Mission Accomplished!

Okay so my mission, which I chose to accept, was to NOT ruin a turkey, and to feed 12 hungry Hellmans and Schaffners. Actually I guess 13 if we count Blitzkrieg. Wow could we be more German HA. Soooooooo it actually turned out: ta da my first ever turkey!

I'd like to thank my mom who helped me know what all to put in the bag for a more flavorful turkey, and my sisters for helping me determine what all the random guts were that were inside the turkey (I had no idea it came with the neck!) and my husband for putting it in the pan (it was HEAVY) and my dog for not eating it, although she did keep jumping up and putting her paws on the counter trying to get a good look at it :). Oh Rach for reminding me that having Spencer cut the turkey was so 1940's gender roles or something like that :). So pretty much all the cooking went according to plan, except for one thing! I waaaaay overestimated how much food people would be eating. Probably due to the fact that we all ate 40 million sausage balls prior to the actual meal :). So I probably have enough leftovers to feed a small army! So umm whoever lives in Tulsa and is hungry come get it!

So a few other random notes about the preparations: the shelves did get painted in time to grace the walls for Tday. I think they turned out pretty good for amateurs :). I didn't quite get them all decorated in time for thanksgiving though, apparently you have to buy thanksgiving decorations more than a week in advance, all the stores had already switched over to Christmas decorations!!! But everyone agreed, the trees look much better on the white shelves vs. just hanging in a row on the wall looking awkward :).

Also we made a little make shift give thanks board! This was a definite Schaffner tradition that I just thought was worth continuing (along with the making butter, umm see facebook for these pics apparently I didn't have time to take pics while cooking haha). So here you go our thanks board! Let's see I'm not even sure what all is on it, but it was pretty entertaining :). I think "The Road Less Traveled By" made it on there along with "post nuclear america" and "my exercise ball being deflated" and "metaphysical mulligans" gotta love those english major siblings, always making for a good time :).

So besides the actual Tday festivities, we also hit up the local coffee shop for breakfast one morning. Okay actually Spencer and I went there three mornings in a row and got called loyal customers aka we spend way to much money on 4 dollar lattes. Side note, I'm reading book on alleviating poverty/healthy ways to help the poor (When Helping Hurts). 40% of the world lives on less than $2 dollars a day. So basically my iphone bill alone is what 40% of the world lives off in a month. Something to chew on. So back to thanksgiving ;). My sister enjoying her lovely Topeca coffee while contemplating umm her lovely Topeca coffee :).

Also we hit up Elotes for luchadora fighting!! Again random pic of Rach :). It was pretty much the most ridiculous thing ever. They even have a real wrestling ref there just to make sure it doesn't get out of hand!! Umm you should just check it out I don't know how to really describe it, it's just ridiculous. Think Nacho Libre but with real live people who get paid ha probably not, probably just doing it for the love of the game :).

Alright welll pretty much I love my family, both halves of it, the blondes and the brunnettes haha. The okies and the TEXANS just had to throw that in there ;). And I loved having you all here. So pretty much you should move here and be my neighbors so I have someone to eat all my leftovers. Oh and Alisha you can be in my family too, for the record :).

Oh only sad note was our neighbors were missing from the party!! They made it on the thanks board too :).

Long Awaited Day!!!

Okay I know you've all been waiting for this . . . . the spare bedroom is getting a door!!!! Okay you can stop holding your breath now :). We finally found a 31 and 3/4 inch door at the restore today. Acccctually I found it! It was unmarked and I thought what the heck I'll measure it just for kicks and it worked! All Spencer had to do was shave a little off the edges so it'd fit in our slightly crooked door frame, gotta love good old houses with no real straight edges. So all you who are visiting for Thanksgiving or just driving in from Arkansas or wherever you can now shut the door to your room :). Oh and the best part it was five dollars!!!

Spencer and his I'm oh so happy to finally find a door face :).


Check out the mess from shaving it down to size!


On another note we've been building some floating shelves for the dining room. And when I say we I really mean we this time! I learned to use the table saw to make all the cuts I needed for the framing. Then I did a bunch of screwing together of all the pieces with Spencer's help. It's hard to hold two pieces of wood and screw them together with only two hands!


Then we did a bunch of nailing and I filled all the holes and the cracks in the wood with wood filler which was also new to me. I know I'm learning so much!

And then I sanded my little heart out to get this nice smoth finish over the edges. Now all there is to do is wait till the wood filler dries and then paint them! Oh and then hang the frames on the wall, put the shelves on the frames, and then decide what to put on them :). The plan is something thanksgivingy haha.

Mass Mayhem and a Little Philly

So Spencer said he was going to work on the shed and then crazy little things started happening. Like these red boxes started appearing all over the back of the house. Translation: more expensive, necessary (up to interpretation haha) tool buying.

And the back room started looking like this (okay actually it was already looking pretty crazy and getting a giant dog crate didn't help but now it's even crazier!!).


And then I left for Philly and the came back to this!! Half the roof off the shed and our yard looking like it got hit by a tornado! I think we were just read to see some more mass destruction at the "Hell" House! It'd been clean and tidy (ha what an exaggeration) for too long! So here we go, round too of reno here we come. Except this one we are actually doing ourselves!

Okay so confession, so far it's been Spencer and David doing all the work, I've just been asking much all the beams and roofing materials are going to cost. I know I'm so helpful ;). But I promised I'd do the one the ground clean up. I am waaay to clumsy to get up on that roof! So looks like I've got a few days of shingle clean up coming up :).


So on another note: PHILLY!!

Hahah so this was our first stop thanks to the iPhone GPS which told us to get off the train . . . and then back on the same train . .. forty five minutes later! So first I fell on my butt after trying to sit on my suitcase and then we spent forty five minutes talking to a Conoco refinery worker who told us all the good places to go in Philly.

After getting back on the train, we headed to our sweet hotel which happened to be across the street from City Hall. Ta Da! Thanks to hotwire this was the view from our suite! Complete with a little kitchen and a maid to load the dishwasher for us if we were feeling lazy for the day. Man I love vacation :).
The next day it was off to hit up the historical sites (sorry no pictures I've already been here twice haha) and then off to south street to see the crazy shops.

Case in point. No explanation needed. And no I did not go inside haha, but it was intriquing haha. Then it was off to the italian market and the other market that was inside the convention center where we got all the fixings for Mexican!! Gluten free for Alisha ;). Looks like we cook the same things in Tulsa, the StL and Philly. Yumm!

On that note we also get really good coffee everywhere we go. Or at least try to. We had some really bad starbucks while trying to hunt down good coffee. But we did manage to find some yummy coffee across the street from the haunted house! Oops getting out of order haha.

First we went to church at 10th pres! And heard Sinclair Ferguson about Christ being the worship leader in a pretty sweet old church!

Then we hit up the metro which put us waaaay far away from the art museum so we took a little scenic walk and saw our next home. HA. In case you can't read it, it says "A Community of Presby's Inspired Life." Umm yes who knows what that means but I feel like I'm leaving a pretty inspired life haha.

After a lovely walk and a lovely time reading by the scoocool river (okay wrong spelling but that's what it sounds like haha) we hiked back to our hotel and then hopped in a cab to the Eastern State Penitentiary for a haunted house! Woo Hoo :). Yes I like being spooked!!

The next morning it was off to the top of City Hall where we decided to be five and leave grafitti in the dust coating the walls at the top. Hope the building security isn't reading this haha.

We also got some lovely orange "I'm a tourist" sticker which was our badge to get through security to the top. We promptly removed them after taking our cheesy "I'm a tourist" picture at the top :).
I love girl vacations!