Masculinity and the Christmas tree

It is no secret that Jen is a very ladylike woman. After all it is one reason I love her. But, when we spent our first Christmas together, I was ashamed to call the Christmas tree ours. Jen has like every barbie Christmas ornament known to Hallmark and lots of crystal like, or birch wood, or porcelain decorations for the thing we called our tree.

So my sister Sarah fixed that. So did my mother in law. To date Sarah has always served me in this capacity. So here are a following of masculine ornaments. (To date I have 6 on the tree, there is still a lot of room to be done though. One of my students got me an electric guitar one with the inscription: "Jesus Rocks." I like it.)

Jen got me this one. It is my favorite. She said when she got it, "Never say I discouraged your want of a motorcycle, cause here is yours. Now you cannot have more than one at a time."

Ornaments on the Tree - Life with Robbie

Hard to believe that Christmas is less than a week away (Yikes!), but there it is! Today I'm going to focus on a few ornaments that are special to Robbie and I (at least I think haha), because they represent our life together thus far. This will be our first Christmas in our new house (obviously), our third Christmas together as a married couple, and our sixth Christmas together overall.

The first Christmas as a married couple is probably always interesting for newlyweds as they determine what traditions they will take from each family and blend together to make their own (unique or continued) traditions. One Christmas Day tradition that Robbie learned from my family is that Christmas morning, before any presents or even any stockings are opened, everyone puts a card for each member of the family somewhere in the tree. So the tree is full of cards by the time everyone is up and ready to start the festivities. A tradition I learned from Robbie's family is having Christmas poppers. Christmas poppers (or crackers) are a British tradition, and are basically little gifts wrapped such that there are two ends to pull on. One person pulls on each end until the popper breaks, and the "lucky" one gets the gift enclosed on their side of the popper!

This special glass ball comes from our Alma mater, Grove City College, showcasing Harbison Chapel. While this was originally where I wanted to get married in Grove City, we were unable to have our ceremony there because our wedding was the same weekend as Parent's Weekend at the College. Nonetheless, we did manage to get beautiful wedding pictures in front of the chapel and the Quad. We both loved our time there at college, and will always remember that place fondly.

Ok, so enough serious stuff - this is a funny memory! :) In our apartment, we lived on the third (top) floor, right next to the woods. We lived in Murrysville, so there's obviously lots of wildlife out and about in that area already. Well, we hadn't been living in our apartment for too long before we encountered these little critters. Thankfully, not face to face like a few of our neighbors, but we would hear them having a party almost every night, late into the wee hours of the morning! The first time we heard them scamper about, we were in bed with the lights turned out, and we honestly weren't sure if they were in the apartment or not. Both of us (probably myself more so) were quite scared to get out of bed to find out, but thankfully after some sleuthing, determined that they were in the walls.

They continued to remain active throughout the night, scampering about - up one wall, over the ceiling, down another wall - again and again. There were many sleepless nights on account of those squirrels, but thankfully, as I mentioned, no face to face encounters (I may never have been able to sleep again if there were)! Finally, after several months of similar activity, our landlord was able to get rid of them, but their memory lives on each Christmas as they hide somewhere on our tree :) .

This last set of ornaments doesn't have a specific memory of me and Robbie to go along with it, but were made for us by my sister (I'll let you decide who is who!). I think penguins are cute anyway, but these are definitely one of my favorite ornaments on the tree! Perhaps this year we'll be able to add some more ornaments from our adventures in the "Homeland", killing two birds with one stone - world travels AND life with Robbie!

Next time I'm going to ask Robbie to write a few words about his own ornaments, and the story behind them. Don't worry, he doesn't have nearly as many as I do, but there's a story behind that as well! Look for his post sometime this week, and in the meantime Happy Christmas Decorating and Shopping!

Ornaments on the Tree - World Travels

So today is my first day of Christmas vacation (I'm off for the rest of the year), and I find that I was wide awake at 6:30 am when I rolled over to tell my husband it's time to get up! I don't think I'm ever wide awake at that time - even when I've been up for 45 minutes getting ready to go to work by then!

Nevertheless, we came downstairs to eat breakfast and it was then that I realized it had been a couple days since I'd watered the tree. Really? How can such a large decoration in our house go unnoticed (or rather, uncared for)? Hopefully it will survive despite my lack of attention to it! Maybe more blog "face" time will make it feel better :) .

Today's ornaments will feature some of the cool places I and my family have been able to go over the years. Since the girls in the family love ornaments, we're always looking for them, whether it's December,  February or July!

