Christmas 2010!

Merry Christmas from our home to yours!
Sending hugs and holiday happiness to you!

5 Year Anniversary Weekend

This weekend my dear hubby and I headed off to Annapolis, MD for a short jaunt away to celebrate our 5th wedding Anniversary! It was pretty cold and windy, but we had a nice time & enjoyed relaxing and catching up on some sleep! :)
Maryland Inn - the oldest Inn in Maryland... there's a shot further away, later.
There's a US Naval Academy in Annapolis which you can tour, but I forgot my ID so we couldn't go through it.
Water scene~
Someday maybe we'll have one of these for a vacation home... :)
The highlight of the trip was a Segway tour we took of the town. It was completely last minute, and unplanned, but they fit us into the 3:00 tour and we had a blast! It was neat to get the historical tour of the town. An added bonus was that we got it 1/2 price too!! The Segways are SO fun to ride!
John Paul Jones is buried here (these are US Navy grounds)
St. Johns College
Maryland State House
Maryland Inn - Again. :)
The smallest house in Annapolis - this used to be an alley-way. There was a dispute between the husband and wife who owned the house to the left, so while one of them was away the other had this "house" built. So the story goes anyway. :)
Sorry for some fuzzy photos - we were pretty shaky during our Segway tour as we were SOO cold! :)
Here's to 60 more happy years!

Project Staus(es)

Exterior painting... Done! :) Well, 'cept trim. Minor detail, right?
We spent that last few weeks re-doing the guest bath. Remember this post? In less than 10 days it went from the following two pictures to what you will find further below. :):) We had a bit of a "must-be-done-by-date" as we have company all this week for the Thanksgiving holiday! Although we wouldn't mind sharing a bathroom, it is just so much more convenient for our guests to have their own. :)
Bathroom BEFORE...
20+ year-old cabinet, barely-flushable toilet with oak (NASTY) toilet seat, plastic towel bar, gross, bland tile with un-matching dark gray grout:
Moldy shower grout, scratched tub, old shower bar...
New tub walls braced. We bought a kit from Lowes... and now we have no more grout to scrub!!!! I love it!
Peter flew right through the flooring; it looks great too!
New toilet! (who knew this would be so exciting?!?)
Kitty inspects the new cherry cabinet...
And...
Dun
Dun
Dun
DUN...
The mostly done, fully functional but details-still-need-to-be-finished guest bathroom! We have lots of drywall patching to do, but for now it works for our company! :) And I LOVE the way it's all turned out. We flipped this project from functional to completely demo'd to functional again in less than 10 days... not bad! :)
As always, I still have plenty of painting to do, so a full reveal will come later, but this gives you an idea of how it has changed up til' now!

DC sunset

Tonight we had a lovely stroll downtown with BB to see the sights.
~~We enjoyed a beautiful sunset~~

Come see?

Thanksgiving #24!

This year was my 24th Thanksgiving... My sweet hubby brought these Happy Birthday flowers home with him on Wednesday. :)
We had dear friends K&L over for Thanksgiving and good buddy BB from the West Coast joined us too! It was a lovely day with wonderful friends!
Our tablescape:

BB makin' us Thanksgiving morning pancakes... From scratch. I think we'll invite him back! He seems to have made pretty good buddy's with Dozer too. He discovered that finger licks of butter will make friends pretty quick. :)
How the turkey started... the photo in the background was what our turkey was s'posed to look like. :)
Brined, buttered and basted. Stuffed with lemons, oranges, onions and LOTS of fresh herbs. The butter rub had crushed rosemary and sage with lemon zest mixed in too.
Mom sent me Grandma Ramey's potato roll recipe...
Our turkey turned out beautiful!! And delish!!! I will definitely use this recipe again!!
Sweet potato casserole in the back w/Gram's rolls in front.
My sweet hubby carving the turkey ~
Green bean casserole!! My MOST favorite dish!! :)
L. made creamy mashed potatoes and some seriously yummy gravy from the turkey drippin's. We wondered if the citrus in the turkey would make for some odd tasking gravy... but no! It was amazing!
Plate full of goodness! My eyes were a bit more zealous than my stomach tho. :)
L. also made homemade cranberry sauce which was awesome! I failed to photograph it though... :(
Stuff-t
L's Pecan Pie, my Blueberry Cheesecake and L's Pumpkin Pie! We had no shortage of sweets!
My first cheesecake ever that didn't crack! I used this recipe.
Hope you had a wonderful day too! We're so glad that although our family is so far away, we have such sweet friends close by to share these days with!!

Today's progress

Guess what got painted today?!!!!!!!!!!!!
You know what that means??? The main color on the house is done! Time for me to get busy with the trim now!

Guest Bath re-do

We (Peter mostly!) have been knee deep in the guest bathroom re-do! Last week he tore out all the existing stuff...
Under the tile was some delicious linoleum. We pondered keeping it for a half-second. Not.
The studs had a little bit of mold, but we were actually pleasantly surprised by how dry it all was!

Clean slate, with new PEX plumbed in! Now the master bath (next and last BIG project!) is the only room with the PB plumbing in it!
This picture is mostly for Wes' benefit. Peter had to work with some copper pipe for a bit, so he brought the bar-b-que propane tank up to use to solder. :) Hah.
Deep in plumbing thoughts... you know, drains, P-traps, hot and cold water connections, etc. The hot-water valve was faulty on this new piece we bought, (which we found out after it was all installed, bah!) so P. called the manufacturer and they over-nighted (!!) a new valve to us. Wasn't that nice of them? We'll be buying Moen products from now on, thankyouverymuch. :)
New tub in!!!
That catches me up on blogging, and you up on our house progress!! Happy Veteran's Day!

Paint preview

The weather has cooled down a bit, so we've been delayed in finishing the paint on the back side of the house - but I thought I'd give you a preview of how it looks right now. The trim will eventually be all cream - that will bring a bit more contrast to the green once that's all done. We're debating whether to paint the vertical batten pieces cream also - what do you think? We'll probably do it on one side first to see how it looks...

Yahoo for holidays!

Yep, Halloween was quite awhile ago, and I may just be the world's WORST blogger, but here are pictures none-the-less!
I made some Oreo cookie truffles for the party ~
...White chocolate covered Oreo cookie truffles actually. Mmm.
...and cupcakes too
Scary Monster cupcakes to be exact~
...and pumpkin turkey chili! T'was delish - I will definitely make this one again!
Some of the other party fare~
Miss. Lizzy - Can you guess what she was?
(think "watch")
Our party crew!
Mrs. Smith and errrr... Mr. Smith? In his more nerdy years maybe. :)
You have to see the whole outfit to really appreciate it. :) Click to enlarge and enjoy an afternoon giggle.
K&L were even kind enough to let a bum in!
His poor feet...
Wild West family, their resident detective... oh and Harry Potter. :)
Gracious, sweet host and hostess! (Cat & Ghost) Thanks much friendlies!