The heat is on.

Last week was hot. Not just hot. H-O-T hot. But lots of awesome stuff happened during the heat, including seeing The Heat, which, gotta admit, I flippin loved. It definitely did NOT have me balls deep in boredom.*

*especially not when Joey McIntyre randomly showed up on screen. Yes, I yelped like a 13-year-old.

Brad was up north for his big golf trip (sleeping in a tent, in the heat), so my Melissa came for our third annual ding-dong-the-hubby's gone beach weekend -- our first in three years where we had TWO full days of beautiful weather. (Yes, I consider 102 degree heat a successful beach day - that's what the water is for!) As per usual, Melissa came well prepared - new beach chairs with backback straps and built in cooler and cutie towel clips.

Flamingo baby.

We also tried out a new place, Jimmy's in New Buffalo -

Fun but just so-so, but the beer was delicious.

And a new-to-Melissa (and pretty new to town) bread+bar -

The pink lemonade cake with lemonade buttercream frosting was WHITE HOT.

And after our hottest week of the summer (and perhaps last summer, too), our painters extraordinaire, Daniel and Frankie, FINISHED THE HOUSE. A quick look back, if you will.

BEFORE

DURING

Three weeks in... the "pick the color process" begins. This process was not fun. In fact, it was incredibly stressful. I had the picture in my head but didn't know how to translate that to paper swatches. Very very lucky for us, we had good guys working with us, and even though Daniel knew how to make what I wanted happen, he humored me and at one point we had 10 different samples on our house, including custom mixes.

And when we still didn't know, they painted our two favorites basically across the whole front of our house. They made it clear that this is not normal (in fact, they pointed out they've never gotten that many samples nor have they painted such large swatches [below]). But it pays to not be assholes (us) because people are more willing to do the crazy things you request they do.

Eventually we went with Antique Silver, the sample on the far left. Did you know that true gray, I mean, what you picture in your head when you think "gray" is actually mostly brown? Any other gray turns your house purple. Who knew? Other than the painters, who tried to tell me.... ;)

Before they could start painting, they had to cover the neighbors' house. Thank god we have such awesome neighbors.

And then, it was finally time for the grand reveal. It started as just a quick peek....

But once they started, they got too excited and just revealed all.... and what a beauty they revealed.

AFTER

Hot stuff. 

We are so thrilled. Thrilled with the outcome, thrilled with the guys we worked with. It would be impossible to list everything they did for us. They caulked every seam between every shingle on our siding. They replaced a random broken window square in our garage. They killed some bees for me. They respected me and the bird babies and didn't think of touching my ferns until the finches had flown the coop. They loved our dogs and took care to keep the gates closed. They wore space suits for a week straight and scraped lead off our house. They replaced rotten windowsills. And all their hard work shows. I wish my new job could be "stare at my looks-like-a-new-house house all day" for money. I absolutely adore our house. And I love her even more now.

And, of course, a peek at my beloved front porch, which I am SO happy to have back.

Now, if I could just find the perfect replacement furniture.

Stay tuned........