Most of you that know me probably know that our family has been going to Hilton Head Island, South Carolina every other year, for a long time. I think our first trip as a family was in 1995, but my parents have been going even longer than that. When we were kids, Lauren and I would go on the beach and find real sand dollars. One year, we found tons of them, and decided that we would just let them dry out on our condo porch, and they would turn out beautifully white like this one :) . Well, you can probably guess what happened, but several days later we had a lot of smelly sand dollars on our porch, and they weren't that pretty! So now we have a much better looking (and smelling) reminder of the fun on our tree.

This one might just look like a pretty snowflake to some, but if you got up close (and especially if you could feel it), you'd see that it was made completely of salt. Not just any salt either, mind you, but salt from the Great Salt Lake out in Salt Lake City, Utah. Now, I have never been to Utah, but my parents have been at least a couple times. This was actually not for my Dad's business travels, but for my Mom's! (I'm sure you can imagine that doesn't happen often!) Mom used to sell Stampin' Up! rubber stamps, and their annual convention was out there a couple years because that's where they are headquartered. So Mom actually took Dad on a business trip with her and they brought us girls back some souveniers.

This little wooden dutch shoe actually isn't symbolic of my heritage, but of a trip we took out to Holland, Michigan to see some family friends. This town is usually bursting with people coming to see all the tulips in the spring, but when we went it was during the off season and everything was cold (and dead lol). But that didn't stop us from visiting all the cute little Dutch shops! This ornament also has my name carved/burned into the other side of the shoe. 

These next three are all from the same basic area, but each tells a little different story :) .  Only a week or so after Robbie and I got engaged, my family decided to take a short getaway to Arizona - one last trip as a family before I got married. So we headed out to Arizona expecting the weather to be cool, but definitely warmer than Pittsburgh. We were in for some surprises! It was pretty cold, and in some places that we went (i.e. the Grand Canyon), there were several inches of snow! It was really cool to see, but a lot colder than expected!

Anyways, the cool cow ornament comes from a little town called Jerome, which had some great history behind it (that right now I just can't remember!). It also had a lot of little shops that were mostly small businesses selling things that were homemade and such. The cow ornament actually came from a store that basically sold everything cow you could think of!

This trip to Arizona certainly was amazing - I saw another part of the country that I had never seen before - all very beautiful, in many different ways. Hopefully I'll get to take Robbie there someday - perhaps when it isn't snowing!

Happy Friday to Everyone - 1 week until Christmas! :)

Decorating for Christmas!

So it's been about six months that we've had our house now, and the kitchen renovations are almost done (yay!), and since it's Christmas and there is soooo much else going on, we've taken a little break from renovating the house and focused more on decorating the house. After getting ready for Thanksgiving, I wasn't ready to instantly create a winter wonderland just yet (even though the snow did come on Dec. 1!). So this weekend we finally got around to getting a Christmas tree and decorating it!

As we were putting up the many different and diverse ornaments, it reminded me of lots of memories or symbolic memories that are found in most all of them, and I thought I'd take a stroll down memory lane and share some with you for the next week or so. After reading one of my friend's blogs on a similar topic, I decided it was worth sharing with all of you! So I hope you enjoy and I also hope it stimulates some of your own decorating / ornament / family / friends memories! Please feel free to share them with me by commenting below!

Each post I'll try to keep a theme, so for the first group of pictures I'll be selecting some of my childhood ornaments and memories to share with you.

The glass pickle ornament is an old German tradition. Each year families would "hide" the pickle ornament on the tree somewhere and children would try to find it to get a special present. This ornament was a gift from my (German) grandmother, who first told my sister and I about this tradition when we were very young (but old enough to find a pickle!). That first Christmas there were two pickles on the tree - one for me and one for my sister. Every year since then we have made it our tradition to "hide" our pickles on the tree just for fun (no special gifts to those who found them).

Another one of my family Christmas traditions was going to see the Nutcracker ballet each year downtown. I (more than my sister) simply loved the ballet, and even had visions of becoming a ballerina (unfortunately, one year of ballet class when I was 6 cleared that dream - professionally, at least). The Nutcracker was my absolute favorite Christmas tradition, and even when I got older and we stopped going to the ballet (Dad was falling asleep through most of it!), I still would listen to Tchaikovsky played by the London symphony orchestra each year - still do! This ballet shoe was one of a pair given to my sister and I by my mother, and reminds me of the fun girlie dreams I had of being a ballerina!

