A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Fondue

We have a habit of staying in on New Year’s Eve and our “tradition,” loose use of the word as it is, is to watch a movie, flip over to see the ball drop, clink Champagne glasses, kiss, and go back to the movie. Dinner is up to whomever is cooking, but it’s usually something that lends itself to being eaten on the sofa while watching said movie. This year we decided on a variety of nibbles and the ooey-gooey goodness of cheese fondue.

Fondue is not complicated. It’s shredded cheese (often one or more of the Swiss varieties), a little wine or beer (or broth if you so choose), and a touch of mustard or garlic. And if kept adequately hot it remains nice and smooth and dip-able. Some fondue pots are electric but ours is of the sterno/candle variety–seriously, never underestimate the power of a tea light!–and we were missing one crucial piece of the puzzle.

A match.

Or lighter or any other fire-starter you can think of. We searched high, we searched low. We searched junk drawers, offices, the butler’s pantry, the bar. And despite knowing for a fact that we owned at least 2 boxes of matches and one long-arm lighter, none could be found. The only thing we could locate was a box of strike-on-box fat lighter sticks, but that seemed like overkill, so Todd did the logical thing and went to the store 4 hours til midnight.

Dinner is served… and saved!

Our movie was From Time to Time, with Maggie Smith, and old drafty manor house, and a family secret that needed to be solved pronto, all set in the last days of WWII. That’s pretty much our movie preference tied up in a bow, though it’s in stark contrast to the numerous episodes of Criminal Minds we mainlined on Christmas day.

I’ve put in a request to add more 2-player board games to our stash so we can switch up our routines a bit.

* * *

This weekend was super-productive and I’m starting of this week with a very Seize the Day attitude. It was a mix of fun, work, and future work and I’ll walk into work for the second time in as many weeks with a clear desk.

Today I’ve got a post up over on Love My Fabrics about my favorite sewing technique: French seams. We (the creative team) are still anxiously awaiting our fabric to arrive, but it’s not stopping us from posting. (I also wrote a post last month on organizing my fabric stash.) Speaking of my posts elsewhere, I created a couple different types of ornaments for my December Gauche and Helmar projects. The Gauche site is currently in transition, but you can find out about my Victorian Lady ornaments on the Helmar blog.

My Gauche-inspired Vintage Christmas ornament.

I had big plans for decorating the Dollhouse for Christmas. We got, um, maybe 50% there? The exterior got garland, lights, and wreaths, but the inside only managed to decorate 2 of 4 planned trees and the hallway entry. Oh, well, it gives us something to shoot for next year!

The library hosted our “fussy” Victorian-style tree with lots of handmade glittery paper ornaments and bits of bling.

And we avoided rearranging the living room by sticking to our small table-top tree with the fun, colorful, mismatched ornaments on it.

The big tree was on the upstairs landing but it never got more than lights on it. Which was good since that’s what shone through the upstairs center window.

What you can’t see are the wreaths in the upstairs windows with the room lights off. We did finally procure electric candles but never got around to setting them up. Next year!

It’s not a full-on blogger house tour, but I wanted to at least get these pictures up before the decorations all come down on the 6th–just made it!

Faces of Phases

In The Studio

This month’s inspiration board from Gauche Alchemy? Pure lunacy!

In the best possible sense, of course.

I never thought the window between our dining room and our hallway would come in so handy!

We’re all moony this month and I thought it was the perfect excuse to make another piece of Halloween holiday decor for the Dollhouse. You can see the full details of these moons over at the Gauche Alchemy blog, today, and here’s the way they look hanging in our upstairs windows.

3 of our 5 moons, the easiest ones to spot from the street.

Alas, the hope of the glow in the dark paint has been somewhat thwarted by one unrealized factor: the lack of dark. There’s a streetlight across from our home and it’s on–as you would expect–at night. Thus, our windows are seldom dark enough to really let the glow show. But the moons still look pretty awesome, even at night, so I’m counting it as a win.

