Holiday cheer!

t was a weird Christmas. We technically celebrated Christmas the night before thanksgiving when Ricki was here. I worked Christmas eve and day, we spent all week working on the house trying to get it ready for furniture to move in the Monday after.  However, because my mom is my mom, it was a good Christmas full of good food, family time, and smiles.  everyone had smiles. and as far as Christmas’s go, if this has to be the last one for Grandma, which is a distinct possibility, it was a good one to have.

the most important part of Christmas to my family:

peppernuts and caramels

while making the caramels, my grandma who gets extremely short of breath walking to the bathroom right next door, was yelling cooking instructions to my mom. who, for the record, has made these for years. they were perfect.

while make the peppernuts my grandpa made my mom sit down and re-write the recipe so that each step was thoroughly explained, because “the process is just as important as the ingredients.” Then for good measure they added in some favorite stories surrounding this holiday tradition.

Grandpa decided on Christmas eve that it can’t be Christmas without some sort of tree, so my my mom, who wants to make grandpa happy, asked my dad, who wants to make mom happy, to come up with some sort of tree for grandpa that would be small and easy. Dad climbed over the fence of a closed tree lot, and came up with this:

perfect for their collection of mini ornaments

Grandpa’s face when he saw it:

pure happiness.

and as far as family goes, my brother lives the closest of the grandkids and sees them the least because of his schedule.  Everyone was happy when he made it to Christmas dinner:

(yes, I know… crummy picture. someday I will master the art of inside people photography. )

I had more favorites, but my computer decided to run an update before I saved the edits in photoshop, so these will be my favorites for today

It was a good Christmas.

part of you capture

list

done:
living room painted… bedroom painted… furniture moved in…
not done:
kitchen(mom has cleaned/lined most of the cabinets but not all) unpack boxes… move all of the stuff currently at mom and dad’s house (clothes, books, things I didn’t want in storage) clean wood floors… get new thermostat installed… install lights outside… set up a budget…
these lists seem a little uneven. although in all honesty painting the living room took about a million times longer than it should have.
I am tired. my brain is fried. I am used to taking it relatively easy 4 days a week, and for the past 3 weeks I have cut back on sleeping and been sanding, painting, cleaning, shopping, etc nonstop.  Today when the furniture arrived I collapsed on my couch and fell asleep while mom worked on the kitchen.  not my plan, but I was all worn out.  However, I am super excited about the things that have been done, namely how beautiful my bedroom is turning out.  a hint of what is to come:

Very cool

My house!

So… are we ready for the unveiling of the house?

Floor plan:

walking in from the garage to the laundry room.  stairs to basement are past the curtain on the other side of washer

from the laundry room looking into the kitchen:

(picture to come… when the kitchen isn’t covered in painting supplies :)

breakfast nook:

den:

 

fireplace. (and the point where I decided to use my flash.)

looking from den down to kitchen:

 

dining room living/room standing from door in breakfast nook:

looking the opposite way from entryway straight into living room

master bedroom:

masters bath:

guest room:

sewing room:

a hall bathroom (that is actually pink, not yellow. I hate taking inside pictures…)

 

and that is the official house tour.  eventually the walls will be a different color, the carpet in the living room will be gone, the kitchen will be updated… I will make the list later.

owning a house day 3

I own a house now.  The size of the check I had to write to buy said house?  Scary.

I have had a headache every day I have owned said house.

I am not entirely sure if they are related or not.

I am guessing not.

Went to see the new Chronicles of Narnia movie today. My professional opinion is 2 is better than 1 which was better thann 3.  If that makes any sense.

I have picked out colors for my bedroom, fairly positive on colors for my living room, and have no idea what all needs done before I can paint. Something about putting more screws in the sheetrock to keep the walls from shifting?

I am getting frustrated because there are things that need done but apparently I need help with more of it htan I thought which means probably it is never going to get done because everyone in my family has more to do than they c o tan handle. Which is why I went smart and bought a house that didn’t need that much work. apparently that much work is realitive, though.

Pretty sure my dad is tired of the word cohesive.  I want my trim painted white, but if I am going to do some of it, I need to do all of it and make it cohesive.  I want my colors to go… the rooms all flow together and it needs to look cohesive.  The wood needs to match… etc. 

i think I will make a list of things to do to my house.  Kind of like the bucket lists everyone seems to be doing.

Could be fun.

I like my house.

ack!

I am uying a house today! I close in 5 hours and I am freaking out a little. Electric is in my name, gas will be monday, I need to scope out who my neighbors use for trash and I completely forgot one had to pay for water. The details are exploding in my brain and all of a sudden I am convinced I cannot afford it and am going to fail misrably. Of course... I can and I won't, but there is no telling me that. I think if I had any idea what my monthly expenses would be I could make a budget and calm down, but I haven't figured that out yet... too many variables. Oh well... it is exciting! My brother and SIL arw going to come see it and then we wiill go to red lobster to celebrate. Unless byy then I have passed out in shock of wrting the 20% down check. Okay... deep breaths being taken and all is well. This is going to be good... I am buying a house today!

