I am the lowest common denominator.

Bill and I had our anniversary date last night. After stuffing ourselves on the best, most gigantic sushi we've ever seen, we rushed around the corner to see the new Will Farrell vehicle Blades of Glory. What does it say about me that I laughed until I cried several times during this movie? Besides the crass boy-on-boy humor (mainly surrounding the compromising positions pairs skaters can potenially find themselves in), which I thought was done in a funny-but-not-overly-homophobic way, the combination of Will Ferrell and Jon Heder (aka Napoleon Dynamite) was just spot-on. I also adored Jenna Fischer (Pam from my favorite TV show The Office) as Napoleon's girlfriend and sister of the evil pairs team that is Will & Jon's main competition. Finally, I totally appreciated the fact that the Iron Lotus, the pair's final trick in the big Wintersport Games finale, was a brilliant rip-off of the Pamchenko from another favorite cheesy skating movie, The Cutting Edge.

Unlike The Cutting Edge, this movie doesn't even try to make the skating routines look realistic. Apart from a few triple axels sprinkled here and there, all of the routines are something pretty much anyone who can skate relatively well could do OR they're obviously done in front of a blue screen with wires & harnesses. I thought that this totally added to the humor of the movie. The last movie I laughed this hard at in the theater was The 40-Year Old Virgin, and this one, although not what I would consider totally family-friendly, was much less uncomfortable to watch. I will definitely be buying the DVD when it comes out.

Now that you've lost all respect for my intellect and taste, I'll move on to another project happening in the Knittin' Mom household - the remodeling of our kitchen! We've been talking about doing this ever since we moved into this house, but didn't actually make any progress on it until last week when the contractors finally wedged us into their schedule. They came in and started tearing things apart so quickly, I barely had time to take any pictures of the old kitchen. Here's a picture of our old backsplash and tile counter - yuck! I've got nothing against tile, but it was hard as the dickens to keep clean and I hated the purple accents.



You can't see it very well, but the entire kitchen used to be painted purple to match those tile insets. We painted most of the walls (apart from the strip above the windows), but the ceiling is still purple. Every time I look at it, it ticks me off because I just HATE that color! Ironic from someone who loves purple, isn't it? I just don't like purple for my kitchen.

The contractors swept through last Thursday and ripped out all the counters and the sink (which I also despised - the faucet was broken, and just about everyone needed a lesson in how to use it since the handle would pop off if you didn't move it just right), leaving us with this all weekend:



We're replacing the tile with Paperstone, which is a bonded composite made out of 100% PCW (post-consumer waste) recycled paper! How cool is that? The contractors have never installed it before, so we're going to be an experiment for them (which I'm hoping doesn't turn into a bad choice on our part). Right now, the slabs are sitting in our dining room:



Here's a close-up of the surface (which I see has been attacked with a pen - hope that comes off!):



Our new sink is sitting on our kitchen floor, waiting to be set into the cabinets. It's a hand-fired clay apron sink (meaning it's the old style where the front of the sink is visible rather than being hidden behind the cabinet). Isn't it gorgeous? I am SO excited to get my new sink and faucet.



Okay, I've totally used up my store of goodwill from Owen typing up this ridiculously long blog post. I've also got a new chicken post over on Enviromom with pics of our little darlings. As you can see, there's not much knitting going on around here! One of these days, that will change (I hope)!