One Holiday Down, One To Go...

Stained glass windows at St. Andrew's in Roanoke, VA

My favorite holiday is Thanksgiving, hands down.  No gifts to buy, no decorating to do ~ just food and family.  It's simple and wonderful and supposed to be upbeat and joyful.  Plus, I always look forward to having a 4-day long weekend. Yippee!  This year, I hosted and served a 14 pound Butterball turkey for my parents and husband.  The turkey was stuffed because stuffing is my favorite part of the meal.  Also served cranberry sauce from a can (YUM), gravy, Swiss Chard, mashed potatoes, and a homemade pumpkin pie.  My parents brought squash, turnips, chocolate cake, and a homemade apple pie.  It was great and the leftovers were greater.  No, didn't do Black Friday or the new "Black Thursday".  I feel bad for the people that had to work retail on Thanksgiving ~ it's just cruel of the companies to require that their employees work on such a traditional family holiday.  Give people a break!  Let them eat turkey, watch football, hang with the family, and take a nap.

Anyway, I'm now gearing up for Christmas.  Sent out my first batch of Christmas cards today and started Christmas shopping (mostly on-line) a few weeks ago.  I have quite a bit done which makes me feel good.  Still need to put up decorations and the fake tree which are hiding out in the basement.  I did find a great fresh wreath downtown for only $14 which has been hanging on the front door for about 2 weeks now. It looks great!

The hallway paint job (see previous post) is almost done and looks fantastic.  I bought a great 9-frame picture frame (9 black frames of different sizes joined together) from Walmart yesterday for under $7. I put a group shot from our wedding in the big 8 x 10 slot.  It's a great photo ~ most of the guests standing on the front steps of St. Andrew's right after the ceremony and before the reception. Love it!  The other 8 frames will hold photos of our grandparents and immediate family members from years past.  Looking forward to getting that all finalized.  I love framing and hanging stuff on the walls.  Our house has nothing on the walls yet which is driving me nuts.

I priced some curtain fabric over the holiday weekend.  12 yards at $35/yard is too much.  That's the end of that.  Will keep on searching...

Next up is the living room.  We've been painting for months and are so busy with work and everything else that we might hire a painter to do our living room.  We're hoping that will give us a leg up so we can finish that room quickly.  You know what I've had trouble finding?  A large painting or something for over our long couch.  Still searching for that also...

I made bagels from scratch this past Sunday and they were AWESOME!  Used an old recipe from my high school bake shop class.  A little piece of NY for Thanksgiving weekend.  :-)

Going to try to remember to watch the documentary on Investigation Discovery channel tonight about the LIRR shooting that happened 20 years ago.  I cannot believe that it was two decades ago.  I wrote my dad about it and he wrote back: "Hi Honey, thanks for the heads-up, I'll do my best to remember to turn it on. As you must know, I used to ride that same train, it was an express to Hicksville and one of the secretaries at (where he used to work in NYC) was on the train.  She told us that the gunman looked right at her, but didn't shoot, and continued on down the car.  Have a nice day, Love, Dad"   I had forgotten that...  Here's a clip from the documentary that New York Magazine put on Facebook: