A Birthday Post…..

Just popping in to say hello and to let everyone know we had a wonderful Christmas.

Today is my birthday and I am doing absolutely nothing…nada…squat…zilch…zippo…

diddly-squat…jack…no ioda…zip…zot….goose egg!! And you wanna know why? Well…because

it’s my birthday and I can do that today!! Ha ha

I am really old today….56…I guess I feel about 46 and some days younger, and some days older.

One year ago today I was recuperating from a heart attack and I was four days without a

cigarette. I am very proud to say I am  368 days without a cigarette and I am pretty sure my heart

is doing good! Yay! What a flipping miracle.

My next challenge, will begin on January 3rd. I will begin, along with my husband,

to eat better and try to lose weight, slowly. I know we can do it. I have been succumbing to

all the fattening foods that the holiday brings with it. My plan for 2011 is to get healthy

and try and get off my duff more. I have terribly bad knees and plantar fasciitis in both feet.

It makes it hard to exercise without being in pain. I am guessing if I lose weight, that may get

a little better for me to deal with. So…say a prayer for me will ya? I need it. I wish you all a healthy

and happy 2011….filled with wonderful things…..Happy New Year Everyone!!

Merry Christmas 2010

 

The stockings are filled and hung on the mantle.

The tree is up and decorated, AND so is the house.

The last bit of crown molding went up!

My cookies are all made and ready.

A few last minute presents to wrap and I think I’m done!!

Whew!! I thought I would never get to this day without

complete chaos and it’s here and we’re fine. Everyone is coming here tomorrow.

It should be a blast.

The menu is:

Penne Pasta Salad with roasted vegetables, basil, feta, and spinach.

Creamy Southern Pasta Salad

Spiral Ham

Shrimp Dip and crackers

Mixed Olives and pickles

Seafood chowder (made by Alice) with cod, crab, cusk, shrimp and haddock.

Vegetable platter and dip (carissa)

Appetizers and either Chicken parmesan  or meatballs (my brother in law Joe)

Cookies and plenty of “junk” food!!

Cran/raspberry/ginger ale punch….with fruit.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL

HAVE A HEALTHY & HAPPY HOLIDAY

I’M GOING TO TAKE SOME TIME TO RELAX AND ENJOY THIS HOLIDAY.

US BLOGGERS, TEND TO BE TYPE A PERSONALITIES! GOING TO TRY AND SLOW DOWN……WAY DOWN….TAKE IT EASY…..ENJOY ALL THAT IS IN FRONT OF ME……

AND HAVE FUN WITH MY KIDS AND MY FAMILY….SING A LITTLE…EAT A LITTLE….NOT GET TOO

EXCITED IF THE FLOOR GETS DIRTY OR OBIE GETS CRAZY….JUST REEEEELAAAAAXXXX.

I’LL GIVE IT A GOOD TRY….AND YOU KNOW WHY?? BECAUSE WE ARE ON HOLIDAY!!!!! YAY!!

XOXOXO ………SOME HOLIDAY LOVE GOING OUT TO YOU ALL…… HAVE FUN AND SEE YOU BACK HERE AFTER THE BIG DAY!!    DEBBIE

 

Finally Getting In The Spirit…..

I am finally getting into the spirit of Christmas.

Somewhere I found my holiday mojo?

I went out and purchased some of these….

And then I got some of

these…. And I decorated our

Maple tree outside. They were on sale at Rite aid…. 100 mini lights

in each box and they were 2 boxes for 5.00. I even bought a poinsettia!

Honestly….I ended up in a slight depression there for a bit and I was

wondering if I was going to bother even decorating. Last year we had a

gorgeous tree. The problem was it was so dry, that it shed its needles every

day and what a mess. We decided to have an artificial one this year. My father in law

Woody, showed up here a couple days ago, with a 7 foot blue mountain spruce

artificial tree!! My mother in law decorated that tree for years and it was beautiful.

