is officially closed.

Christmas came and went with it’s usual insanity. It begins with family, joy and food and ends with bags of torn wrapping paper, and inevitably me, shivering in the alley, digging through the garbage looking for a lost gift card. You’d dig through the garbage looking for $50 wouldn’t you? Didn’t find it. BUT this was our first Christmas in the new living room, it was nice to have a fireplace. Yeah for us!

This year was super special. I usually only make two presents a year. And to be fair I usually start them about a week before the holiday and finish them just as the gift receiver is pulling into the driveway. This year, for reasons I’m still not sure of, I made seven gifts. Six for my family and one for a friend. Seven. I od’ed on crafty. They are as follows…

Paige’s blanket
I knit. I like it, most of the time. My niece wanted a super soft baby like blanket. I got started and didn’t stop until 3 days before Christmas. I knitted until my fingers were gnarled and my eyes were crossed. A word about Pipsqueak baby yarn – ARRRRRRRGHHH! Paige is cute tho, so it was worth it.

The Calendars
We Fancy! Both a Burrows and Harding calendar were created with only 2 out of the 6 children actually supplying photos. That left me to steal from Facebook and where ever else I could think of. The up side was that I got to use the photo of Erika dressed as Ms. Piggy. It was awesome. There are perks to being left to your own devices.

The Frames
There were requests for the frames that I made for the living room. 2 sets of 3. Three days before Christmas Ben and I were dumpster diving looking for wood pallets. It was about 10 degrees out and we weren’t finding much. I finally had to climb up a 6 foot wall and dig out the one good pallet that we found. We drove around for another half an hour trying to find some more, but no joy.After leaving me to go to the Post Office (pre-heated discussion about whether square Christmas cards required extra postage) I spent the next hour yanking boards apart and pulling out about 100 rusty nails. One of which DID go through the sole of my shoe, but DIDN’T break the skin. Flashback. Dizzy. While pulling the nails I kept thinking, I better get every single nail picked up or Ben is going to have a cow. So, I piled them all in the driveway, careful not to lose even one. Ben got back, (I was right, extra postage required) and as I brought the boards into the house he pulled his new car into the garage. We can do that now, clean garage. Enter Ben with a hand full of nails, that he had driven over. After all that care, I left the pile of nails in the driveway. Where is my memory…he was a better sport about it then I thought he would have been. But he did say he was sure that he was probably going to find flat tires in the morning. He didn’t. But we did find while running the greenway the day after Christmas about 100 pallets stacked up behind a bunch of buildings. If nothing else, I know where to go next time. Also, please note the actual frames turned out much better then these horrible pictures! Maybe the recipients will take a photo of them on their wall with the new art in them and send them to me…maybe…?

This brings me to a brief aside about getting older which, if I haven’t mentioned before, sucks. I keep looking for the “silver” lining, but there isn’t any. When we were young we thought by the time I’m their age I won’t care about my wrinkles or my waistline, I won’t have to worry about money, and we can retire in comfort. Well, at least I thought those things. Could not have been more wrong. Between us, Ben has us tittering somewhere between financial ruin and homelessness, it depends on the day. Neither of these options are remotely going to happen. Besides we’d just move in with Tom and Al…the kids already made it clear they won’t have us. Not care about waistlines and wrinkles? Well, maybe I’ll FORGET that I weigh too much, can’t eat whatever I want. Maybe I won’t REMEMBER that the person in the mirror that is starting to prune, everywhere, is me. Well, that was a bit bitter and kind of depressing. Maybe I could forgo therapy and just submit these blogs. There has to be enough here to make a diagnosis don’t you think?

Moving on…to more positive things, really!

The Hat
This is the year of the grandbaby. She is due next week. We are all at DEFCON RED. She has a name, which I will not disclose here – at least not yet. I don’t want any of you using it before she does! I have, in my head, been referring to her as the polka dot, or the mmm mmm good baby. For those of you too young to know this was a soup commercial from when I was having babies, and VCR’s were the coolest technology – ever…Anyway, I decided to make the Dot a little Burnsville Braves hat to wear to her Papa’s hockey games. He’s a coach, she, is a future Olympic athlete. I started the hat after the frames. And at 1a.m. Christmas Eve day, after starting the bonnet 3 times, I finally figured out that what I thought was a double crochet, was not even close to what an actual double crochet is. VCR’s…How did we ever survive with out Google? Seriously!

The New Year
As far as the real reason for this blog – the kitchen is next but shouldn’t be to tough because most of the heavy lifting is already done. Except for a new refrigerator, which I need to save for. That being said – I’m having some issues and have to back track. A year ago we were working on the bathroom. Was it really a year ago? Holy cow. Anyway – you may recall (you poor bastards) the sanded, not sanded grout battle of 2012. Well, the sanded grout is yellowing. I had gone over “all” of it with the unsanded grout but apparently missed a few spots. Every time I clean the bathroom I start weeping, quietly. I don’t know how I’m going to resolve this, or if I have it in me to re- re- re-grout the floor. It may be time to call Dan the tile guy and get a little help.

The other problem is the den. It’s still not working for me. Poor Ben, every blog he learns something he doesn’t want to know. I keep reminding him that I’m just trying to keep things interesting. This is probably just furniture placement and maybe adding a bookcase or two. I’m not sure. Now I know that some of you (and I know who you are) are going to say, leave it alone, it’s fine! But that’s what you said about the dining room and I was right to add the stencil. At least I think I was, and as my beleaguered spouse will tell you, in this house, that is all that really matters.

I was going to make a resolution or set a new deadline, but come on, who’d believe me? I couldn’t even convince myself at this point, and I believe everything.