TGIF, people!

Leftovers, Anyone?

Happy Thanksgiving, peeps!  Hope it was a good one.

Ours started with a Thanksgiving Meals on Wheels route, delivering hot meals and desserts to homebound seniors.  I'm hoping this will become a tradition.

We got home, finished up our own cooking, and spent the afternoon pigging out.  G even got to eat this year, which was a nice change.

We had an impressive, wide (for us) spread including turkey, meatloaf, mashed potatoes (knocked this one out of the park - turns out a stick of butter and half a carton of sour cream and heavy whipping cream will do that), stuffing, green bean casserole, dinner rolls (thank you, Sara Lee, for your crack-filled rolls).  All slathered in gravy and cranberry sauce.  And pie.  And pumpkin bread.

Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Green Bean Casserole: the unsung hero of the holidays.

You knew I was going to include a picture of this pie.

Honey Butter!  OMG who even needs a dinner roll to put it on?  Just eat this gooey deliciousness right out of the carton.

I'm not a fan of rushing through Thanksgiving in order to get to Christmas.  I don't like it that stores - I've been in them recently - put up Christmas stuff before they have even taken down the Halloween decorations.  A witch overlooking the nativity is just…creepy.

And I think it's a shame that stores are opening at 8:00 p.m. tonight in order to even get ahead of the Black Friday madness that starts at midnight.  Deals are great to get - but what about all those people who have to work?  It's complicated, I guess.

BUT BUT BUT - I'm all in favor, as a way to aid with the turkey digestion - of decorating for Christmas on Thanksgiving Day!

We got the new window coverings installed just in time to completely block them with the Christmas tree.

A little something for Lucy to chew on.

Now Lucy is scampering while G plays some monstrous game involving chain saws and aliens on the XBox.  I'm in my pj's about to attack a book.  I've been leisurely meandering through our latest one for Literary Society, thinking I had another week, and then I realized it's Tuesday night.  So, not so much with the leisure anymore.  On to the deep concentration, shh'ing G and all that.

And I must rest up.  Tomorrow is a full day of cabinet painting.  And rabbit chasing.

Your Holiday To Do List

Well, hello loves.  Guess who has the next five days off?  This gal!

In preparation for this blessed holiday, I will treat you the way I treat myself; I will give you a detailed To Do List.  So, in addition to the baking and cleaning and eating and loving and sleeping that you plan to do, also consider doing the following:

Watch the Thanksgiving episode of The Big Bang Theory.  Be prepared to laugh until your stomach aches.

Source

Give this TV show a whirl (it's better than it sounds!).

Source

Read this book (just finished and I'm hooked on the whole series).

Divergent by Veronica Roth

Bake this pie

Recipe here

Check out this blog for great recipes (shameless plug).

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I will be dealing with this one.

  

And eating these like they're going out of style.

Also on the ol' agenda:

**Thanksgiving community service!

**Painting more cabinets!

**Enjoying my last homework-free, grading-free Thanksgiving!

**Exploring CO!
**Supporting Small Business Saturday!

**Dinner with the Russkie!

**Laying around in my pj's and reading!
**Decorating for Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving and safe travels, you guys!

Phase II Complete

Well, hello there, finished library.  Hello, matching wooden window covers.

Goodbye, crappy warped blonde wood nastiness.

Just Chillin' With David Sedaris (for real!)

G is the master of gift-giving.  Case in point:  He took me to see David Sedaris yesterday!

He read from his various books, magazine articles, and journal entries for two hours, then signed books.  The only way it could possibly have been better is if he had allowed photographs and also moved in with us.  Lucy would have to deal.

We saw him at The Paramount downtown and they sell wine and beer!  WHAT?  You can't see it in this picture, but I was all cuddled up with a red wine.

I took my favorite book for him to sign.

Proof that I really like this dude.  This introvert doesn't deal well with mass chaos.

But I inhaled and exhaled and went to my happy place and it was worth it.  I got my book signed and got to talk to him for a few minutes.  :)

Now if Anne Lamott would get her butt to Denver...

