Let's Eat Turkey From My Big Brown Shoe

When I went out to pick up the pumpkin pie Wednesday evening, I overheard a kid (probably about 10-12 years old) tell his dad, "They don't have any Thanksgiving songs."  I missed everything else in the conversation so I'm not sure what brought that statement up but I wanted to tell him, "Oh sweetheart, you are too young to know but there is a totally awesome Thanksgiving song out there."  I blame the parents for not raising the boy right.  Then again, he may have been a bit young to hear that song just yet.  My title for this posting is a line from the song, just in case you thought I actually ate Thanksgiving dinner from a brown shoe.

Rob smoked a whole turkey in our smoker and it came out good.  I made most everything else to go with it, except the pie.  I never make the pie.  I have so much else to do and I know I can buy one that will be much better than what I can make so I just do that.  Here's the bird.



It looks different when it comes out of a smoker compared to oven so if you might be thinking it looks burnt, it is not.  It was perfect.  Here are the guys all having a drink and waiting for me to stop taking pictures and sit down so they can start eating.



And the aftermath.



Everything is cleaned up pretty good by now but man, what a mess!  It was a wonderful day- I think it was supposed to be 68 degrees!  I don't think it maybe got that warm but it was definitely in the 60's which is strange (it set the record for a high) and awesome.  So we had a very nice Thanksgiving here at our house.

I have been looking forward to today so that I can start my Christmas decorating for probably a month now.  And now that the day is here, I haven't done hardly any decorating.  My big issue is that I hate to put anything up now when everything is going to change so much in the next week.  Our tv mount gets here on Wednesday and that should be the day we move everything into the new family room.  AND I'm trying to convince Rob to paint the living room after we move the furniture out so I can't really decorate in either of those rooms.  I did manage to finish up the wreath I was making and I hung it on our front door today.

Hopefully I will be putting up some new pictures next week with everything in our new room and then later after it gets decorated too!

Move In Ready... Almost

This weekend, it was finally time to remove the door between the new family room and the rest of the house.  Rob and I removed the door then Rob knocked the frame out but left the final blow for his number one assistant.



Rex thought it was all his doing that got the frame out which he just loved.  We did that Friday night and then Saturday and Sunday Rob put up all the new trim around the door and finished the step (it was just the bare 2 x 4's up until then).  The room is pretty much move-in ready now.







I say "pretty much" move-in ready because we do still have the electrician coming to finish up the electrical work so we can get the tv and related tv/audio equipment installed.  The big hole to the right of the fireplace is for the air conditioning unit but we will just be covering it up with some artwork until next spring when we are ready to purchase the unit.  All the oak trim at the doorway and around the fireplace still needs to be stained and we have to figure out what we are doing for shelves for the cable box, dvd player and audio equipment.  So there are a few minor things to take care of but I am hopeful that we will be able to be sitting out there and watching tv by this time next week.  We've been having fun playing soccer and just running around in the big empty room though too.

I have been getting ready for Christmas as much as I can.  I love to decorate for the holidays but I have never been even close to satisfied with my decorations in this house.  They always seem so sparse and I have been working on projects and coming up with ideas to make it the space I want it to be.  We picked up a lot of decorations at our neighbors' garage sale this summer when they moved out.  We even scored a 7' artificial tree which will go in the family room while we have a real one in the living room.  I have picked a new color scheme of silver, white and bright green to go in most of the house.  The family room will probably be a color overload though mostly because I still want to use some old things that don't fit the color scheme and because that steal of a tree we got included multi-color lights on the tree.  Anyhow, I spied some fun artwork I wanted to try using paint and stickers on canvas (paint over stickers to reveal the silhouettes) so I gave it a go.  Turns out I am not very good at painting even when I cheat and use stickers.



The one on the left may be salvageable but I think the one on the right is a complete FAIL.  The paint got under the stickers and basically glued them down so now I can't peel them off.  Oops.  Well, on to other things I suppose.  I have a wreath wrapped in white yarn that has been sitting there for weeks just waiting to be finished.  Considering I need to put it up this weekend, I'd say the time has come to complete that project.

Our Thanksgiving plans are simple- without any family around or a dining room table to accommodate more than our family, it is just going to be us.  Rob is going to cook the turkey in our smoker and I will make the usuals to go with it.  I have been so busy thinking about Christmas that I confess Thanksgiving hasn't gotten much attention.  I am so happy for Rob to have some time off though and I am sure we will have a wonderful time.  I hope you do too!

Craigslist Love

Thank goodness for craigslist.  We have gotten some really good bargains for our family room project, especially the electric fireplace and our carpet tiles.  Rob installed the carpet tiles this weekend as well as some vinyl hardwood planks by the exterior door.

First Rob put the adhesive down-



Then he put the carpet tiles in-



And here it is after the vinyl planks went in too-





The tiles are a little wild but once we get our very neutral and boring couches in, it should tone it down some.  I like it and for $100 worth of carpet tiles, it is hard to beat that.

I mentioned recently that I have been looking on craigslist for an old entertainment center to turn into a kids' play workbench.  I kept looking through ads then finally posted my own wanted ad when I couldn't find any for free.  It was just a few days before a lovely lady contacted me and told me she had one in her garage that I could have.  Yay!  I looked at it last Thursday and it is perfect.  Tomorrow night we are going to go pick it up then I can start that project.