There were many glass ornaments given to me over the years from my mother and grandmother - many from German shops and some even made in Germany. They were precious to me as a child because they were so fragile - extra special care was taken to make sure they survived through 20+ Christmases to make it to my own Christmas tree as an adult. This ornament I actually found in Virginia while visiting a friend, and I found similar ones that were shaped as a basketball, tennis ball and football for my sister, mother, and father (respectively). My hope is that I can keep these glass ornaments long enough to pass on to my own children someday!

Well I hope you have enjoyed this brief trip down my memory lane, and I'd be delighted to hear about your own recollections. More to come later this week! Happy Decorating!

Breaking in the Kitchen!

Jennifer went out and bought me some goat cheese. It is the only cheese I can have since I am lactose intolerant. It is a major curse. Trust me on that. A few months back, well weeks, my mom gave me our beloved recipe for Pepperoni Rolls. (I am telling you these things are great.)

So here is the deal: you need white bread dough, olive oil and egg yolk and some seasonings. Once you roll the dough out, you need to baste the egg mixture on the dough. Then throw down some meat, cheese, and whatever else you want. Throw them in the oven for 25-30 minutes. And they are lovely.

This is what they look like before the oven.

These are the finished product.

 

This was the first thing that either of us made in the newly revamped kitchen. It was great. I loved having a bar that I did not have to bend over on. That is one bad thing about average height countertops. 

(post by Robbie if you did not notice)

We've got Water!

The day we got our countertop was a momentous day indeed. Not only because the countertop was the last major part of the kitchen we were waiting for, but also because we were able to get a plumber to come and reconnect everything! We finally had water in the kitchen again!

For some people, this might seem like a small thing - but for us, it was huge! The main reason being that we no longer had to handwash our dishes! I had a dishwasher in the house for about 2 months by this time, but hadn't been able to use it until the water was connected.

So the next three days I went through a washing frenzy and put everything we owned through the dishwasher. Stuff that had been sitting in boxes since we moved was now clean and sitting where it was supposed to be - in the cabinets.

We also got a very nice sink and faucet to match everything, and even managed to get our old garbage dispenser hooked up again. The only hiccup was that my dear husband accidentally threw out the connector with the old sink! Thankfully the plumber had an extra connector and we were indeed able to get water again. Running water has never been better, now that it's in our kitchen!

The End is Near! (Countertop Installation)

Finally we are coming very very close to being done with our kitchen! The last BIG piece to this project was getting our countertop installed and getting water back in the main floor! Below are the steps in the process as they assembled the different pieces to pull it all together!

The main countertop area came in two pieces - one short one (above) and a longer one with the sink cutout (below). They had to take the cabinet faces off to properly set the granite tops on.

Below you can see the (easiest) part of the job, since there was no backsplash to attach - and some more of the woodworking done to make the new half wall nice and even with the cabinets.

Finally - the most important part - the sink!!!! The piece we had been waiting and waiting and waiting for!  :)   (The backsplash was also put on by this time)

(Looks are deceiving though - the water isn't hooked up quite yet - that comes with the plumber!)

Finally, our kitchen is nearly complete!! With countertops, we could really get everything back into the kitchen area without worrying about everything getting dusty and dirty anymore. Still need to add some finishing touches (move the fridge back in, hang some lights, finish electrical outlet work, etc.) - but the biggest piece was done!

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

I know it's a little late, but there's a story behind this as well! :)  I'm taking a quick break from the house developments to share our holiday story with you. But don't worry, next week I'll finish the kitchen saga and unveil the finished product!

This year Robbie and I hosted the Schmidtberger family thanksgiving at our house. Since there are now at least 3 separate family thanksgiving celebrations to coordinate within the family, we decided to host Thanksgiving dinner on Friday instead of Thursday. This turned out well for several reasons - we had more time to prepare for the big meal (especially since it was my first time cooking the turkey!), we were able to relax and take it easy on Thursday, and we didn't feel pressured to participate in the Black Friday craziness on Friday!

So Thursday when we rolled out of bed around 10am and Robbie cooked us breakfast a little before 11, it felt a little weird not going anywhere for the day. It was almost like a "snow day" because everything was closed. For once the phone did not ring at all with telemarketers (because it did again today at 9am to wake us up!). And the "only" things we had to worry about were inside the house.

