Official 1/1/11 Post

Okay I know this is umm almost a month old, but I'm stuck recovering from a cold looking out the window at the freezing weather outside. It seemed like an appropriate time to finally write about some of my new year's resolutions.

Okay I know resolutions can be stressful and make you feel guilty, but I like to think of them as ways to dream a little about what the next year could be like. They help me to not feel stuck in a rut. I tend to put things on my list that are more like wishes than resolutions . Like go to Switzerland. That is on my resolution list for 2011. I resolve to go to Switzerland :). I'll let you know if it happens haha.

Okay so another one of my resolutions is two fold, or actually maybe more folds than that even (excuse my bad grammar haha)! I want to keep expanding our garden. I'm reading this book all about backyard homesteading and it's making me want to grow all kinds of things in our yard! I'm not fully convinced on the raising chicken part yet, but I may still get there :). We don't want to burn ourselves out on gardening though by goign to overboard at the beginning so we're going to just add two more beds this year to the one bed we already have. We've made a little list of what we want to grow:

- tomatoes (maybe upside down!!)
- lettuce
- spinach
- squash
- zucchini
- bell peppers
- herbs (hopefully I'll have better luck than with my rosemary last year!!)
- jalepenos
- asaparagus (okay this doesn't bloom till the second year, but we're going to start!)
- green onions
- cucumbers (maybe in containers? or on a trellis?)
- and my favorite!!! a blueberry bush!! I actually made it a separate resolution from gardening to plant a fruit tree or bush in our yard this year because I was so excited about it!

Okay maybe the list isn't so small, but I think it's doable, and I think they are all things we will eat! One of my problems last year was having a million peppers and cherry tomatoes and not knowing what to make with them. I hate throwing away produce and there's not much motivation to go pick more of something when your kitchen is already overflowing with unused veggies. So here comes the two fold part of this resolution. I also want to learn more veggie recipes!! I like eating veggies (okay I still hate onions, I know, I know I'm still a 5 year old at heart ;) but other than that I like mostly everything), but sometimes I just don' t know how to cook them! So I actually started working on this part today, since it is gross outside and you can't really plant anything in Oklahoma till the beginning of March!! So, I went online and searched myrecipes.com and came up with a bunch of cucumber, cherry tomato, squash and zucchini recipes. Yum, yum, yum!! Anybody have any recipes to recommend? Fast and limited ingredients are the best ;). Besides veggie recipes I also want to learn how to can and perserve vegetables so I can eat them all winter long. Okay this might be way out of my league, but I can dream right? :)

Side note on dreaming, I've been reading the book "A Praying Life" by Paul Miller. Don't tell my Bible study for the semester (we're supposed to start next week and read a chapter a week), but I'm probably going to finish it this week, or maybe even today! It's been really encouraging and basically reminding me that part of praying is getting back your ability to dream, to hope, to wish for God's kingdom to come quickly. It calls prayer an adventure because you're never quite sure what is going to happen. So on that note, I think I might add practice praying like a little child to my resolution list for 2011. We'll see how it goes. I'm guessing I'll need ALOT of practice.

Snow!!

Okay I know it's been forever and I need to do a real post, but for now here you go :).

Oh Vacation You Are So Beautiful To Me

Okay I like my job, but let's just be honest a much needed vacation every once in awhile is so, so nice. Although I still have a hard time turning my organizing little brain off. Maybe I'll make that a new year's resolution: stop and smell the roses!!

So thanks to some abnormally warm weather in t-town, we've been busy. Okay Spencer's been busier than me, but I helped :). The roof is done on the shed!

Thanks to a coworker of mine who had an ancient compressor and nail gun the job was not quite so miserable, but still roofing by floodlights since the sun goes down at five is not fun, okay I'm postulating here since I never actually did any roofing haha. All I ever did was cook dinner or buy joe mammas for the troops :).

Here's where my part came in: the cleanup! So yesterday it was a balmy 65 degrees in Tulsa, so we went to work on all the shingles and decking and random pieces of wood that were all over the yard. (See I'm really not so good at chilling on my vacation days haha). We took a load over to the dump, which by the way those people have made a couple hundred bucks off us during this whole process! Who knew it was 30 bucks to dump shingles! Something about their weight makes it more expensive to haul off. haha probably TMI :)

So after a couple hours of clean up and listening to blitzy bark at the broom in the shed ;) here's the progress! Okay I know it looks like an abandoned building with an oddly new roof, but it's all winterized in case Tulsa decides to ever enter the winter season this year :). And the yard is almost entirely free of shingles! I have a little more work to do in the corner, but that's by the crazy neighbor dog and I was getting tired haha.

So we also bought this book for Christmas called The Backyard Homestead for my sister since she's about to learn how to run a small scale farm. We loved looking at the book so much we bought ourselves a copy and I think I've almost read the whole thing already, well apart from the chapter on raising your own livestock haha I do live in the city thank you very much. But anyway it tells you how to use your quarter of an acre (which we actually have thanks to our corner lot!) to grow thousands of lbs of veggies and plant fruit trees and nut trees and have chickens ha not so sure about that one yet, but who knows maybe I'll raise chickens someday. One of our neighbors has them! Anyway so I might be asking around for veggie recipes this summer when I get tired of sauteeing them ;).