Having the new space to decorate this year has really made getting ready for Halloween that much more fun. While some of my bigger ideas won’t happen this year, and we need a few more decorations to really round out the decorations, it’s a pretty cool “problem” to have.

Highway to Happiness: Shall We Process?

Wedding Recaps

Yes, we shall. Timelines be damned, we were just going to roll with it!

All images courtesy of Pink Shutterbug Photography

But before we do, let’s take a look at the aisle and ceremony decor. We kept it simple but, I think, effective. For the aisle markers I needed something free-standing (the earlier idea to use shepherd’s hooks or similar was, of course, nixed when we chose a non-grassy space for the ceremony) but also something that was easy to set out since we would be handing them off to the venue to arrange and you never know who’s going to end up with that job. I drew up the plans for an open crate with a tall lattice back panel, just deep enough to fit a trio of wine bottles, which Roadie was kind enough to build for me. Painted a dark brown and then sponged with a metallic glaze, they were deemed complete with the addition of some moss-coated wire, faux grape clusters, and the aforementioned bottles.

As I mentioned in our planning posts, in lieu of a bridal party, we opted to formally seat our families at the beginning of the ceremony (instead of just the mothers, as is traditional). Starting with Roadie’s family, his father escorted his sister to her seat and Roadie escorted his Mom. Roadie likes Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (as do I), so we settled on the Largo from Winter for their music.

For my family we went with Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring as played by the Canadian Brass (a subtle nod to Mom dealing with 7 years of her schlepping me around to practices and performances–I played baritone in middle and high school and still do in a community marching band). Brother Scooter escorted Dr. Aunt to her seat, followed by our youngest brother & sister-in-law as Scooter circled back to escort Mama Leadfoot.

Â Now, I’d chosen relative brief songs for both of these selections while simultaneously making sure we had enough music in case we had to use the church (which has a longer aisle). I saw no reason not to let the music play and give everyone time to get settled and just take in the peace and calm of the moment. Unfortunately, I wasn’t the one pressing the play button (or stop, as it were) and the DoC felt differently, fading out the music early and moving onto the next. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I felt rushed, but there was just no way to communicate with herÂ not to keep doing that, so we rolled with it.

pinkshutterbug_brideandgroom_processional_collage

Oooh, the anticipation!

I remember feeling not so much nervous as giddy in that moment. I may have gripped Roadie’s hand a bit tighter than usual and I was feeling rather giggly. There were no butterflies–I don’t even think I felt self-conscious at this point (which is saying something considering the two dozen pairs of eyes trained on us at the moment). I was just happy, and then our music started (Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s Christmas Cannon Rock, edited to remove the singing and some of the extra repeats).

Why do people (myself included) appear to be laughing in those last two photos? Because, in true form, I got up the altar and immediately realized the rings were off to one side of the altar instead of in the center and reached behind Friend-ficiant L to rearrange them. It’s wonderful to be surrounded by people who know you, your quirks, and love you because of them (or in spite of, take your pick). At any rate, it was a nice ice-breaker, if a wedding ceremony could be said to need one.

But enough of that, it was time to get serious!

The Road Trip Wedding Recaps:

Merry Christmas!

Everyday Adventures, The Gingerbread Diaries

It’s Christmas Day and, as usual for us, we’re just hanging around the house enjoying the lack of activity. Several years ago my family started doing the big celebration on Christmas Eve (mostly to allow for my brother and sister-in-law to make the rounds of her family on Christmas Day), so we had them over last night for the big dinner and present-opening, etc.

Of course, things weren’t going quite as smoothly as I had hoped, when the scene both in the house and the garage was looking a bit like this…

Both in the garage…

…and inside the house!

Which necessitate a call to these guys…

Because doesn’t everyone want to call a plumber on Christmas Eve?!

Luckily, though, the prancing and pawing of the plumber and his snake on the roof led to the clearing of the clog that was causing the water to back up, and he was gone about 15 minutes before the first of my family showed up. Timing is everything, folks!