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picturing it

I find myself struggling because I can't picture it instantly.  This house, while awesome, is somewhat different than I thought I would be getting, so all designs I had stuck in my head seem off.  Chandeliers... I don;t have the tall ceilings of old houses. I have normal ceilings, so maybe not so much. I don't know what to do with the trim. I really want to paint it all white... but in the den there is a  wood mantel and wood beams that are rough wood and I don't want to paint them. so... can I have painted trim everywhere except for the beams and mantel in one room?  No clue. and that isn't something that is easy to go back to, although I do think light gray walls with bright white trim would look awesome in the living room/ dining room.
Lets talk laundry room.  I want a cute laundry room, and I want it to be bright and fun. There is going to be a door of off the kitchen because I don't want to be able to see straight into the laundry room, and i think out of all the rooms in the house where you can go crazy, the room dedicated to dirty clothes should be it. There are cabinets above the washer, and they are made out of the same stuff the kitchen is. I want to paint them... I am not planning on painting the kitchen ones so can I have them different colors?  I think it might work.  Also, I had in mind a fabric to make a curtain out of for the window on the door and also the stairs down to the basement... I want something with a white background and colorful flowers, but not just flowers, and I want a green to be a main color because I want to pain the wall you can't see from the kitchen green and maybe some purple.... as the main graphic, it needs to be good.  SO I looked.  ThE first possibility I found was this:

 
It has the graphics, and the story, and the lots of color, but the colors aren't just right and the background is too dark and it just wasn't it...

Next choice:

 

This one I like the color of the green, but it isn't fun and graphic the way I wanted.

But then... I clicked one more before I gave up on this subject, and this is what I found.

It is just almost perfect.  Colors galore, stories, you could look at it for ages and find new things. and it is crazy wild, which is what I was looking for.  I want it, I think... but is it too much for  a small room? an entire doorway filled with this fabric... I might be crazy.

We passed the appraisal.

7 days to closing.

59…30…4

This guy…

decided he needed to marry this girl

after knowing her for less than 3 months.  5 days after the wedding he was shipped overseas for 8 months.  After he came home they had 3 babies in just over 3 years( during which time they moved from Kansas to California to New York and then back to Kansas) the youngest of which was him:

(granted, later on 3 more kids came but grandma had a little break first…)

He went to college, where he refused to take no for an answer from her:

(she refused to go on a date with him so he sent roses to the front desk of her sorority asking her out. pretty much every girl in her house read the card and told her she had to go.  I have never believed peer pressure to be all that bad seeing as how it is responsible for my very existence.)

she gave in, married him and 18 months later had her:

(the older one. the younger came much much later to the youngest of the original six.)

She married him (they had a semi-forbidden relationship in high school, didn’t talk for 5 years and reconnected her senior year of college. It shocked a lot of people when they got married, but they are surprisingly perfect for each.)

59 years… 30 years… 4 years. 

Kindred's.

 

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Thanksgiving

I discovered the retro app on my new droid this weekend.  My life might never be the same.

On my weekend running away trip, I ate these. right out of the oven and off the pan. Yes I did.

But first I ate this:

We are the type of people with 2 bowls of cookie dough.  One to eat from, one to make cookies from..

 

And now for the real pictures of the week,

It started as this:

and ended as this:

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, and it has (almost) nothing to do with food.  My dad’s whole family gathers, at our highest there were probably 35 people in the house, and it is all laughs and talking over each other and eating all day long and playing pitch and building gingerbread houses and cheering for the cowboys to lose, and listening to my 3yo cousin say she doesn’t like her new school cause “the boys say I am cute” and talking about my new house and…. it goes on.  It was a good, good day.

 

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Running away.

I ran away this weekend.  I suddenly realized on Thurday that the place I needed to be was 2.5 hours away… staying  in a guest bedroom I might as well call my own.  So… pack a bag and drive. I went friday night to the plaza and ate at  an amazing place called the Melting Pot, with a couple girls I used to work with.  It was so.much.fun getting caught up, and can I say yummy fondue?  

 

(Kansas City Plaza overlooking the river SOOC.  low ISO and high(er) shutter speed. I am loving manual shooting.)

Late friday night I showed up at my friend Joanna’s place… we talked.  Houses. Work.  Life.  I showed her pictures of my new house, she showed me her new pumpkin recipes. 

Saturday… brunch with a  college friend, shopping with old roomies, lots of girl talk and house talk and OOHH Tiffany has a new crush talk.  An utter cure for whatever was stressing me out.

Then came the cookie dough.  Is there anything better than a movie and a bowl of cookie dough?  Hot cookies are good as well, but cookie dough became an addiction in college for my girls… and it is  a staple of life. when one must walk 3 flights of stairs and stand in line for the community oven, one discovers the delight of uncooked food.

(there was supposed to be a picture here, but as of yet I haven’t figured out how to get pictures off of my phone and onto my computer. Maybe by You Capture time I will have it figured out…)

Insert movie review.  I have heard about Breakfast at Tiffany’s for years.  Figured it was this awesome movie, this classic, all sorts of great things.  No. It was a pretty horrid movie.  She was a ditzy airhead willing to marry for money, who threw her cat into the rain.  He was a man kept by a married woman, and he was a total enabler.  Joanna, who is my psych major friend, and I were both diagnosing people the whole time.  really?  classic?  I don’t think so.

I love my girls.  I love being with the people who have shared most experiences of the last 5 years, who have heard me cry and scream and laugh and stress and who know how to handle me in all those moods.  It was a great way to let the stress melt away from everything that has happened in the last few weeks.  Life is good!

Inspiration

Inspiring me today…

the beginning of winter sunlight over frosted fields…

The combination of frozen grass and fall trees

 

Beauty that I only see when I am willing to get out of my car on my way home from work and appreciate the morning instead of head straight to bed.

My (almost!) house.  I spent 2 hours there during the inspection yesterday dreaming of the possibilities.  We passed with flying colors so maybe this time next month I will be able to start working to make it uniquely mine! (and i know it is a lousy picture… cell phone picture taken in the rain/snow.)

 

Part of you capture