Everyday Adventures

How to Hang Outdoor Wreaths Without a Ladder

The Gingerbread Diaries

One of the many awesome things about the Dollhouse is that it gives us these great windows to decorate. Since I’m so used to living in apartments or single-story homes with porches that obscure windows and doors (great for keeping the house cool, not so great for decorating), having that row of upstairs windows is still kind of novel for me. And I knew without question that I wanted wreaths for the windows for Christmas.

Don't mind the bare center window--the upstairs tree will shine through it at night!

Don’t mind the bare center window–the upstairs tree will shine through it at night!

The question was, how to hang them?

There are plenty of instructions for double-hung windows that involve lowering the top sash, but ours are the old single-hung type. There’s always the “direct” route involving the porch roof and maybe a ladder besides, but I wasn’t keen on the danger element, there (and this was months before Todd and ladder disagreed and he ended up with plates in his wrist, no way we’d go that route now!). So what to do?

Necessity is the mother of invention, after all, so this is how we hung our Christmas wreaths on those upper windows (pictures from last year). If you’ve faced a similar quandary, allow me to solve that for you!

What you’ll need:

  • Wreaths of your choice (I got these 24″ wreathes from Walmart, again, last year, for only 3.98 each and the bows from the Dollar Tree–both held up great)
  • Tulle or some other sort of sturdy mesh material (thin is important here, you’ll see why)
  • Cup hooks
  • A wire coat-hanger
  • A helper
You can tell this was taken in 2014, the hallway still has its wallpaper!

You can tell this was taken in 2014, the hallway still has its wallpaper!

So start out by fluffing out and decorating your wreaths as necessary. The fluffing is mandatory for most artificial wreaths as they’re quite squished and can look pretty anemic when first purchased. I chose to go with simple red bows and nothing else because it presents the highest contrast and is less likely to get damaged by the elements. Tie a fairly long loop of tulle or netting to the top of each wreath.

While I suppose you could anchor the wreaths to the window latch, it didn't sound like a good option long-term.

While I suppose you could anchor the wreaths to the window latch, it didn’t sound like a good option long-term. Cup hooks are cheap and it’s not going to compromise the window frame.

Screw a cup hook (hook facing down) to the center-top of the lower window sash, on the inside of the house. This will be your anchor.

Now we're getting somewhere!

Now we’re getting somewhere!

Straighten out the coat hanger except for the top hook. Now, open the window about 6-8 inches or so, just enough to let the wreath pass through when flat. (Oh, you’re going to need to remove the screens for this to work, too. Most of our upstairs windows don’t have screens, so it’s not really an issue for us.) Slip the coat hanger, hook-down, behind the lower window sash–it helps if your helper is tall–and between where the two sashes pass.

We practiced on the downstairs window, just in case...

We practiced on the downstairs window, just in case…

Hook the tulle onto the coat hanger and have your helper carefully pull the hook up and through the gap between the window panes while you guide the wreath safely through the open window gap. It’s worth noting that our windows are 70-some-odd inches high, making each half more than a yard tall. If your windows aren’t so lofty and you have reasonably long arms, you might be able to do this without a helper.

And there you go! One safely hung wreath!

And there you go! One safely hung wreath!

Close the window, sandwiching the tulle between where the sashes overlap (the tulle compresses enough that there’s not a big gap for air to seep in or out), position the wreath roughly in the horizontal and vertical center of the lower sash, and wrap the tulle several times around the cup hook to secure it, finishing with a slip knot.

Tadaa! You have now hung your exterior wreaths without risk of life or limb.

You can't see the wreaths, but you can see the lit Christmas tree upstairs.

You can’t see the wreaths, but you can see the lit Christmas tree upstairs.

We’re looking forward to getting our tree this weekend and I’m sure the outdoor decorations will be coming out as well! We kept the unbent coat hanger in the closet with the rest of the decorations just so we wouldn’t have to hunt up another one!

Do you decorate your windows for the holidays?

 

A Relaxed Thanksgiving, Todd Plays the Hero, and Cyber Monday Shopping

Everyday Adventures

A Relaxed Thanksgiving

Did you have a good Thanksgiving?