On Monday I finally found enough holiday spirit to actually put up our holiday decorations. We had plenty of pretty cards from friends and family to decorate the pass-through, flanked by our Nick and Nora Build-a-Bear sock monkeys.

We continued to use our tomato-cage “trees” again this year, along with our “drunken monkey” ornament theme. Will we ever get tired of them? Highly doubtful.

Of course, this year we had an extra special addition to the ornaments: a “Happily Ever After” ornament complete with mouse ears and our wedding date, courtesy of a friend and wedding guest.

The way things are going, though, next year we might have room again for a full-sized tree!

This past week has been a bit of a whirl-wind. On Tuesday I found the house I was pining for in my last post, and on Friday I got some of the most grown-up news I’ve every gotten: pre-approval for a mortgage! So Saturday, as we toured the 1910 Victorian, we made the decision to put in an offer and decided to see if they’d accept almost 10K under list price. Imagine our surprise when they accepted it within a day without a counteroffer! Todd now thinks we could have offered less, but I think we’re still getting an amazing deal on a house this size.

After walking through it (and under it, in Todd’s case), we felt comfortable with the amount of work it would need to update parts and pretty-up others. The original house is in amazing shape–some cracks in the plaster from 103 years of settling, but still very sturdy and solid from what we could tell. The outside looks a little shabby, but that’s just peeling paint; the clapboards are still solid and strong. The 1970ish addition, though, that’s where the most work will be needed, including ripping out the kitchen floor and maybe a wall in the hallway extension.

rear view of a 1910 Victorian home with a 1970 addition

The back of the house, showing the add-on upstairs bathroom, and the kitchen/bath/laundry update from the 70s. Yes, the laundry room does look tilted–that’s something we’re going to have to address.

Of course, we’re not pros, so a lot will be determined by the formal inspection still to come. We’re hoping nothing new and drastic pops up from that process, but as long as his or her findings square with ours, we’ll continue on with the home-buying process. Our offer is contingent on a satisfactory inspection, and we have until January 15, to complete our Due Diligence and pull out of the deal without any repercussions. I really hope it doesn’t come to that–we’re looking forward to a move next year!

If all goes well, closing is set for the end of February, which would give us a 5-month overlap between taking possession and our lease being up in our current rental. Plenty of weekends to spend up in Thomasville doing the basics, getting the home ready for us to move in without the last-minute scramble we had in our last move.

But that’s enough house-talk for now. I think it’s time to raid the leftovers for tonight’s supper!

However you’ve spend your holiday, I hope it was a happy one. And if you have celebrations still to come, I hope you have fun 🙂

My Mixed Media Christmas Tree

In The Studio

My mini-tree is the most decorated part of our home, so far.

For this month’s Gauche Alchemy project I finally dug into the awesomeness that is the kawaii, Japanese-themed Kokeshi kit to decorate a silver tinsel tree for my office (head over to the Gauche blog to see how I put it all together). Not only does it add some festivity to my recently re-organized space, it’s the perfect size to pose with 1:6 scale dolls, of which I’ve acquired a few in the last couple of months, and as soon as I finish a couple more props I’ll be setting up a little photo-shoot.

Yes, I’m 37 years old and I’m totally reverting to childhood and playing with dolls again.

I’ve actually been interested in miniatures and dollhouses since I was young, but we never had space or money for the big fancy dollhouses I lusted after. I had Barbies as a kid, of course, but I wasn’t as enamoured with them as some of my friends were. I would make dioramas, sometimes, but mostly I just wished.

And what’s the fun in being a responsible adult with a full-time job if you can’t make some wishes come true now and then, right?

Is there anything you wished for as a child that you still want as an adult?
How can you make that happen–if not for Christmas, then in 2014?

Scraps of Life

Better living through creativity!

decorations

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Fondue

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Faces of Phases

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Highway to Happiness: Shall We Process?

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Merry Christmas!

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My Mixed Media Christmas Tree

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