A Weekend of Paint

It occurs to me that in two months I will be swamped with homework.  That sets off alarm bells inside my Type A brain and gets me going on all sorts of house projects I feel the need to wrap up.

Like - hold on to your hats - the inside of the kitchen cabinets.  I know.  I know that sounds extreme, but look at them.

The good thing is that they are well made and sturdy.  The bad thing is they look like someone slapped up some plywood and called it a day.  So I repainted the inside.

The color ties in with the backsplash without being too matchy matchy.

Two cabinets down, four to go.  But that can wait until next weekend.

Let's get on with this holiday week!  Bunny mama is ready for Thanksgiving!

After-After

Remember the Before & After of the dining room?

Well, all the cream-colored walls have been gnawing at me.  And the more I looked at the beach painting, the more it just wasn't right for the room.  So we have done some brainstorming over the past few weeks and this morning it all came together:

We printed a canvas print of one of the Hong Kong pictures (thank you, Shutterfly) and picked a dark blue/grey color for the accent wall.  It ties in with the living room and provides a nice pop of color.  Not bad for a Saturday morning!

Now I'm starting on the insides of the kitchen cabinets...

TGIF, people!

White

Today we got our first substantial snowfall of the season.  Some serious ice, and a few inches of snow, with it continuing to fall most of the day (in our neck of the woods, anyways).

I think the high was 19 degrees today.  The low was 8.  We were like, 8 degrees?  Why do they even bother telling us stuff like that?

We had to venture out at o-dark-thirty this morning to take my car to the shop.  What with the snowfall and everything, it's kind of important that my windows stay up on their own.  Between the weather and the traffic, it took us forevs.  I then high-tailed it home (again, forevs) and worked in my pj's.

I know I'm stylin'.  Don't be jealous.

Even though Lucy is nowhere close to experiencing the weather, in her sheltered little yogurt treat world, I do think she can sense when it's time to bed down and stay warm.  She was a lazy goose all day today, not even summoning the energy to jump out of her cage and lay down next to her sting ray buddy.

 Instead, she made a little den out of her hay and snoozed the day away while mama was on work calls.

Oh crap.  Here comes that pajama-clad woman again.

Hmmm.  Maybe she has a carrot cracker?  Or perhaps a yogurt bite?

What?  No treat?  Go away.

What's that you say?  Tomorrow is Friday?!  Oh, yes indeed.

Hold On To Your Pocket Protector!

I could get in big trouble for this post.  So, I hope you appreciate it, considering that we are all bored out of our minds by nerd stuff.

Last night?  G was nerding it up with his nerdy friends and I snuck into his hobby room!  I had to hurry, because I didn't want to get infected.

Here's what I documented:

Scary, right?

This is the room in all its glory.  It's not messy; things are precisely where he wants them. 

Look at all the paint on the desk...Also, the Darth Vader cuddling up with the Elmer's glue.

Here are some miniature killing machines, or as I like to call them, dolls.

And then, the planes.  Oh, the planes.  There are more where these came from, but these are the only ones currently on display.

Tribute to Hong Kong!

And then his friends encourage him by sending nerdy t-shirts for him to wear. 

Stop the insanity!  I don't even know what that is.  Some sort of insect?

So there you have it, the nerd room.  Thankfully my eyeglasses are still in one piece (not held together by duct tape) and I didn't magically grow a pair of suspenders.  Whew.  I think I'm safe.

Except for those imminent divorce papers...

Here's To Your Inner Teenager

A-peep remarked that I'm going through books like crazy these days.  She's right, and there are several reasons for all the reading of late:

*  Grad school starts in January.  I'm convinced that once I'm required to read as "work" and not as "fun" I will never want to read again.  I will spend months on end whining and complaining about what I "have" to read instead of what I "get" to read.  Enjoy these book reviews now because it'll be like 7 years until I post any more of them.

