Oh IKEA. I love you. I hate you. I love you. Maybe. This particular tumultuous episode in our relationship occurred on Sunday, bright and early. We left home with our big trailer...with hopes of filling it up with our entire kitchen contents...and toting it back up the mountain. We had been on the IKEA website, using the 3D kitchen planning tool...and thought we had everything roughly sketched and figured out.

We walked through all of those adorable little apartment kitchens, opening and closing doors and drawers...anticipation growing in our hearts as we approached the planning cubicles. And then, as I was taking it all in, it hit me. The white cabinets IKEA offers didn't match the white paint that we had already spent a week applying. Why oh why?! At the time of painting, we didn't know if we were going with IKEA or not. Hence the difference. There is nothing I dislike more than mismatched whites. But we weren't about to re-paint everything. And so, we had quite the dilemma. We considered going to grey cabinets, but my heart has been set on white for-EVAH.

As Matt and I sat at the planning table discussing our options...the girls were becoming increasingly vocal and "borrrrrrrrred". Two of them tried to go shopping on their own without letting us know. We were noticeably more rambunctious than the newlyweds next door planning their first kitchen with stars in their eyes. I finally decided to just let Matt do the planning and I took the girls to play in the kid's section.

Matt continued to work his magic with the layout and we found some small tents and moose to commandeer...firmly in the middle of Sunday shopping chaos. After about an hour, we headed back and found Daddy finishing up.

It was decision time. *gah* We decided to wait. We just didn't know what we wanted to do with the color of the cabinets and the kitchen in general. Nor did we have one ounce of energy left to navigate the Marketplace for the other items on our list. It was a big list. Lighting, frames, rugs, art room shelving, and more. But we walked out the door.

We left IKEA with nothing.

Not one thing. Matt loaded the kids into the truck and I sat down on the curb. The sunshine warmed my face as big tears of disappointment rolled down and sat on my cheeks. I felt defeated. By IKEA. By my children. By kitchen cabinets. Our kitchen quest, and our remodeling adventure in general felt like it was going backwards, not forwards. The decisions just kept piling up and up and up. It was like that moment on HGTV when the weary mama is filming a selfie video as she hides in the closet...crying that this is just "too hard" and she can't go on. The mama I always shake my fist at and say..."Suck it up girl! you're getting a new kitchen! Geez!". And now I am that mama.

I finally got up and we went on our way. Matt and I sat in silence for a long time...and I continued to cry. When he finally spoke, he said,

"I know it's hard for you when things don't go the way you planned.
We're going to make this work honey. One way or another. It will be great."

This man knows me deeply. He was so gentle in his approach, even though this little hiccup wasn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. It was just the straw that broke the camel's, or in this case, the mama's back. It had been a very long emotional week already.

From that moment, things improved. Light started to shine in the cracks and we talked about all the options we hadn't thought of yet. We were all laughing by the time we pulled back into Boulder. It was a gorgeous, warm day. We stopped for some iced coffee at Ozo and headed over for a little salvage hunting at ReSource.

We have decided to change the color of our great room just a tad so that the white kitchen pops a bit more and the whites don't clash.

I'll be sharing about those paint choices later this week. I am notoriously quick and efficient with choosing colors and it's rare that we have to re-paint. This time...it's OUR home. And apparently that makes it harder than painting a rental. Much harder. Especially because I'm doing things a bit more muted this time around. I have to figure everything out from scratch. We have painted several rooms already and we are now re-painting all of them.

Matt just keeps smiling as he picks up the roller again and again. I now know why people say a house remodel can be one of the most stressful things you can take on. But tonight we had our first fire in the fireplace. Our home is warm. We are together...and all is well.