This Little Light of Mine

Today was a ridiculously, off-the-hook productive day.  My mom is here to visit for the week, and that allows me to get to some projects that I've been wanting to do for a while.  I love being a mother to these babies, but I certainly miss being able to accomplish some things around the house.  There just aren't enough hours in the day anymore. 

Miles and Vivienne cooperated this morning by taking a LONG nap (like over 2 hours) and gave us some time to work.  During their nap, Mom helped me to put new hinges on 7 of the doors upstairs.  That leaves 9 more doors to re-hinge, but we were limited on what we could do without waking the babies up.  (We recently replaced all the knobs in the house with satin nickel knobs, so I wanted to change all the hinges to match.  Jason and I already did the downstairs doors.)

With the paint and updated curtains in the kitchen, I have been thinking about replacing the light fixtures as well.  I've actually wanted to replace these fixtures for quite a while.  I remember noticing the ugly "cloud" fluorescent fixture the first time we looked at this house with our realtor.  Recently, I was inspired by my friend Mary's blog (her project to change her kitchen lighting), so I decided to go ahead and make the change.  Last night, Mom and I went shopping at Lowe's to buy the replacement lighting.  Here is the before and after for the breakfast area light (please ignore my messy kitchen).  The old light fixture was a really cheap, builder-grade light fixture without much personality.  It literally looked like it had been spray painted silver.  The new fixture is a more modern, brushed nickel finish and looks much more elegant.

Before

After

Before

After

After the light fixture change, Mom and I went to lunch together at La Farm.  When we got home, I went for a 4-mile run and then made some homemade baby food (carrots and peas).  It was a super productive day!

Earlier this evening, Jason and I removed the ugly fluorescent fixture from the kitchen.  I'm going to replace it with track lighting (inspired by Mary's blog).  However, we'll need to install an electrical box (using a brace between the joists), so we need to take a trip to Lowe's tomorrow for a box and brace, sheet rock saw and a few other things.  More pictures of that project to come in the (hopefully near?) future.