Thanksgiving night was time for me to start baking our desserts - traditional pumpkin pie, apple crumb pie, and my family's special cream cheese pumpkin pie. Friday morning Robbie and I both got up early to start the cooking festivities, but I also couldn't resist throwing together some monkey bread for breakfast (cinnamon pull aparts for those of you who don't know what that is).

Robbie and I couldn't resist long - so it's already missing some pieces! :)

We finally pulled out our china for the first time, and I had fun decorating the table for fall. The turkey went in the oven around 9:30am (after spending an hour in a couple cold baths to make sure it wasn't frozen!), so then we could relax for a little while until our guests arrived.

Finally it was time for dinner and everything was becoming ready at the same time - craziness! Robbie cut the turkey, his mom mashed the potatoes, and I pulled all the side dishes out of the oven to put on the "buffet" table. Below you can see a few shapshots of our feast - a great combination of foods and efforts from the family!

And, of course, the star of the show this year - our new niece! She didn't get to share in the joy of eating with us, but she did look very interested in participating - hopefully next year! :)

Finally, I thought I'd end the day in a little reflection of a few things I am very thankful for this year. First, I am very thankful for my Savior, who never leaves us nor forsakes us, despite our own failings. I am very thankful for my husband, who also stands by my side in the good and the not so good times. This year I am also very thankful for our new home, which, despite the large amount of work it has added to our busy lives, we hope it will be a source of blessing for more than just ourselves in the years to come.

There are so many other things I am thankful for and truly blessed by. I hope you too have found or will find joy in spending just a moment to reflect on God's many blessings. Happy Thanksgiving!

Moving in to the Kitchen - Getting Excited!

Now that we had all of our cabinets in, I decided that it was finally time to get the kitchen stuff back into the kitchen!! (Previously, it was in the dining, living and family rooms - some in boxes, some in crates from college!)

Since we moved all of the stuff out of the kitchen in August, this was huge (for me at least)! Figuring out where everything would go, trying to determine how I would use the space and cabinets...

...unpacking dishes that hadn't been used since before we moved...

...finding places for all that stuff that gets used, but not that often...

...and, of course - stashing food in the pantry! My favorite part are the roll-out tray on the bottom part of the pantry - space for everything, and I don't have to pull everything out to get to that item at the back!

Finally lots of boxes were unpacked, kitchen utensils and appliances were found (another reason it's hard to do much when you're living out of boxes in the kitchen), and space was created in other rooms. We took all of the flattened boxes (acting as paint and dust protectors) off the floors, polished the wood floors that were covered in plastering dust, and moved the dining room table out of the living room and back into the dining room!

It was a little weird at first not to be eating in the living room (as that was the main area everything was located during the remodeling), but finally things were coming together, and our kitchen felt more like a kitchen. Only 2 weeks to wait for a countertop (and water)!!!

Kitchen Remodel - Almost Done!

After another month of waiting, our cabinet installer came back to finish the project that they started. With most of our cabinets in and ready to go, they brought back the right size pantry cabinet, worked on the bar wrap around, and installed our microwave over the stove. We were very pleased to finally have the cabinets all in, and amazed by the difference the pantry made in looking like a kitchen!

Below are the semi-finished products after our installer left!

Now that our cabinets were all in place where they should be, we called the countertop people to come and measure / template for our countertop. With time escaping us and November fast approaching, we knew we needed to get things rolling if we were going to have people over for Thanksgiving.

Thankfully they were able to come the next week to measure (way cool to see - all kinds of software and advanced tools to create a virtual replica of our kitchen measurements), and I was able to go the next couple of days to see the granite slab. We didn't want to slow down the process, but our designer kept telling us that we should go see it in case it wasn't the same as in the store. Here I thought that we'd be picking one from several slabs in our pattern of choice.

So I had to arrange work to leave early, travel an hour away to the granite site, and once I got there to view the slab, realized that I really didn't need to come out. I took one look at the only slab of granite they had in our color choice, said it looked good, and went back on my way! Here, I guess if you don't like the color choice they have, you have to pick another color (which also impacts the price!). I guess at least my concerns were put to ease.

So then we began the last part of our waiting - waiting for the countertop to come in and be installed (along with water!) in our kitchen!