I’d been making one or two things a night all week and on Wednesday night set up the slow cooker with chicken leg quarters and vegetables so that, Thursday morning, we woke up to the heavenly scent of homemade chicken broth filling the downstairs. I’m only sad I didn’t think to do this before.

Since we didn’t have anything too pressing at the moment, I was able to kick back and watch the Macy’s parade and the National Dog Show while I polished the silver and did a few small tasks from the couch. (The one down side to a closed-plan house is that you can’t see the living room tv from the kitchen, especially when they’re a couple of rooms and a hallway away. Maybe we’ll install one of those little under-cabinet units when we redo the kitchen some time in the future then I’ll feel really fancy, hah!)

The turkey didn’t have to go in until 2:30 for our 6pm dinner (thanks to the speedy nature of our tabletop roaster oven which, once again, served us in good stead) and then it was short work putting together the casseroles to wait for their time in the oven. The only thing I was still working on when my family arrived was the pumpkin brownie trifle for dessert.

We usually watch a movie after dinner, allowing everyone time to digest before digging into dessert, but this time we landed on a marathon of Who’s Line is it Anyway? and laughed our butts off between that and Molly the French Bulldog’s antics.

I think it was one of our better holidays, and definitely our best turkey to date!

Todd: Not Just My Hero Anymore

Ah, neighbors. Unless you live on serious acreage you’ve got them and you just have to learn to live with them, or at least near them. We’ve gotten used to the neighbors on our west side, the personal care home, bringing an ambulance, firetruck, and police cruiser or five to the end of our block on a regular basis as well as the frequent caterwauling of one of the residents–I don’t know her story, but I do know she seems to shout everything, to anyone or no one at all, while wandering their back yard or between the small cottage she shares with her father and the main house.

On the other side, to the east of us, are two sets of duplexes that officially belong to the cross-street, and are more or less separated by trees and a partial fence. There are young kids in these duplexes and, thanks to the thin (read as: un-insulated) exterior walls, it frequently sounds like they’re right under my office windows when they’re outside playing. Aside from the occasional check to make sure they’re not flailing makeshift weapons around our cars, I just think of the day when we’ll get our privacy fence up on both sides and the noise barrier that’ll bring.

All of that to say, I didn’t think too much of it when I heard crying outside on Sunday afternoon. I figured it was the lady next door and briefly peeked out the kitchen window to confirm. Only I didn’t see her, and the noise wasn’t so loud in the kitchen as it was in my office. That was kind of odd.

My next thought, as I stood in the back doorway, was that one of the kids on the other side of the yard was crying out his or her displeasure at being disciplined. Not pleasant, but also something you kinda feel awkward intruding upon, if that’s the case. Or is that just me?

But then I heard the very definite cry of “Help me, please!”

Turned out that one of the boys next door had been climbing in the tangle of trees that divide our properties and had gotten his knee wedged between two of the trunks and was undeniably stuck. I couldn’t easily get to him but got his parents from inside (the kids had been called in and none of them mentioned their sibling was stuck in a tree!) and then went back to our house to get Todd (and his saw). He had to saw through a good bit of one of the trees (they’re not super thick, thankfully, but pretty sturdy) before they could pry the two apart enough for the boy to remove his knee.

If Todd hadn’t been home I think we would have had to call the fire department.

It’s Shopping Time!

I’ve decided that I’m going to do my level best to make the presents to my family this year (both due to budget and the simple desire to), even though I’ve decided this a bit late in the game (it helps that we’re a small group for Christmas or any other holiday). Still, I’d be a poor excuse for a maker if I didn’t let you guys know what’s available from my own shops this holiday, just in case they fit someone on your Christmas list!

First, there’s the CyberWeek sale over at The Crafty Branch

CyberWeek Sale

Our first four Creative Mischief kit releases are all available: Portable Plein Air, both Holiday card kits (which work great for scrapbook layouts, gift tags, and more if you miss the card-sending window), and our new Bound & Determined bookbinding kit. Kits range from $40-$50 plus shipping, but you’ll get 10% off through this Sunday and free shipping if you order 2 or more kits (which saves you about $9 each, at current rates).

