What do we get ourselves into?!?!?!

So, Brandon and I have a habit of signing up for a whole lot in a short amount of time. We always deliver on our promises, though it's not usually without some sort of grief or pain in between. This weekend is no exception.

Thursday was Brandon's birthday. For those of you don't know, let me tell you the cake story. I have made a lot of cake in the last 4 days. First, I made a lemon angel food cake from a recipe out of FoodNetwork.com. It just didn't bake like it was supposed to and got really brown on top before the middle was cooked throughout. I figured I had just done something incorrectly.

Then the cheesecake fiasco began. For those of you who don't know, the word on the street is that I make some of the best cheesecake in town. I'm not bragging, but it's the truth. So, I made the usual cheesecake recipe except I decide to make it a cherry swirl cheesecake and add pureed cherries to the center and top of the batter before putting it in the oven. I swirled the sauce and it looked soooo pretty- just like a red spiderweb- except not creepy.

Anyways, usually the cheesecake takes 1 hour to cook thoroughly, but this time it took 1 hour and 45 minutes- and it looked horrible! It was very mountainous across the top and was by no means pretty. I went ahead and tried and it tasted horrible too! So I went back to the store and bought more ingredients and decided that the cherry filling was clearly not going to work with my recipe.

So I remade the cheesecake with the same recipe I use every time- the same way, the same ingredients- the same cheesecake that I have made hundreds of times with much success- and what happens? It too is RUINED! Mountainous top and tasted awful. By this time I knew something was up, so I figured out that the oven was broken. :( The top coils had a tendency of turning off and on on their own accord which was making the cheesecake rise and fall repeatedly- thus the "mountainous" appearance.

So it was clearly time to get a new oven. Which we had planned on getting one anyway when we received our tax return so it must've been God's plan for the oven to kuputz the same week we happened to get our tax return back. I looked online and found a great oven on sale and we'll be getting it next week.... and I'm soooo excited!

But then we started thinking about the kitchen and how we would like to get it all finished up before the new oven comes in. That involved changing out the fluorescent light fixture and repainting the walls. So having said all that, we started our project today and we'll be extremely busy this next week!

Tonight we took out the old fluorescent light fixture and filled in the holes in the ceiling from our last kitchen project: hanging the pot rack. (Which is a mighty hilarious story for another time.) Then I repainted the where the light fixture had been and touched up the rest. After that, Brandon proceeded to install the new track lighting we just bought with a leftover Home Depot gift card from the wedding. It looks sooooooo (I know that's the third one) much better and really updated the kitchen.

The next few days will be filled with frantically taping and painting the kitchen. I'll post a picture up when we're done- I can't wait to see the finally result of all new appliances (we replaced every one now), fresh paint, and great lighting. Woo! You know you're really married when you get excited about home improvement projects- gotta love 'em!