Another Christmas First

Yesterday I posted about our first real Christmas tree.  And no, we didn't decorate it yet.  However, last night we did get the ball rolling on another big Christmas "first": we ordered our Christmas cards!

Forty sure sounded like a lot last night, but this morning as I'm making our list, I'm starting to realize that forty may not be enough after all.  We had this problem with wedding invites, too (although we definitely invited a lot more than forty people). 

I think we'll just make it work.  Forty covers our close family (the ones we see more than twice a year) and friends (the ones whose phone numbers we have and use).  If we start branching out to extended family and Facebook friends, we might end up with five hundred cards to address(not to mention stamping).  And that would not put me in a very jolly mood.

My only fear is that we'll forget someone important.  That's almost enough to make me want to scrap the whole thing.  Two weeks after our wedding, I realized that one of my best childhood friends had not received an invitation.  I realized this when she mailed us a gift.  Worst day EVER.  

I think we'll press on, anyhow.  And I can't close out this post without a little preview, now can I?

Do you send Christmas cards?  How many do you send, and when do you send them? 
-Kelli

There's Nothing Quite Like It.

 The smell of a real, live Christmas tree.  This is Madison's and Patrick's first real tree ever.  Can you believe that?  Well, I mean, obviously the Madison part wasn't a surprise, but Patrick?  He's been around for twenty-seven Christmases before this one, and if he's to be believed, he has never once had a real tree.  I can at least vouch for him for the six Christmases we've been married.  Every year before this, we had a fake tree, but I always knew I wanted to go "real" once we had kids.  Or kid and dog.  Actually, now that we "have a kid", I kind of hate the way that phrase sounds.  Like you have a hammer, or a toaster oven, except it's a kid instead.  But I digress.  This post is supposed to be about our Christmas tree!

Originally, my plan was to go to a Christmas tree farm and chop down the tree of our choosing.  Then I started to dread the long ride to the nearest farm, and the long time spent in the cold picking out/cutting down/dragging back our tree.  At first, I pressed on with the plan, mostly out of some strange sense of duty to Madison to "do it right".  Then I realized that Madison would probably be even more miserable than we would if we "did it right".  So off to good ol' Walmart we went. 

Sadly, we are now a zero truck household.  Man, we miss his Ranger.  Since we didn't have a truck to toss the tree into, we had to go with plan B for getting our prize home.  Enter the Explorer.

Pat spent probably ten minutes making sure the tree wouldn't fly off the top.  His new name for the week is Captain Careful. 

At this point, it was about six o'clock.  That's about fifteen minutes late for Madison's typical dinnertime.  We decided I would feed her (sweet potatoes for the first time, which she loved) while Patrick cut a few inches off the base of the tree.  All we had to cut it with was Pat's circular saw, but he got the job done. 

We put Madison in her saucer so I could "help" Patrick with getting the tree in place.  And by "help", I mean make him come through the back door twice because the camera wasn't ready the first time. 

We obviously haven't put the kitchen back to rights yet.  I'll just pretend we left it this way on purpose so Pat could navigate the room more easily while carrying our tree.  Yeah, that's what we were thinking.  I'm so glad we plan ahead for these things.

I'll admit; once it was in its stand, I couldn't help feeling a little...disappointed.  It was just so small!  But I didn't say anything, because we had just spent more than a dollar (meaning a lot of money in our book) on it, and Pat had worked really hard (in the cold) to get it home.

 But then something magical happened.  When Pat started to pull the twine off the tree, it grew before my very eyes.  I know you'll think I'm being facetious here, but I really was surprised by how full and appropriately sized it looked!  I guess when you go five years with cheap (think <$50) fake trees, a real tree like this is bound to surprise you with its...realness. 

  At first, Madison wasn't too sure about what we had going on.  This is the look she gives me when there's a loud noise.  It's her "Mom, is that okay?" look. 

 I assured her that yes, it's safe, and it's our happy Christmas tree!  Then she felt free to explore.

 Immediately after that picture was taken, she announced rather loudly that it was bedtime.  Since we didn't want to decorate the tree without her, it's still very much bare.  Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow with a post on our fully decorated tree!  Until then, I'll just enjoy the sweet smell of Christmas. 

