Birthday Celebrations! and Furniture Make Over

My birthday fell on a Memorial this year, so I got to spread out the festivities :) I got lots of birthday calls and messages and enjoyed the love and catching up with old roommates, friends, and family.

To kick off my bday weekend, my office took me out to lunch at Zupas! (this is not Zupas... but it is my little work family)

I went out for frozen yogurt with one of dear friends that I haven't seen in way too long

I am a member of the birthday club for Red Robin.... YUM!!! So naturally we just had to go there! (I was so excited about the fries and my shake that by the time my free birthday burger came all I could get down were 2 bites!!! oops.. :) I did take it home and enjoy it later though.)

Dima got me my lovely glasses!!!

My dear aunt Juju got me Rick Steve's book on Italy for our big trip this summer!!! (more on that later!)

Mama, Erwin, and Babushka also sent me a birthday package with chocolates/candy (always exciting to get!), make up, coin purse, and some bday money! I love you guys! Thank you so much for your generous and thoughtful gifts!

And my sweet seester signed us up for this amazing race!!! I am seriously so stoked about it!!! We're hoping to make it a tradition to run one race together each year... So far we've done Ragnar (the wasatch back); and Provo's Halloween Half! This year it's: The Dirty Dash!!! :)

My dear mazsha came up for the long weekend and helped me redo our bedroom furniture!! This was the main birthday event/marathon! But I wouldn't have had it any other way!!! It turned out just how I envisioned!! So I'll give you the 5 cent tour of journey:

Dima and I inherited this furniture when we got married from my grandparents. Its functionality is GREAT.... but not so much our style... its was a pinkish-kaki wood color, which made everything in our bedroom look muted and blahhh. SOOO we decided to paint it and put on some new handles!

So here is the before:

We had to fill and sand all the holes for the handles because none of the newer handles had the same spacing, and the screws they all used were smaller than the handles.

Then we primed it with this AWESOME stuff that allows you to paint on finished pieces without sanding!!!

My mom and I spent Friday night picking out the paint and gathering supplies, then painted 3 coats of this lovely yellow Saturday night (after filling and sanding holes, and priming).

(and the entire time I was painting it I had this stuck in my head: skip to about 4:19)

We resumed our project on Monday with the tinted glaze that we painted over the entire piece and then wiped off most of it... although it didn't stay in the creases as easily as we had hoped, so it took us the majority of the day to carefully paint/wipe to get just the right amount of brown glaze in just the right spot... but it turned out perfect!

Now all that was left to do was buy the handles, drill the holes and put them on! Which my dear sweet husband helped me do throughout the following week after long days at work. And TA-DA!!!! Here is the final product!!!!

We were so happy to finish up so we could clean up and get back to a normal and functional living situation! :)

Year 24 is off to a great start so far!!! (new list of goals to come! along with a report on my 23 ambitions)

Thanks again to everyone for making it a great birthday!