We had a garage sale a few weeks ago (that I posted on craigslist) and two of our items were some wall cabinets out of our bathroom and the former bike shop (now our beautiful family room).  Now, they aren't lovely but I thought someone could use them for their garage or something since they are in excellent shape.  Rob thought I was nuts for trying to sell them.  I guess he was right; no one was interested.  I put them out by the curb and put an ad on craigslist in the free section.  Still no came for them.  I was really surprised now.  I waited a while and finally reposted them last night and this morning I had FOUR emails from people wanting them!  The guy who emailed me first came over at 9:00 this morning- he couldn't get them fast enough.  I love that I get stuff out of my way and he was very happy to have them to use at his house.

Craigslist seems to come through for me a lot.  I love you craigslist.

Basement Play and Let the Potty Training Begin!

I thought we were doing such a good job on making the basement more appealing for wintertime play- until I saw this photo I took yesterday.

There are a few things working against me- I was taking it with my camera phone and the lighting down there is great but not the best for photos.  Anyhow, I'm trying to get their play area fixed up to give us more options for the winter months and it is coming along good.  I took the playhouse apart and washed it all down on Sunday (when it was warm and sunny) then brought it downstairs and reassembled it.  I also washed up their bbq and set it up so they have a whole little house and yard thing going on with their new picnic table.  Even though they aren't playing with it in this photo, they do spend a lot of time playing in the house and Rex likes to cook up things on the grill and then serve it to me and Wyatt while we sit at the table.  I still have to move some things around down there (like the fireplace surround with the area rug thrown on top of it) but it is almost how I want it.  And good news with the crappy camera situation- I took my camera apart this weekend, by myself thankyouverymuch, and got it working again.  Go me.

Time for the family room project update- all the window and door trim and baseboards have been painted and we are ready for carpet tile install.  Yay!!!  Rob asked me to help him on Saturday while the boys were napping and I agreed.  As it turned out, he wanted me to spackle all the nail holes on the baseboard. There were a lot- I think someone got a little carried away with their new nail gun maybe...  Anyhow, as I was working my way around the room, something on dawned on me.  I asked Rob, "Am I doing this because it's a really crappy job and you just don't want to do it?  Tell me the truth."  He replied, "Yes,  That is it 100%"  Since he had done the spackling on the window trim, I couldn't be too upset that he had gotten me to do the baseboard.  The trim is all painted white (Swiss Coffee to be exact) and looks pretty much the same in pictures as before so I didn't bother to take any more photos.

This morning we went out and did a big grocery shopping trip because we are supposed to get our first snow tonight.  The National Weather Service is predicting 2-4 inches but since it is still pretty warm, I am not expecting much of it to stick around.  But you never know so I figured I would get us all set up for a few days so we don't have to go out.  It also is a great chance to finally get Rex through the 3 day potty training bonanza.  I am kind of dreading it but when I think about not changing his diapers anymore and not having to spend all the money on diapers for him, it doesn't seem so bad anymore.  He is definitely old enough, he understands that he should be doing it, he has used the toilet several times in the past; we just have to make it the daily routine now.  I feel pretty confident that it will work and we will be successful, we just have to make it though the next three very long days.

Family Room Update and Basemp Picnic

As usual, there has been a lot of home improvement going on around our house.  Last weekend Rob got the fireplace in its spot.  Sorry for the crappy photos- my camera is still stuck on movie mode so all I have to work with for now is my phone on my camera.



There was a little hiccup with the fireplace installation because it turned out the opening was just a tad too small.  When Rob measured the fireplace insert, he didn't include the little bun feet that it sits on.  Oops.  It was a quick fix though so that was lucky.  We've run the fireplace out there a few times and it is amazing how well it heats up that space.  I am pretty impressed with it.  He also got the windows all trimmed out.  I only got a picture of the one but the other one looks just the same as this.



We were both impressed at how good the windows look at all finished up.  We took three in-stock windows off the shelf at Menards and just made them fit our space.  Rob did such an awesome job with it- both the framing of it and the trim.  I don't know how he got everything to fit the space so good when nothing was custom made or ordered and it had to fit the existing openings.  I think he is done with all the baseboard and trim nail-hole-filling and caulking and it is ready for paint now.  I can't wait for that to be done so I can get started on laying out the carpet tiles.  I am really anxious to see how they will look.

Rob took a short break to mow the lawns this weekend.  Rex must have known that Daddy needed to get back to his other projects so he decided to lend a hand.



The boys and I were out on a little shopping excursion yesterday morning and ended up at K-Mart where we found a little kids' picnic table on clearance.  I thought it would be fun in the basement (or basemp as Rex calls it) for the winter and, of course, in the backyard for the summer.  I'm trying to get the basement a little more fun for the winter so they can play down there more.  I'm going to put their playhouse down there and I could just see it all set up with the playhouse, the Little Tikes BBQ and the picnic table all set up.  Rex and I tested out the table yesterday at lunchtime.

It was pretty fun but the cable guy came to FINALLY replace our crappy cable box so picnic time got cut a little short.  I have one more project idea for playtime in the basement that I am going to get working on pretty soon here.  I have seen a lot of kids' play kitchens that are repurposed from old entertainment centers and I think it is so neat and such a good idea.  I didn't really want to build the boys a play kitchen though (even though boys can be chefs- Rex cooks and bakes with me all the time) and then yesterday I came up with the idea to turn one of those old entertainment centers into a workbench play area.  They love tools and I think this would be a lot more fun for them than a kitchen.  Everyone is getting new tv's that require a different style entertainment center so I am hopeful that I can get one of the old ones for free.  I keep looking on craigslist and people want anywhere from $20 to $150 for them.  People are so crazy with their prices on craigslist sometimes- do you really think someone is going to give you $150 for your ancient entertainment center that only fits an ancient tv?  Please.  Anyhow, I'll keep looking and I know I may have to break down and give someone a few bucks for one.  I'll be sure to post the project on here when I get to it.