For the girl who’s got everything, may I suggest a Character Cocktail? What’s a Character Cocktail you ask? Only a custom-designed, personality-based cocktail presented as a ready-to-frame piece of original art.

jvanderbeek-12

This close to the holidays I’d suggest getting a gift certificate for that hard to shop-for girl or guy on your list (we have pretty ones available for you to place in a stocking, just note that you want the gift certificate in the PayPal checkout), since they usually take 2-3 weeks to create.

Finally, for the foodie, gamer, or comic book lover on your list, What to Feed Your Raiding Party is a perfect gift.

wtfyrp_cover

Whether you’ve got a cousin who’s moving into their own place and will have to fend for themselves for the first time or your dear Aunt Agnes collects unique cookbooks, this book works either way! We’ll even gift wrap it and tag it at no extra charge. And don’t worry if they’re not a gamer–not only do the recipes stand up just fine on their own, the comics that open each of the five chapter are parodies of popular movies, so anyone can enjoy them!

So, dear readers, what’s your holiday plan: make, buy, or buy handmade?

Giving Thanks for the Little Things

Everyday Adventures

I’ve had a reason to stop at the grocery store each night on the way home, there are two pans of cornbread chilling out on the counter for dressing, and pies and cranberry sauce made. Yup, it’s Thanksgiving!

Growing up, Thanksgiving was always Mom’s favorite holiday. When we still made an annual pilgrimage back home to Louisiana, it’d be for Thanksgiving more often than not.

She preferred it over Christmas and I can see why. Leaving aside the pressures on a single mother to come up with presents and a tree and all the other things that go with the typical idea of Christmas, Thanksgiving is about food, and family, and taking a moment to be grateful for what you have, not wishing for what’s next. Those big dinners at Paw-Paw’s house were full to bursting with people, with tables and counters piled high with food. You grabbed a plate, piled it high, and found someplace, any place, to sit and eat.

Many years we kids ended up on the porch steps.

As much as I look back at those trips with a certain nostalgia or fondness, I admit to wanting, if not the full Norman-Rockwell experience, at least something closer to what I saw in the media, or even what I experienced at Sunday dinners at friends’ homes.

Which is to say, everyone seated around one table, food being passed from person to person. And everything that goes with it.

Seems silly, really, in the grand scheme of things. But it’s what I wanted.

Thrifted Table and Chairs for $50 (the leaves are leaning against the wall near the window)

Thrifted Table and Chairs for $50 (the leaves are leaning against the wall near the window)

So when we stumbled upon that dining room table and chair set for $50 at the thrift shop on the next block, I was ecstatic because this table was wide enough to hold people and their plates and still have room for serving dishes. Could seat 8 with no problem and up to 12 if we were in the mood to be cozy. Not only that, but we’d have enough chairs, between the old kitchen table and the new-to-us chairs that we wouldn’t have to bring out folding chairs or wheel in our desk chairs anymore.

Last year, getting ready for our first Thanksgiving in the Dollhouse, I was already looking forward to it when at work, the Friday before, one of the guys in the back came up and said I had several big boxes and did I want to bring my car into the alley for them to load ’em up.

They filled my trunk, the back seat, and even one in the front--it was like moving again!

They filled my trunk, the back seat, and even one in the front–it was like moving again!

Realizing what it must be, I looked at Mom across the office and uttered, rather indelicately,

Did she ship the f-ing china and silver?!

Nice…

Years back, Aunt M polled the nieces and nephews to see what of her Mom’s things we wanted. She wasn’t planning to wait until the reading of the will to disperse them, instead she was going to downsize in “5 years” (I later found out that was a rolling deadline) when she retired and parcel everything out, then. I requested the china and silver if they weren’t already spoken for.

See, when I was much younger, between ages 3 and 5 or so, we lived with my grandmother on my dad’s side and that house is the site of my earliest memories, including the Thanksgiving I was still in my high chair, at the corner of the formal dining room table, and I asked my uncle in the next seat for another roll as I’d eaten mine. That’s when he explained that I was supposed to save my roll as a pusher (to get food onto my fork) and then eat the roll last.

