Into The New Year

Greetings!

This may be a long one.....

Well, it was a rather strange holiday season here for us.  While we did decorate a little bit, mostly on the exterior of the house, we did little inside.  No tree other than the little one on the porch.  I have mentioned before that I am not a religious person, but I do like some of the holiday decorations and traditions which I see more of a celebration of Earth itself and renewal for the coming year.  With Mrs in school and little time to devote to anything other than that, we decided to not give each other gifts.  We used the excuse of having purchased a number of things for ourselves and the house of the last year and we avoided a great deal of stress that can go along with the holidays.  And why should we add stress to our lives?  It was strange, but it worked.

So, Christmas came and went.  I worked that day, but planned to take off every night between Christmas and New Years, excluding an overtime shift I had previously signed up for, and New Years Day which is a big holiday for this civil servant.

We did have our nephew over on the 26th and he stayed until the 27th.  We also entertained Mrs's Dad and Step-Mom that evening watching a football game and exchanging gifts with them.  We had a moderate storm that day and into the next.  What started as heavy, wet snow turned to rain just in time as the wind was really picking up and limbs were coming down.  Many in the area lost power; some for a day or two.  We were fortunate.  The storm 'bombed out' over the Atlantic and really started raging during the overnight and into the next day.  The four or five inches of snow that did fall soaked up the rain water which left me aching after clearing what I could from the driveway apron.  The piles from the town plows were sopping wet and terribly heavy.  I shoveled most of this at around midnight knowing that as the storm moved away, the cold air would be swept back in and everything would freeze solid.  And everything did freeze solid.  The driveway was a layer of ice many inches thick that made for some excitement while creeping towards the roadway.  My 4Runner insisted that brakes didn't matter and tried to push me out anyway.  Good times.

Mrs ended up feeling under the weather that morning so she slept in.  Once nephew was awake I made him a hearty breakfast and we watched TV most of the day until it was time for us to return him to his Mom.  I am sure he felt a bit cheated and I had hoped to do some things outdoors with him, but he had only brought the old sneakers he had on so outdoors was really not an option.  I also didn't want to stray too far from home in case Mrs needed further assistance.  So, we owe him a bit of Cool Aunt & Uncle time.  It may come in the form of a camping trip sometime this summer.  We shall see.

Not Quite As We Had Planned

With Mrs somewhat laid up, we decided to abandon the plan to paint the interior of the house.   All but the bedrooms and one bathroom would have been (and still need to be) painted.  Instead we focused on smaller projects that were not really in the plan.  They just sort of happened.  We decided that it was time to replace the family dining set that has been handed down through a couple generations of my family.  The dining table and a buffet are really all that remain of the set and are in fairly good shape.  They don't really go with our taste anymore.  Mrs has contacted a local antiques auction house and we are waiting to hear back from them.  I know.  I know. It's family stuff.  It's time for me to let go of some of this, and of the few remaining relatives, no one wants it.  It's been here since the early 80s and needs a new home.

In the mean time, we have broken down the table and stored it in the basement and are using an old table that Mrs grew up with and had been our dining table at one time or another while the old table was stored in the attic.  Amazingly enough, this table does fit our taste and fits the dining room nicely.  Once the buffet is gone, our plan is to buy some type of hutch that will allow for storage in the bottom cabinets and on top shelves the out-in-the-open display of the pottery we have acquired.  We are also in need of lighting in the room.  Prior to the addition this room served as the living room and has no ceiling lighting at all.  We need a light directly over the table.  So, we're also making a list for the electrician.

We dragged up another old piece of furniture from the basement.  It's a tiny bench that had a cushion of sorts on the top.  We removed the top which had this awful moldy, blue-ish fake leather covering on it.  We removed that and found the original fabric covering under neath it.  This was also moldy and worn so that and the thin layer of batting were also removed.  We lightly sanded the legs, cross braces and base for the top and Mrs painted that with a black paint.  While the first coat was drying, we headed off to a fabric store in town and found a nice fabric that we thought would go quite well with the black, as well as some new batting for the the cushion.  A second coat of paint and the new and improved cushion on and we have a wonderful little bench that we use to put our feet up on while sitting in our 'lounge' (which was the old dining room in the original part of the house).

Mrs also repainted a dresser that we acquired from her mother when she moved to Florida last year.  It's a basic pine dresser that had been painted and stenciled to go with the Cape Cod nautical theme in her spare bedroom.  After sanding off the stencils and a good deal of the paint, Mrs painted the dresser white and, once dried, distressed it slightly with a bit of sandpaper.  It came out quite good.

We did a few more things including cleaning out some closets and drawers here and there, purging things we do not need.  There is much more of that to go, but we do have a good start for 2011.

This post has gone a bit long as I thought it might so I will end it here.
Happy New Year.