Holiday festiveness

Tried to keep the Holiday decorating simple this year (only because our house is under construction and its a little hard getting decorations out... plus our upstairs is packed with boxes since there is nowhere to store them in the basement while its being remodeled... so now a lot of room to put things up). Anyways, even while trying to keep it simple, I just love the weekend after Thanksgiving when I get to put up all of our festive holiday decor and our cute little tree.

Our little tree. Maybe one day we'll get a bigger one once there is more room in the house with the basement done and we move our big TV & entertainment console downstairs. Love the new Red Balls we have on it this year though and the the "G" ornament I picked up at Pottery Barn. =) 

Holiday Flowers

Now that Thanksgiving has come and gone....Time to start the Holiday Decorating! Found these beauties at Home Depot for $3 each.... continuing my obsession of having flowers in our house for the year.

First Snow

We had our first snow of the year this week! Seattle doesn't get snow very often, maybe a dusting of snow each year and then it melts the next day. But this reminded me of the "big snow" of 2008 when we got 2 feet. On Monday we got a couple inches.... but I dont think anyone was even expecting that, so everyone still drove in to work that day and it was a mess getting home. Seriously, worst traffic mess I have ever seen in Seattle.... literally took Matt & I in the car 5 hours to get home from downtown to West Seattle (which would normally take 15 minutes).

I have to say though, even after that horrific 5 hour drive home.... I'm crossing my fingers for lots more snow this year. I just can't help it! Love the snow and how pretty it makes everything look... I'll take that over rain any day.

Here is a picture from our front porch.

Beer Brewing with the family

We celebrated Kieran's birthday 2 weeks ago by going with my family to a place in Edmonds called Gallaghers and brewing beer! It was a great time, and this last weekend we went back to bottle it. Can't wait to give it a taste. I even made some fun labels to try out on some of the bottles to make them look festive and maybe we will give some away to friends this holiday season. =)

 

 Washing the bottles

Bottling the beers... 

 Enjoying some of our beer.

 Labels for the beer... We bottled them in larger 22oz bottles, and I printed these labels ahead of time at home to put on them and make them festive!

And then we were done! 12 boxes (each with 12 bottles) of beer. 

1 batch of Citrus Blonde and 1 batch of IPA. 

Its that time of year...

Time to get the Chimney swept. I can't believe we have lived in our house for 3 years and have never had a fire. Matt was concerned since the chimney was so old, how long it had been since it was cleaned (if too long and there was a lot of build up it could cause a chimney fire which we do not want!)... and we just kept putting off getting it cleaned. Now I wish we had sooner!

I called up a company I found recommended on the West Seattle blog - The Mad Hatter, and scheduled them to do the Chimney cleaning. They were booked out for about a month back in October when I called, so we just had them in this week. They had a $99 special, and did an awesome job. They kept everything really clean and did a total inspection of things letting us know about a few other things we should keep an eye on or fix on the roof in the future. I am always weary about letting contractors or workers in our house, worried it will get super dirty or that if Matt isn't here and they say technical things that are over my head and I'll have no idea what they are talking about and I won't know the right questions to ask. But these 2 guys were both so nice and friendly and helped answer any questions I had.

Can't wait to have our first fire in the fireplace this year!

 

More walls up, more floor down

We tried to be extra productive this last weekend, since we only have 1 more weekend until Thanksgiving and then Holidays are in full swing and we'll be busy every weekend in December.

So, we got more walls put up, and are getting sooo close to having all the subfloor done. The Subfloor is really my project (I guess Matt figured I couldn't screw that up, haha), and while it was kind of fun at first... that quickly grew old. We just have so many odd shaped areas and nooks where you have to cut the panels to fit, such a pain. Oh well, one upside is that I have been forced to become comfortable using the power saw... and after about panel 100... I have to say I feel like a pro. =) Ok, not a pro, but at least I'm not scared to death of sawing off a finger anymore.

The first wall is up

We are finally putting up walls. Matt has a system down, building the walls on the floor and then we hoist them up and attach them to the ceiling beams and the floors. Here is a picture of the first wall we put up. Hoping to get all of them done in the next few weeks before Thanksgiving. It actually seems to be going quite smoothly so far, and I think after this last weekend we have about 1/3 of the exterior walls done. We will see...

Flowers everywhere

We went with my parents to the Marysville Rotary Auction this last weekend. My dad is really involved with Rotary and its a great cause raising money for scholarships for kids. We've gone the last couple years and always have a good time. Hopefully as we get older we will be able to donate more to great foundations like Rotary and give back to the community. Anyways... we didn't walk away with too many auction items this year, but did make it home with these beautiful flowers!

I thought these would be way to huge for our house... and they are very large... but are kinda fun for a week taking over our dining room table. 

Beautiful little centerpiece I picked up! Fits right in with our little pumpkin on the kitchen table.