I don’t know if that’s common advice, but I remember that. And I remember the table set with the china and silver (though I couldn’t exactly remember the patterns). It didn’t matter what they looked like, it was a part of my childhood and I wanted it if it was available.

So in those seven massive boxes, packed in a mountain of bubble wrap and packing peanuts, was Maw Maw Hoover’s service for 12, plus serving dishes. Aunt M was flying in for the holiday in a few days (so I didn’t expect the dishes until a trip she drove down because, really, that’s a lot to ship) and wanted to surprise me.

Done!

Noritake Ardis china and Chantilly silver

Noritake Ardis china and Chantilly silver

Todd and I spent a good while digging out all the pieces, checking them for damage to assure my aunt that everything came through fine. Dinner, salad, and dessert plates, coffee cups and saucers and even demitasse cups and saucers all fine and accounted for. I was like a kid in a candy store!

Finally, a family dinner done "right."

Finally, a family dinner done “right.”

I host a baby shower that weekend, so the salad plates were immediately put to use, then Aunt M offered to polish the silver Thanksgiving morning, saying it was usually her job as the youngest to do so, so she’d do it again. And over dinner she told us the story of why there are 13 dinner forks.

The Story of the 13 Forks

The china and silver don’t date back to when my grandparents got married, but to when their oldest daughter (20 years Aunt M’s senior) got married and was doing all the registering for gifts and selecting patterns and whatnot. Maw Maw decided she deserved some china and silver herself. She was always afraid of the silver being stolen, however, and there was a specific hiding spot in the sideboard or wherever that they stashed the silver rolls (preferred over the cases because they were easier to hide/less obvious). Paw Paw, however, was adamant that no one was going to steal the silver and shook his head at her foolishness.

Well, they came home one day and the house had been broken into. First thing Maw Maw says is “check the silver.” Paw Paw insists that it would be there, and it was… or so they thought.

I don’t remember if anything (else) was taken from the home, but it turned out that one of the silver rolls had been absconded with, the one with the dinner forks, and was subsequently replaced. Then, later on, a fork was found in the grass outside the huge double doors that were really the front doors but that no one ever used because the kitchen entrance was more convenient. Whoever had stolen the forks was in such a hurry that they must not have noticed when one fell out of its slot.

And that is why there are 13 forks for our otherwise service for 12.

Always good to have a spare, I suppose!

Not gonna lie, I was pretty happy to set our table with the family china and silver, and use the pretty serving dishes along the middle of the table as the sold table decoration (except for the runner shot with silver and gold, tying the curtains and the silver edges of the plates together). There was no need for a buffet, though we did have to remind my brothers which direction to pass the food in, and I was happy to have what I always considered a “normal” family dinner.

This year, Aunt M won’t be joining us for Thanksgiving, she’s preparing to sell her house in New Jersey and relocate to her not-as-downsized-as-originally-planned lake house in Kentucky before jetting off to Liberia to supervise another round of labwork on the Ebola vaccine trials or something to that effect. She’s a busy woman. So I’ll be the one polishing the silver while watching the Macy’s parade this year.

I realize this post might sound sort of superficial–silver, china, a dinner table–it’s not exactly earth-shattering reasons for gratitude. If we were still serving buffet style and using folding tables and our IKEA flatware I’d be just as happy to be hosting another Thanksgiving dinner for my family. At the same time, that dining room table is one of the things that actually helps me feel like a capable adult, instead of the inner clueless 18-year-old that is my usual, and looking at 40 around the corner I figure it’s about time!

So, yes, I’m grateful for my home, my family, my friends. I’m thankful that I have a job that pays the bills, and that I’m able to do what I want with my time the rest of the days and weekends. And tomorrow will likely be a little hectic at moments and on Friday we’ll plunge into the Christmas season and the headlong rush to 2016. But it’s the little things, like the $50 dining room table, that remind me of all of that and more.