Kitchen Bar (Redesign)

When the 2nd day of installation was done, we realized that there was a miscommunication between our designer and us. We're certain that we explained we wanted the cabinets to be at 40 inches above the floor, where the wall was currently cut, but when they were installed, they sat a good 4 inches below the wall height. So we had a couple of options:

1. Keep the cabinets at the height they were at, and install the countertop lower than we originally intended (normal counter height). This also would involve cutting the wall down more.
2. Keep the cabinets at the height they were at, and have the countertop be two-tiered (i.e. a lower and upper countertop - one on the cabinets, one on the wall)
3. Order new cabinets at the correct height and lose the ones already installed (lose as in lose the money paid for the cabinets, as they won't take them back).
4. Take the cabinets off the wall and have the installer build up underneath them so there is a taller toe kick. 

None of those options were very appealing to us, so we talked with our expert carpenter friend, who gave us this idea:

• Build on top of the current cabinets to raise the counter height to the wall height, and create a wrap around the wall to ensure the height is even all the way around.

Perfect! This, in our minds, was actually better than the original idea of having cabinets all the way to the bottom of the counter, because it would be easier to get into the cabinets with an overhang above it.

So while we waited another month for our pantry, we also had them order two 1x8 pieces of lumber to match the cabinets so they could construct the build up. (Lucky you don't have to wait a month for the conclusion to this post!)

In the meantime, we managed to finish painting the kitchen and dining room in new colors - warm stone (brownish gray) for the kitchen cabinet area and backside of the bar, and agreeable gray (light gray) for the dining room and part of the kitchen wall that was shared with the dining room.

Finally, the day arrived, and the installer came back on a Friday afternoon to put in our pantry and build up our bar. Below is the finished project of the bar area.

They had to take off the countertop supports and move them up to meet the build up, but they did such a great job that you can't even tell it wasn't like this in the first place!

So with this key component of the kitchen done, we were ready to move onto the countertop (mostly) ! We still needed to do some cleanup and putting stuff back together before then (you might notice the outlets and vents exposed, and the fact that our fridge is still in the living room!).

Cabinet Installation - Day 2!

Our installers came back the 2nd day to finish as much as they could at that time. Unfortunately what we found out was that we had the wrong size pantry, so we had to order another size - which also means that we had to wait another 3+ weeks for it to come in. We also did not have our over the range microwave yet because it was out of stock all over pittsburgh, so the installer was going to come back later to do the finishing work.

So they basically were able to finish the cabinetry work that they had left (some cabinets on the wall between the kitchen & dining room) and install our gas range and dishwasher that were just delivered the day before! Since the gas line was moved, the stove worked (yay! we can cook!), but because the water wasn't hooked up, we couldn't use the dishwasher.

Our gas stove came from Sears, and has 5 burners (one extra in the middle) - something I hadn't seen before :)

Our dishwasher also came from Sears, which we found & decided on through Consumer Reports

One of the last things the installers did before they left for the day was put on our cabinet hardware. I had to come home over my lunch break because they told me that there were different "placements" of the handles and I had to decide where to put them. I'm thinking, "Can it really be that difficult?" And it did seem kind of silly, but I guess they didn't want to be liable for me not liking it when they were done. Below are the doors with the handles installed, and the glass door put on the corner cabinet.

 Now it was time to wait and wait and wait until our pantry came in, and because of that and the cabinets over the bar area not being quite how we wanted them, we couldn't have the countertop people come yet. So the kitchen got put on hold for a little while and we continued to eat off of paper and plastic! :)

The Cabinets are Here! Installation - Day 1

We ordered the cabinets towards the end of July, and they came in around the middle of August, but because we still had some work to do on the floor and walls, we had delayed the installation until the end of August. But the cabinets were delivered to our house, so we lost half of the garage to all the cabinets (plus some of the old ones we still had around).

Finally, the day was here and it was time for our installer to give us some storage space back in our kitchen, and make it look a little more like a kitchen! They set up shop on our back porch and went to town cutting and fitting everything so that it was just right. As you can see below, they did the top part of the cabinets first before moving to the bottom ones.

These pictures were taken at lunchtime on day 1 of cabinet installation. You can see that we chose a darker oak wood, with partial overlay doors. The cabinet in the corner will get a glass door frame.

We had to repair the drywall / plaster above the window where the old light receptacle was, so we didn't get a chance to paint it before the cabinets were installed. We're also hoping to replace that window (and a couple other broken ones around the house) before winter comes, so we didn't worry too much about it being completely finished.

By the end of the first day, they had the bottom cabinets in, the doors on, and moved the gas line for our stove. They had to move the gas line about a foot since we slightly changed the layout, so they were drilling holes through our garage and the tile to do that, but in the end it looked great!

I didn't get pictures at the end of the day, so you'll just have to use your imagination and wait to see the finished product...coming soon!