She did many themes over the years. Anyway….my husband asked if he could have it

as they no longer use it and they said YES! So….it’s on my kitchen floor in a

box right now and will be decorated this weekend…..thanks to Woody and Alice!! It’s my first one and I know there is NOTHING like a REAL tree but they are getting quite expensive and some of the artificial ones are gorgeous!

 I want to apologize to all of you in blogland. I haven’t been very good

at visiting lately. I’ve been in a slump. I promise I will be back soon. Our reno is coming to an end after today.

The crown molding goes up in the dining room today, and we will stop until after the holidays. We have a wonderful Christmas

party coming up at my brothers on the 19th. We are doing an old fashioned Yankee Swap! I can’t wait. It sure is a lot less expensive

buying two gifts versus 7 or 8! Do any of you do this? I am told a lot of people are this year.

Christmas is being held at my house this year.  It should be fun! I am on the lookout for a nice vegetarian Christmas dish for

my daughter. I am hoping to cook a spiral ham and I have some other ideas. We usually do pot luck. Here are some pictures of my “old” country themed

house before we started renovating last year at Christmas…  Here’s my old country beam that we cut out decorated for the last time!!    And my snowmen….    and xmas cards all over my mothers hutch……

Kathleen’s card is in there!!!  Let’s get closer…. And even closer….There it is….see the pink and white one with the deer? I loved that card Kathleen!

When I look back, this year, on all of the decorating I did last year, I have a bitter-sweet feeling about it all.  You see…this was all done within 2 weeks of Christmas. A lot of the greenery I got from the woods at my husbands parents farm. I filled bags of it for myself and for Alice.  Although it dried out quickly, it was really pretty. I was having a bit of a hard time getting this all up so I asked my husband to help me with some of it. Because we ended up with a dry tree and dry greenery, we decided to take it all down the day after Christmas. I started doing just that on December 26 of last year, 4 days before my 55th birthday. While doing that, I noticed I was not feeling well. Once in the ER in Portland, I was told I was having a heart attack. So….I have an uneasy feeling about it all I guess, for no reason. It’s been a long and very different year for me….but a good one. I am very grateful to be alive this Christmas. I am going to decorate the blue spruce Alice and woody gave us and as many other areas in the house as I can and enjoy the season. Hopefully I can take down the decorations after the holiday and NOT end up in the ER this year!! I’ll be back with new pictures soon……meanwhile….enjoy the season you all!!!                          

 

       

 

Another makeover……

We are finally getting to the end of our long kitchen/dining room/hallway partial makeover!! Here are some before and after photos….

The kitchen floor before….I’m embarrassed to say we were hiding the tears in the the old 1983 linoleum with area rugs.

The new floor is a grayish ceramic tile in the kitchen and hallway as seen here.

And here is the old stencil above my cupboards I painted eons ago and the original color “bone” that was in my kitchen. Here is the new color in the kitchen….it’s called Cream Yellow…after the priming of course!

                         Before                                                                       Primed                                                                 Cream Yellow                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Then we began working on the dining room right next to the kitchen. The floor looked like this…..          and now this ……       What a huge difference! It’s gorgeous now!! We painted the ceiling in there tooSee the difference already?  And we repainted the walls. They were already painted a light yellow called Filtered Sunlight but they needed updating. That stairway that you see in this photo, will be updated as well. In January, the carpet on those stairs will be replaced with birch treads. The mantle and railings and side boards will be painted. Here’s the dining room painted out…..ceiling and walls….with my curtains down…. That was before the floor was done. That monitor heater had to come out by our monitor guy the first day of the floor sanding. We used a small electric heater for 3 days.This is the pump behind it and the exhaust and the brackets it goes on. We love that heater. It’s the best way to heat a home….very inexpensive and efficient. See the beam Bobbie and David built? That needs painting still. See the transition board between the kitchen and dining room? Those are oak and our carpenter guy made them for us and the floor guy sanded them down and put poly on them for us. Here’s the new beam tricked out but not painted on one of the top sides. Here’s our guy sanding the floors….            Hard work that lasted three days. Once  it was sanded, the wood began to show these gorgeous dark and light boards. We always thought the floor was just birch. Our guy showed us birch AND Maple too in the floor! What a surprise that was!! Here is a shot without the sealer on it…. See the dark and light boards? Lovely. Now here it is with the sealer and three coats of poly, after three days of coating and sanding and buffing….      It looks like glass! We absolutely LOVE it!! And here he is tipping his hat and saying goodbye….. a job well done!! Thanks Matt!!

