MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Well, another year has come and gone. We have again survived!


























We punctuated our Holiday kick-off with a trek to a local tree farm. Linus is pretty much in heaven at the farm - dirt, heavy machinery, vegetation, animals, the works. We picked a cute little tree and it's been doing great and sucking up LOTS of water here at our house. I'll try to take a picture of it before we take it down and send it on to be mulch (circle of life!).
The last (and seemingly random) picture was taken at our local botanical garden, it is NOT a picture of our little tree in some giant atrium in our house. That would have been one heck of a Charlie Brown tree makeover! It was just so Christmassy I had to throw it in.


HAPPY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE!

Cousin Fun!

I've got to try to blog while my mom is still in town. She leaves tomorrow and I have a hunch my free time will be greatly reduced.

Sooo........
Cousin Lilly came to visit! She's almost exactly two years younger than Linus and they really got along great.

All of us were quite smitten.
Lilly seemed to enjoy Pittsburgh (especially the trip to Rita's, just like her mama). Her parents Ryan and Suzi seemed to have fun. too. They were real troopers driving so far to come spend Thanksgiving with us.

Come back anytime, guys!

Victory is MINE

Pardon another non-Linus post. Some things just have to be bragged about.

We moved into our house three years ago. This room had been taunting me in technicolor ever since. It looked like a Disney Princess puked Exorcist-style all over the walls. Yes, those walls WERE four different hues of hideous. And there was a big hole under the window of the purplish wall (don't ask, lower right corner of window - partially obscured) that I had "sealed" up with plastic wrap and duct tape to block the drafts. I know, you'd think it was a single-wide.
Anyway...

I didn't get any truly "before" before pics, but I think the midway-through pics are bad enough.

Turns out all I needed was to reach the boiling point with disgust (and a built in babysitter - thanks mom - and a little extra incentive to tackle it -more house guests!). I got done just in time. I have no idea how we lived with it like that for so long. Oh wait, yes I do. We used it as an office, ignored it as much as possible, and never let anyone in there to see it.

Soooo... a laborious patch job and two coats each of primer and paint on every surface and I think it makes an acceptable guest room.


Dang, I wish I had better "after" pictures. Oh well. Maybe later.