O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree!

I love decorating for Christmas.  Especially with how much work we have put into our house.  I really wanted to go out and buy new decorations, but I decided to just use what I already have.  

Here is how it turned out.

Payton LOVES the snow.  She begs me almost everyday to go out and play in the snow.  She always brings me her gloves and makes me put them on her inside, even if we don't go outside.

Tyler's Search for Payton

Poor Tyler.  He is probably so sick of hearing his sleep talking stories from me, but I am not sick of them.  A few nights ago I woke up and Tyler was over in the corner of the room looking behind the dresser.  Instead of saying something I decided to just watch him.  It was hard to see exactly what he was doing in the dark but I didn't want to wake him.  He kept walking around the room looking behind the curtain and then under the bed.  Eventually he went into the bathroom and turned the light on.  I thought maybe he had woken himself up, but he came back into the room and looked under the bed again.  

I finally decided to ask him what he was doing.  He told me he was looking for Payton and then got really quiet and was apparently thinking.  Then he looked at me and said "But now that I think about it, she is probably in her bed sleeping!"  Then he got back into bed and went to sleep.  I thought maybe he had woken up because of the light and realized he was just imagining things, but in the morning when I told him about it he had no recollection of it.  

Poor Tyler.

A few nights later I slept right through what I'm assuming was one of his best sleepwalking stories.  Fortunately I know that because Tyler woke himself up doing it.  So even though I don't have the funny details it still is HILARIOUS.

So apparently Tyler told me he was dreaming that he was underground hiding from someone or something.  He wanted to know what was going on outside so he stood up on our bed pulled back our curtains, pulled up the blinds, opened the window and then stuck his head out our window (our windows don't have screens).  That is what apparently woke him up.  How did I sleep through this?  I must have been really tired.

Sure enough we checked in the morning behind the curtain and the blinds were up and the window wasn't locked.  WEIRD!

Just so you know, this is what he had to get through in order to get to the window.

Thanksgiving!

This year I hosted Thanksgiving for the first time in my adult life.  I finally feel like a grown up now. I love to cook, but I was very very nervous to cook a turkey on my own for the first time.  I spent lots of time on Pinterest.  People were probably so sick of me pining turkey and gravy recipes.  With my mom's advice and Pinterest I decided to try out doing a brined turkey.  It turned out AMAZING.  It was a lot of work the night before, but Thanksgiving day it was cake.  It was so moist and delicious.  I used Martha Stewart's brining recipe.

We had Tyler's family come up and it was such a good weekend.

Hallway Painting...2 down 2 to go

The very first week of living in our home we stayed up night after night painting the living room and kitchen.  Then over the next few months we painted the 3 bedrooms upstairs so that we could start living upstairs.  The hallways got the shaft.  No matter how ugly they looked, we couldn't muster up the energy to paint them.  Until about a month ago.  I was hosting Thanksgiving this year for my in-laws so it gave us a little motivation to get the main hallways painted.

The Front Entrance Hallway

This was an easy 2 afternoon nap paint job.  I painted all the white (baseboards, trim, ceiling and the trim on the door) during one of Payton's naps and the walls another day.  

 Last little bit of yellow in this hallway.  It felt good.

The after picture is definitely not my end goal.  Especially because the lighting is horrible. But it will do for now.

Still on the list to do in this entrance hallway: 

hang some art or pictures on the right wall

spray paint the light fixtures black until later upgrade

paint door a fun color like this blue

get an entrance rug like this or this

cover the tan bench seat in a cute fabric like this

The Basement Stairway

This paint project was a lot harder.  I painted the trim and baseboards and covered all the holes with wall putty one afternoon. That was the easy part.  

Then Ty and I tackled the wall one evening.  It wasn't so much time consuming as it was dangerous.  That banister may look sturdy, but just like everything else in the house it needs some work.  That banister was the only way we could paint up into the high corners of the wall.  I had to stand on it while Tyler held my legs to make it sure I didn't break it.  Unfortunately we didn't get a picture of that. 

 To the left you can see part of the remaining hallways not painted yet.

Here is the finished product with some IKEA shelves and pictures to decorate the fresh coats of paint.

We managed to get the new light switches and covers on before Thanksgiving.  Barely.

We will see how long it takes us to finish painting the other 2 hallways.