What are we doing now? My curtains are still not back up so in the morning I see this still in my dining room….   and this…. That sun is very, very bright without my curtains, while sipping my morning coffee!!  In the last picture you can see there is no baseboard molding or ceiling molding. We just purchased that yesterday from Lowe’s. It’s primed but needs painting. That will go up hopefully next week. Then….my curtains can go back up and I won’t feel like I’m living in a fish bowl at night!! Meanwhile, I have to find a dry cleaner to clean my curtains…..I keep putting that off! Geez….I wonder why? I don’t have enough going on here do I? So….that old country beam that was twisted and cracked that I once loved and still kind of miss, that looked like this… is gone. And now we have a much more contemporary beam that was designed by my husband and our loyal carpenter David that looks like this….   and this…….unpainted. They did good didn’t they? In fairness to my Bobbie (my husband), he painted the entire dining room ceiling and walls himself!! I am so grateful for that. He has a much steadier hand than I do cutting things out….Nice Job Honey!! Whooohooo!! We also have to fill all of those nail holes with puddy on all of the molding…etc….before we paint….like this…. When you are building something like this from scratch, it’s not always perfect, so there are cracks that need to be filled before painting. We talked about tricking out the beams a bit more, by painting a couple of colors on them. I thought about it for a few minutes and then said…. “nope!”…..they are going to be white….period! I am ready to wind down and just enjoy my house now and get ready for Christmas hopefully….my favorite holiday of the year. Although, that is changing too. I’m getting older now and more tired easily I guess. What I could do 5 years ago I can’t seem to now. Maybe it was the heart attack last year. Speaking of the heart attack….it will be one year ago that I had it….the day after Christmas!! I can hardly believe it. Do you know what else was a year ago???? The day I quit smoking cigarettes! What a flipping miracle that is!! Me?? Without a cigarette?? OMG I never would have believed it if someone told me I would quit! So it’s been a long year of being on medication. Before that, I only took an occasional aspirin….now I take one of those daily, along with three other pills….Simvastatin…..Plavix….and one other….along with some vitamins. Thank God for those pills….they saved my life. I had a stent put in and that saved my life too. Next Wednesday, I see my cardiologist and we will discuss my coming off the plavix….it’s been a year….they said to stay on for one year.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We did. Lots of good food and family and as always, my mother in law Alice made my day. She makes me laugh and enjoy the day! She is more than a mother in law….she’s my best friend. I didn’t get many pictures but I did get one of my turkey I cooked the day before so we could have turkey sandwiches…..  it came out nice. I didn’t stuff it because I knew I was going to have some of Alice’s famous Pork/Peach stuffing!! I did get a picture of my father in law Woody with my brother in law Joe’s new dog Jennabell….. She’s a good girl. And here’s Alice and Woody…. And of course the boys like to play xbox while waiting for dinner to be ready…. We had a very informal dinner and it was nice. The food was fabulous. Woody made mashed white and sweet potatoes and a huge Woody special Cole Slaw with shrimp added….Alice made her wonderful stuffing…..I made a pumpkin and apple pie and butternut squash and brought pickles, olives, cranberry, rolls, and salsa and chips. Joe had some nice eggnog and a wonderful veggie dish and two turkeys with dry rub on them that he deep fried. My son and his girlfriend brought a chocolate and a banana cream pie. So….we had plenty of good food!! I guess I have written long enough! Sorry about that. You will have to come back several days to read all this huh??!! See you all soon…..

Happy Thanksgiving 2010

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!!!! Enjoy this wonderful day with family and friends.

See you after this holiday!! Have fun and take a moment to be grateful!!…