Alright so I'm bound and determined to make a list of resolutions, mostly just because I like to make myself dream big about what could happen in the next year :). We'll see what crazy things I come up with for 2011. Last year's list had get a dog on it and what do you know? haha we have a dog! And she is losing teeth haha. Spencer stepped on one this morning!

Okay just some mini highlights from vacation:

- seeing the fam, playing speed scrabble, drinking two cups of double shot before eating on Christmas morning (talk about distracted!), catching up with highschool friends, meeting possible future spouses :)

- seeing the other side of the fam, eating thai cafe, seeing evelyn!!! haha and shane and sherry in aspen coffee shop (the smallness of stillwater never ceases to amaze me), getting a kitchenaid mixer!!! haha I feel like a real housewife now, too bad I still have to go to work every day instead of staying home and baking haha please read sarcasm into that ;)

- hanging out at home in t-town, cleaning the yard, playing with our puppy, drinking topeca coffee and not having to rush because I'm on an impromptu break from work, getting our 8000 dollar home owners tax credit finally!!! woo hoo!!!!

I love vacation!!!!

Breaking the China

Okay make that breaking the china in. I know I just ended a sentence with a preposition. So you know how you register for china when you get married? And then you wonder when am I going to use this?! I mean I'd love to use it at thanksgiving but I only have six sets of it and we had 12 people. And I'm sorry but mixing and matching fiesta ware and china is not my style :). So we decided why not just break it in on a random wednesday night with some friends?



So I got all set up for our fancy meal with our neighbors David and Kat and our other neighbors the lovely gelzergovatoses who also live less than half a mile away from us. And no we don't have a weird neighborhood click, sometimes we just like eating together :). Ha I just realized Blitzy is in the background of this picture.

So I slaved away for hours on end in the kitchen to make a lovely dinner to match the occasion of using our wedding china for the first time.

And yep did you guess it? We had take out pizza. And we broke out the cyrstal glasses and filled them full of yep you guessed it, okay maybe not, miller high life and dr. pepper. What can I say we are just that classy :).

And in case you've been worrying about our poor little dog out in the cold, suffering on these long windy lonely nights you can STOP your worrying. She loves her little dog house, and she loves her wood shavings. Now we call her our little gerbel dog because she smells like a gerbel all the time!!! Only problem is she does not love it when we hang out in the house without her. She is such a whiny baby sometimes! Always wanting to hang out with us ;). Dogs are definitely good for your self esteem.

There you go Alisha :). It was a little later than the weekend, but it was close!!

'Tis the Season

'Tis the season for tearing down roofs and littering the yard with nails.

'Tis the season for building up dog pens so your 4 month dog doesn't jump a four foot fence.

'Tis the season for teaching your 4 month old dog how to "shake" guys it's about the cutest thing. Ever. You should come and see.

Oh yeah and 'Tis the season for Christmas!! And Sufjan Stevens' version of Come Thou Fount! And the smell of a freshly (I know I'm romantizing here haha considering we shop at Lowe's) cut Christmas trees and garlands. And a million Christmas parties. And spiked apple cider. And leaf candles. And pizza and china. More on that later :).

So yeah Spencer's been hard at work on the shed. All the demo work is done, and he's replaced most of the beams already. Then we had a crew from TU come and help us last weekend which was AWESOME. They had been doing habitat for humanity all semester long on Saturdays and were done with the habitat house for the semester so they came and helped us!! They got all the decking done on one side!! All while I laid in bed and was lazy okay actually I had the stomach flu, I would have much rather been roofing than well you can guess. They said they might be able to come this weekend too! So our job for the week is to clean up as much of the torn down roof and shingles and beams as possible so they can work on the other side of the decking.

Here you go: the lovely decking on one side. I'd take pictures during the day but it is always dark these days, I guess 'tis the season for gloominess. Ha no I do not hide my emotions well.

Okay I was trying to get a picture of Spencer's awesome beam cutting handiwork, but it's not the best shot. These are all wood pieces he cut to size with his myriad of tools :). Good thing he knows how to use them all!

Oh yes and Blitzy likes to help too. Ha actually she cries the whole time we work on it because she wants to be part of the action and we don't want her stepping on nails so we put her in the pen instead of letting her out. So then once the work is over and we let her out, where does she go? Yep you guessed it, sniffing around the nail ridden, dust infested shed. Oh well :).

The lovely temporary sky light on the side that isn't decked yet.

Okay this is our giant puppy. And we love her so we had to put a pic of her up. She's already 40 lbs!!! And did we mention she does shake now? :)

Okay so on to other news, we've been decorating for Christmas!! I still need something for the top shelf, but for now this'll have to do :). I'm just excited to be getting to put up all the decorations in our new house!! Okay we had it last Christmas but you might recall last Christmas all it was, was a bunch of studs, so that's not so fun to decorate :).

And of course the Christmas tree!!

Okay I'm getting tired, so the pizza and china story will have to wait for tomorrow :). Okay probably more like this weekend haha.

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.