Cruisin’ by the Seat of our Pants

Just for Fun

I am a planner. I like to research, analyze, and organize my life as much as possible. Not because I don’t like surprises (or not just because I don’t like surprises), but so that I can handle the inevitable hiccups when they occur. And I doubt anyone reading this is at all surprised by that statement.

But you might be surprised that a little over a month ago Todd and I booked an anniversary trip with no planning other than our travel dates!

Questions had come up about travelling for Thanksgiving, but I only had enough vacation days left to do one trip before the end of the year, and one of the few goals I set at the beginning of the year was that we would take a trip for our anniversary, even if it was just a small weekend getaway. That was on a Tuesday, I believe, and by Friday Todd booked us into a suite on the Carnival Sensation for 3 nights leaving out of Cape Canaveral and heading to Nassau, Bahamas.

Have monkey, will travel. She was impatient waiting for us to get to the car...

Have monkey, will travel. She was impatient waiting for us to get to the car…

We left Wednesday night after work, the plan being (and I use that term loosely) to drive as far as Todd was comfortable and then get a hotel room for the night. It’s not a terribly long drive from Thomasville to Cape Canaveral–only about 4 1/2 hours–but to leave our successful arrival in the hands of us waking up on time early on Thursday and no major traffic snarls didn’t sound like a great idea. Around 11ish we were getting ready to stop, but before we settled on an exit we were already on SR-528E and there didn’t seem like any place to stop by that point. So we drove the whole way down, after all, and pulled into the first hotel we saw once we passed the Welcome to Cape Canaveral sign: Country Inn & Suites.

Apparently all my room "pictures" are in video format and that hasn't been edited yet. Instead, have some breakfast pics and a monkey posing with an astronaut.

Apparently all my room “pictures” are in video format and that hasn’t been edited yet. Instead, have some breakfast pics and a monkey posing with an astronaut.

It was late, but we still had time to be pretty impressed with the pretty first-floor room with very high ceilings and the next morning we enjoyed a very tasty breakfast (including omelets) before heading to Park Port Canaveral. Parking at the ports is usually around $20 a day, but I heard about Park Port Canaveral on one of the cruise boards (I did do some post-booking research) and it was far cheaper, a little over $20 total, and just a quick shuttle ride to the port. Definitely recommend looking into port parking alternatives in the future!

Our first glimpse of the Sensation on the parking shuttle (with various marina bits in the way).

I see the funnel!!!

One of the perks of booking a suite was that it qualified us for priority check-in and the Captain’s Lounge waiting area. Before you get the wrong idea, it wasn’t all that. We did get to sit in cushy chairs to check in and not have to wait in line, but the waiting area was just one end of the larger waiting area cordoned off from the rest. (No pictures allowed in the terminal.) Still, we got to board the ship in the first wave of guests and it was kind of eerie to walk around the Lido deck when there was no one else around. Definitely a first. We picked a table with a nice view and had an early lunch from the buffet.

Some highlights of our meals on the Carnival Sensation.

Some highlights of our meals on the Carnival Sensation.

Rather than do a day-by-day play-by-play, I’ll just highlight the different bits of our trip. First, the food. The menu selections were a little less elaborate than our last cruise, 6 years ago, but the food was fine and plentiful. I don’t think there was anything I was absolutely floored by, but we didn’t have a bad meal on the ship. Over the course of the 4 days we dined in the buffet, the main dining room, at the poolside grill, and in the alternate dining room for the SeaDay Brunch. We never made use of the pizzeria, the deli, or room service on this trip, but I did grab a mochachino from the coffee shop on the sea day and we did the afternoon tea in the piano lounge. Again, nothing bad to say about any of the dining amenities available.