I'd like to know...do you do real or fake trees for Christmas? 
-Kelli

Check.

 Our kitchen floors are D-O-N-E!  Patrick laid them Saturday, it's now Tuesday, and I'm still surprised every time I see them.  I guess when you live with this:

for over three years, waking up to this:

is gonna be a shock to your system.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let's see...I believe we left off here:

Early Saturday morning, I woke up my sweet husband and put him to work laying out our (commercial vinyl) tile.  This was especially important for our house, because "square" was apparently not a very prominent architectural style in 1945.  Either that, or the builders didn't feel like measuring while they were building our house.  Irregardless (love you, Michelle), we (and by we, I mean Patrick) needed to lay out the tile so that we could find the angle that looked the most square from the most perspectives.

We also went back and forth between splitting the cuts (meaning to have the grid centered on the floor and have cuts on all sides) and working from a corner (which is obviously what we chose to do).  Our reasons for choosing to work from a corner were three-fold.  First, it ended up looking the best.  Had we centered the grid on the floor, we would have been left with itty bitty cuts on either side.  This way, we have no cuts on the two most seen sides, and half-ish cuts on most other sides.  The second reason we chose to work from a corner was that it was easier.  Pat had to make exactly half as many cuts as he would have otherwise.  The third reason was to save our marriage.  Just kidding...after I surprised Patrick that morning with a triple grande double-blended white mocha frappuccino, he was putty in my hands.  I probably could have gotten him to lay the floors on a diagonal if I so pleased.  Which I didn't.  But he did vacuum the dog hair off the floor.  I wonder if a quad venti frap would get me a clean office...

 Once we were sure of the layout, Pat made marks and we popped some guide lines (you'll see them in red).  Then he double-checked that everything was perfectly square:

 At this point, Madison and I were expelled (due to extreme fumes from the adhesive).  We went to Nana's and PawPaw's (about half a minute down the road) and played all day.  Well, we played all day except while Madison took a nap and I ate sweet potato pie.  Three slices.  By myself. 

Once we were safely (obviously not safe from pie) out of the house, Pat opened up this bad boy:

 and started spreading.

 He did a three foot strip, then let it dry until it was tacky.  I wish we would have known a week and a half ago that these tiles were supposed to be laid on a tacky surface...all that demo was for nothing!  (wahm, wahm, waaahhhmmm)  It took about forty minutes to set up. 

 As he laid the tile, he would flatten the joints by pounding them with a rubber mallet.  This helped them get strongly adhered, and also eliminated almost all the ridges.  Seriously...the floor feels seamless.

 Notice I said "almost" all the ridges were eliminated.  After he finished the three foot section and felt comfortable with the process, he spread adhesive over the rest of the floor, waited for it to tack up, then laid it all at one time.  Once he was finished, a few problem areas kept popping up.  Pat put some weights on them, and we hoped for the best.  Actually, the weights are still there.  I guess it's time to move them and put our kitchen back together!

This was my original checklist for the kitchen:  You'll notice I've now crossed through some items and added new ones in red.
-Replace flooring
-Replace countertops/backsplash-
-Repaint the stovetop-
-Paint (or replace?) vent hood-
-Paint refrigerator -Buy new refrigerator
-Convince Patrick that our refrigerator needs to live where the stove is and we need a new stove/oven/vent hood for the island
-Install island
-Buy/make barstools
-Paint base of table
-Reupholster dining chairs
-Build window seat- After de-kennel training Bella, that is!
-Install recessed light over sink
-Find shallow drawer pulls
-Install quarter-round
-Finish painting trim (including column)
-Touch up paint
-Upgrade electrical switches and outlets to GFCI
-Find/DIY art for wall behind table
-Stencil or otherwise decorate the soffit.
-Overcome my claustrophobic tendencies and invite thirty people over for a human game of chess.  


Okay, that last one is never gonna happen.  But night before last, I was a knight and Pat was a bishop, and I totally kicked butt.  Boo-yah.

Have you been working on your house lately?  Or eating pie?  Or manipulating your spouse with highly addictive sugar and caffeine-laden beverages?
 
-Kelli