photos that I will upload to Flickr on Tuesday. Here is us on top of Pike's Peak.

Mount Fremont

I had the day off so Jess and I climbed to Fremont Lookout from Sunrise on Mount Rainier. It was not the best day to do it because of a cold wind and off and on light rain. I did get a lot of cool pictures of the clouds zipping around Rainier. Unfortunately most of the time we were in the clouds.

Last Friday, the boys left with Nana to go to the beach for the weekend so Meg and I had a chance to go out alone. We went to the Boeing wine club wine contest and did some judging and then went to Kell's in Post Alley to watch the Stoutpounders. Saturday we did a lot of yard work and then bought a new stereo receiver and surround sound speakers for our family room. On Sunday, we did some errands and I picked a lot of raspberries to make some wine. I ended up only getting enough for 3 gallons after picking here and at Nana's. I also made 1 gallon of Lapin cherry wine and 3 gallons of bing cherry wine this week. Today after our hike, I failed to find any U pick raspberry places in Puyallup. I am going to have to live with just 3 gallons this year.

Next weekend is the Delano family reunion near Pike's peak in Colorado. We fly out Friday afternoon.

4th of July - Stretch Island.

Fun and relaxing weekend at the beach house. They boys were able to light off fireworks for the first time in a few years. (we have been on vacation for the last few fourths). Had some good food and just did a lot of laying around. We are not looking forward to going back to work on Monday..... Also....Europe pics are now available on our flickr site.

We are back!

yes we are home. at least for a few hours... We are getting ready to spend the 4th of July weekend at Stretch Island. I have downloaded all the photos but I won't be able to get them sorted and put on Flickr until Sunday. It is good to be home but somehow a lot of weeds grew while we are gone.

Switzerland

Here we are in our last leg of the adventure in Zurich, switzerland.
We are worn out and tired and ready to go home. On the drive here we
found an American restaurant in the middle of nowhere Switzerland and
we ate overpriced hamburgers for the first time in a couple of weeks.
We then made it to Zurich and turned in the rental car. We had a few
hours to look around but nobody was really into it. The kids have had
an awesome time, but they are tired of traveling and ready to go home.
Tomorrow we head to the airport in the morning, and spend the day
flying.

More Munich

This morning, we spent at Dachau. Very touching and sad. A great
museum, but we rushed a bit because Joe was bored and Jess's head was
full.

We drove back to downtown, and had lunch on the plaza (Marienplatz,
above). Then we toured The Residenz, the royal palace of the
Wittlesbach family. Interesting, but after the 20th gilded hall, we
were all bored!!! A siesta in our room, now we're out to dinner. I
succumbed to steak, I couldn't handle anymore wurst or pork (Bill says
he can always eat more pork, it's just me .....although we are going
to try to make schweinsbraten at home, yum!).

Tomorrow we leave Munich, headed to Zurich.

More Munich

All day in Munich, we spent the morning just roaming, checking out the
market, then getting a new memory card for the camera, then to the big
bookstore to find english language novels for the kids (they already
plowed through the ones we brought).

Then we went to the massive Deutches Museum, a technology museum. We
spent at least three hours and probably only saw 40% of it. Exhausted
and hungry, we found an empty table at the beautiful biergarten in the
middle of town. All the locals were out, the beer was cheap, and we
got various street food to nosh on.

But, after the sun and beer, we got sleepy, and had a rest at the
hotel. Now we're back out and about. We did some souvenir shopping,
and alas, found ourselves back at the Hofbrauhaus for dinner and
oompaloompa music.

Munich!

This morning we drove through the German countryside to Munich,
detouring to see a way cool monastery that has been making beer since
1455. Once in Munich, we mostly just wandered around the pedestrian
old town. We found and experienced the famous Hofbrauhaus (beers
above are 1 liter each!!). Then we found an art museum and got the
Sunday special, entrance for only a euro each, kids free. Then dinner,
sausages, spaetzle, and saurkraut, of course!

Castles in Bavaria

We started today with "the castles", Hohenschwangau and
Neuschwanstein, both castles lived in by "mad" King Ludwig of Bavaria.
It was pouring this morning, and despite our raingear, we were all
drenched. But the castles were cool and we had a great time. We also
ran into someone I know from Seatlle, a Rick Steves tour guide. It's a
small world. This afternoon it dried off enough that the local louge
run was open. SO FUN!!

Bavaria

We spent most of the day driving from Colmar to the Bavarian Alps, we are now nestled in the little town of Unterpingswang, near King Ludwig's castles that we plan to explore. However, there is absolutely no cell service or wifi here, so no pics to be sent from the iPhone. I know you are all disappointed! Check back on Sunday when we are in Munich.

 

Colmar

A cool merchants house from 1537.