Suite V3, Carnival Sensation

Suite V3, Carnival Sensation

After a couple hours exploring the common areas on deck, we headed up to our stateroom on the Verandah deck (deck 11 of 12). We were just over the bridge and just behind the observation deck on the starboard side. When Todd booked the suite, be booked by category, meaning he didn’t choose the specific room himself. About a week later our online registration showed our stateroom assignment and I was happy to see we were not in one of the obstructed-view suites (those are parallel to the lifeboats, a little farther back). Our steward left a sweet note on the mirror wishing us a happy anniversary and we came back from dinner the first night to a couple of gift cards–$25 off a bottle of wine and $50 for the spa–as anniversary gifts.

jvanderbeek_carnivalsensation_amenitieshighlights

I used the spa card for a shellac manicure after we got back from touring Nassau. I called that morning and they were already pretty full for the day, but thanks to our late dinner seating I was able to snag a spot after our excursion with plenty of time to clean up for supper. We wandered through the gym and the Serenity pool area on our first day, but aside from a seminar that Todd attended before we got to Nassau (which ended in a $600 sales pitch, to the surprise of no one), we didn’t end up using those areas much. A) We were here to relax and b) we had our own balcony if we wanted some sun. Todd had wanted to play mini golf one day, but the sea day was overcast and very windy, so we never made it up

There's plenty to do on the ship, even if you're not interested in gambling or pool antics.

There’s plenty to do on the ship, even if you’re not interested in gambling or pool antics.

We’re not really one for poolside activities (that would require us being at the pool, after all), but we generally enjoy the shows on the ship. The first night was a show called 88 Keys and it featured an ensemble singing and dancing their way through all sorts of music. I was particularly impressed with Come Sail Away (fitting, no?) and that they included one of my favorite Barry Manilow tunes as well. The second night we skipped the Love & Marriage game show in favor of an early night (though it was replayed on the ship’s television channel the following day and was pretty funny) and opted for the late night comedy show after dinner on the third night. We’d hoped to meet up with our tablemates from dinner but the Polo Lounge was standing room only when we arrived, so we just hung out in the back.

The fun 66% of our dinner table.

The fun 66% of our dinner table.

Speaking of our tablemates, we were assigned to a 10-top in the main dining room with 4 other couples. One couple was celebrating the husband’s birthday on this trip, two couples were on their honeymoon, and the other couple… well, there was a misunderstanding. The birthday couple was travelling with another couple, but they didn’t make it to dinner the first night. So, on the second night, when the missing couple turned up, we thought it was the aforementioned friends and acted like they knew what was going on (though we thought it strange that they didn’t engage with their friends or us much during supper). Turns out that, no, the missing friends were at another table entirely and those folks probably didn’t know what hit them. The other honeymooners weren’t quite as chatty as the rest of us, left early the first night, and didn’t even show up the last. But that was okay, the rest of us had more than enough fun for 10!

Highlights from our Nassau Excursion

Highlights from our Nassau Excursion

Another last-minute decision was our plan for Nassau. We’ve scheduled excursions in some ports and gone off on our own in others, and I can usually take or leave a Caribbean port–I just like being on the ship. Todd definitely wanted to get onto dry land for a bit, though, so we booked the Nassau Top 10 Tour, a bus tour that took us a good way around the island and featured stops at the Bahamas Rum Cake Factory for a tasting, Atlantis resort for pictures, Fort Fincastle, John Watling’s Distillery, Frankie Gone Bananas Fish Fry for a conch demonstration, and ending up at the Straw Market, among other stops. We bought rum cakes, rum, and sugar cane-based vodka, had a late lunch of conch chowder, fritters, and salad, and made a cursory pass through the Straw Market so Todd could see it (and see why I wasn’t crazy about going to it in the first place). It was a fun 3.5 hours (more like 4, thanks to a slight delay at Frankie’s), and we’re glad we did it.

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And with this last, cheesey picture of us from “Cruise Elegant” night in the dining room (the same day as our Nassau excursion), I’ll wrap up our unplanned cruise vacation highlight reel. We took over 600 pictures and I’ve got probably an hour or more of video to go through and edit. It was a fabulous anniversary trip and I’m so grateful to Todd for just going ahead and booking it, research be damned! I’m not sure I’d always opt for this sort of loosey-goosey vacationing, but it definitely paid off this time.

Would You Live in a Haunted House?

The Gingerbread Diaries

Or, more to the point, would you stay in a house once you find out that it’s haunted?

