Decorating for Christams

The day after Thanksgiving, we went down the street to buy a tree. 

 

 

 

 

Colin could have stayed up all night decorating, while Eli is pretty firm on "No Christmas Until December"...

 

 

Traditional placing of the angel:

 

 

 

 

 

 While Colin continued decorating, Eli and Ben played some Mario.

Thanksgiving

I am the most thankful for these kids!  I am so blessed by them every day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Colin helped make the pumpkin pie.

 

 

 

 

Alison made peanut butter blossom cookies. 

 

 

The Miller's invited us over for dinner and we all decided to mix up the food and "keep it easy".  When we loaded up the car to head over, we realized that we didn't succeed very well in keeping it easy.  BUT it was all delicious and totally worth it.  Ben smoked a brisket and pork and I made mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole and baked beans.

Marine Ball

 

 

Just had to document how my hair looked...I put a lot of effort into shopping for a new dress and figuring out a formal hairstyle I could do on my own.  I wasn't able to find a new dress, but thankfully my old one still works just fine.  

 

Our first New York ball and Ben's first time in his new O4 uniform.  

We're learning that NY has venues just for fancy events.  I did appreciate that this venue had appetizers out when we arrived.

Our new friends Jorge and Kayla were there!  I met Kayla at our homeschool group and we've had several fun outings together.  It was fun to have a familiar face there.

 

 

Here's a little clip of the dinner:

First real fall in a long time

We are enjoying our first real fall in about 7 years!

One of my favorite things about New York, is how you stumble upon beautiful, historic neighborhoods.  This was on a run by the YMCA...not pictured is the mansion to the left.

I love the stone fences...

The kids and I went on a fall hike at Bethpage State Park.

We went with some friends and Ms. Kayla taught us about the abundance of poison ivy on Long Island.  You can spot quite a bit in these pictures.  Thankfully, no one came home itchy.

Halloween

Colin carved pumpkins

Halloween is very different on Long Island.  We learned that trick-or-treating happens early; like as early as noon!  In our neighborhood, as soon as kids got out of school, they were out.  So when Ben got home from work, we took the boys out.

We actually really enjoyed being able to see everyone and walking around Sea Cliff almost felt magical.  Something about historic homes on Halloween is extra fun.

Alison went to her friend, Alicja's, house.  They dressed up as Teletubbies.

We stopped for dinner and when we went back out, everyone was gone.  I picked up Alison at 7:00 and the streets were empty.  It was so strange, as we're used to just starting at 7:00!

The story of our kitchen

Oh Mint House kitchen...

When Ben first showed me Mint House, my first reaction was "nope" and the biggest reason was the kitchen.  We use our kitchen A LOT; we like to cook, people are always eating, there are 5 of us and Maya is always trying to be a part of the party!  This dinky kitchen was not going to work.  When our realtor walked through with Ben, I asked where they kept their food.  There was a family living there and she could not figure out where their food was!  Storage was definitely an issue, but I had no idea it would be our smallest issue.

We bought Mint House and embraced the simple life of a small kitchen.  This house is 100 years old and clearly people have been just fine for centuries before us, so we can also figure it out.

This was the kitchen when we moved in:

 

 

What you can't see in the picture is the layer of curry grimy goop that covered every surface and the fact that only one burner on the stove worked.  Also, those curtains that look beautifully vintage?  Yeah, they were yellow from the curry grossness.

Our stuff being delayed ended up being a blessing and it gave me time to SCRUB and scrape the kitchen down.  I have never deep cleaned so much in my entire life.  It was so extreme that I smashed my wedding ring while attempting to scrub out the freezer.  It looked like a crime scene for a few days.

 

 

The cabinets grossed me out so much that I decided to take matters into my own hands.  I watched YouTube while cleaning and taught myself how to paint them.

 

 

 

Within a few weeks, we had the cabinets completely painted with new hardware AND we got a new stove.  We also replaced the window treatments, installed under cabinet lighting and painted the walls.  That alone made the space feel so much better.  

  

Pretty much as soon as I was done, Ben commented that for how small the space it, it probably wouldn't be too much to replace the countertops and backsplash.  I still love what I picked, but I did chose the cabinet color to try and make the existing backsplash make sense.  We decided that we'd like to enjoy new countertops for as long as can and took a gamble on what we thought would look good.  But NY is weird  and we were told that it was our responsibility to remove the existing countertops and backsplash.  So, while the kids and I were in Kansas, Ben demoed the kitchen!

  

As with everything in an old home, nothing is easy and the backsplash decided to take the sheet rock with it, so Ben had to also replace that.

 

 

We had to "camp" for just a few days when we got back in town while we waited for the new countertops, but it was very worth it.

We decided to save some money and install the backsplash ourselves.  I say we, as I fully intended to help, but the space is so small that it just didn't work for both of us in there, so Ben did the whole thing himself.

Not pictured, Ben also had to rewire the dishwasher, rework the plumbing and install the faucet and I'm pretty sure several other things I didn't even know about.  He put so much work into this kitchen and it turned out great!

 

And just when you thought we were done...house projects tend to snowball and as soon as we finished the kitchen, the floor just stuck out like a huge sore thumb.  I have always hated the floor, but tried to look past it.  But now it was SHOUTING at me and it needed to be silenced.  So, while Ben was fishing in Canada with my dad, I painted the tile!  Well, first I had to scrub...7 hours of scrubbing got the tile from this:

 

To this: 

This is what living through the project looked like:

  

And it's painted!

It was maybe one of the most stressful projects.  Once I made the first paint stroke, it was done...there's no going back from a painted floor!  I was so nervous about anything and everything scratching the paint.  It will need some touch-ups over time, but I think it was very worth the effort.

The final kitchen!  I'm thankful every day that we put the work in to make this space something we love and feel comfortable in.