*  Reading is escapism.  Life is getting really scary more complicated.  I read to enter into someone else's experience and forget about my problems for a bit.

*  I'm going through easy reads right now.  You'll notice I'm not exactly tackling War and Peace.  I'm reading pretty much whatever speaks to me from the shelf.  {Pssst!  B!  Hey!  Over here!}

*  I'm a book nerd.  Just sayin.  Also?  I'm about 15 magazines behind with The New Yorker.

An Abundance of Katherines by John Green

The next time you want to read Young Adult Fiction, reach for this one, or anything by John Green.  I read The Fault in Our Stars a while ago - before I reviewed books on the blog - and absolutely loved it.  In fact, I've got a couple of Barnes & Noble coupons that are about to expire, and I'm going to use one to purchase that book so I can read it again, repeatedly.

An Abundance of Katherines is the story of Colin Singleton, child prodigy and all-around dork.  The book takes place during the summer before his senior year of high school, and he has just been unceremoniously dumped by his girlfriend.  His 19th girlfriend.  His 19th girlfriend in a row named Katherine.  The guy has issues, and boy does he know it.

He hits the road with his irreverent Muslim, chubby, witty, hilarious best bud, Hassan.  And they end up in Gunshot, Tennessee, with some new peeps and new problems on their hands.  In the midst of changing events, Colin works feverishly on a relationship theorem that will predict the future of relationships based upon who is the Dumper and Dumpee, according to a set of specific criteria he has created.

Green's writing is dead-on teenage speak.  But he doesn't stop there.  His plots are complex and his characters are endearing and you will care what happens to them.  You will love them and their snarky-ness.  He has a few other books out, and I want to read them all.  The language of the books doesn't scream Young Adult Fiction, though.  In many ways this work is as sophisticated as regular adult fiction - just minus the abundance (pun!) of cuss words and bedroom scenes.  This is appropriate for a younger audience and, you know, yours truly.  :)

The book is written from a young guy's point of view and would definitely resonate with the male reader.  About 10 pages into it, I texted my brother and told him to go get it.  I'd also love for G to read it, but since it's not about political science or killing war machine doll thingies, I don't think he will.  That said, the female reader will enjoy it immensely.

Read this one!  You'll love it.

Before & After - That Other Room

As I've mentioned a thousand times before, one of the main selling points of our house is the pretty living room and the fact that the kitchen and living room are close together and fairly open.

The thing is, to the left of the couch, right out of the picture, is a side room and a guest bathroom.  We have been at a loss about what to do with the side room.  G lobbied to make it a hobby room.  I cackled hysterically for about 3.5 seconds before shooting him down and banishing him upstairs (don't feel sorry for him; he got his own room, people).  We thought about getting an aquarium until we realized what a handful Lucy was going to be and nixed that idea.

Then it came to us:  a guest room.  We hadn't planned on turning any of our rooms upstairs into guest rooms because we so rarely have visitors.  It's a much more efficient use of space to have a Master bedroom, a fully functioning and spacious closet, and G's nerd hobby room.  Everyone wins.

But for those rare and wonderful times of the year that we will have guests, we now have a mini-suite for them!

Before

After

We plan to buy a couple of full-size Japanese canvases to use as room dividers, so guests will have privacy from the living room (a.k.a. Lucifer).

It is the perfect size for a nice air mattress, and the room is complete with a sitting area and a wine hutch.  I mean, what else do visitors really need?

I'm going to get a two- or three-tiered decorative cart to put next to the wall on the left.  The bathroom is next to those Asian prints (from Singapore!), just out of the picture.  It is too small to put useful guest supplies in it, so I'll use the wheeled cart for towels, amenities, snacks, drinks and other "welcoming" items.  That way, guests can wheel it around the room/bathroom as they want.

If I ever get around to making that cart, or to jazzing up the guest bathroom, I'll do another post.  For now, I'm just glad this room is clean, organized, and purposeful.

Now, come visit us so you can stay in it!