The first weekend after we closed on the Dollhouse we came up here and “camped out” in the empty house with an air mattress, our laptops, and a smattering of household goods. While it was strange sleeping in an empty, unfamiliar, echoing house, nothing out of the ordinary happened on this or any other weekend spent up there. When we moved in 2 1/2 months after closing, our a/c went on the fritz and we, again, slept downstairs for the first few nights until we could stand the heat upstairs.

That’s when things got a little weird.

While Todd slept on, blissfully unaware, I was awakened multiple times in the night by a series of 4 knocks coming from who knows where–I certainly wasn’t about to go investigate! There were also sounds of boxes being slid around the wood floors downstairs–that creeped me out the most, even if nothing was out of place the next morning. I was not amused; mostly I was just tired!

Fortunately, I’m not exactly a novice when it comes to the woo woo side of things. I read Tarot cards and have even (successfully) run a Ouija board in a haunted hotel as part of a paranormal workshop. I consider myself fairly intuitive, but I’m not sensitive to ghosts–my gifts only work with the living. But I was determined not to have a repeat of the previous night’s experience so–through meditation/visualization–I put up a “security blanket” around the house to ward against any metaphysical mischief. I also may have told the house, aloud, ‘Not tonight, Momma needs some sleep!’ It seemed to work, the strange noises didn’t repeat.

So, was it a fluke or do we just have very polite spirits?

At last year’s Halloween party, knowing that a couple of my guests are sensitive to ghosts/spirits, I took down the security blanket (but left up a net–I’m semi-brave, not fully stupid) and told anyone listening that as long as they could play nice, they could come play that night. I absolutely admit that I was full-on curious, but I did not request my friends to read the house, what followed was completely voluntary, and the two friends that were able to give me information do not know each other outside of possibly meeting at previous parties of mine.

I’d just finished one of the house tours when Friend M told me “You’re not alone.” Okay then! Apparently she encountered 2 spirits in the house, but they just seemed curious about what was going on. Fair enough. She wasn’t able to get much more from them as she wasn’t feeling well that evening and she admitted that it was screwing with her abilities.

Friend S, though, really clicked with one of the spirits: a woman, appearing to be in her mid-30s, who was excited that there was laughter in the house again after so very long of being tired and down. S did not yet know that the house had been rented out as a personal care home for the last 10+ years and was vacant for a time before that. I don’t doubt for a minute that the state of the house when we purchased it reflected the state of the “care” the patients received during their time here, and the vibe of the home in general.

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But that wasn’t all she shared! There is a section of the staircase that she is uneasy on, that she clutches the railing for dear life as she goes down. It was either that she’d fallen down them or that she’d witnessed a fall. Also, in what is now my office, there was an argument of life-altering sort/things-that-cannot-be-unsaid vein that took place between a man and a woman.

In my research into the house’s history (which S did not know until after these revelations), I’d learned that the original owner of the home did take a tumble down the stairs and was hospitalized from his injuries. And I believe it was shortly before his passing, if not the eventual cause of it. So, if it was his fall that the woman witnessed, that could make her his daughter. And I also know that the daughter was a school teacher and never married, living out her days in this house at least through her retirement, so I got the impression that the argument might have been over a suitable suitor. She didn’t seem to indicate (via S) that this was wrong, but there wasn’t anything in the newspaper archives on that subject!

At this year’s party, M again noticed the spirit upstairs. I asked her what, if anything, she could tell me about him, and once again she said it was a curious spirit. He was, she added, not all that interested in communicating and that it almost seemed like the party downstairs might have “woken him up.” This spirit seems to hang out in our guest room (apropos, no?), but future house guests have nothing to fear. My aunt stayed up there last Thanksgiving without incident.

So the question becomes, what do we do about it?

Currently we’re on the side of nothing. While I’ve been chided by some that I shouldn’t be “keeping them here” and that I should help them move on, again, that’s not my talent and I’m not doing anything to hold them. Between the smudging we did before moving in and the “security blanket” that is back in place, I’m actively trying to keep negative energies out of the house. I believe that there’s a higher chance that these are residual energies, imprinted on the house over the years. If either spirit is “active” here, I hope it’s because this is a place they are drawn to on their own and feel comfortable with. As long as that’s the case, I say live and let live. Or, uh, you know what I mean.