A bit of Christmas

Hi, everybody, and merry Christmas! Though Chris and I don't decorate for Christmas the way we do for Halloween, we do like to put out a few things.

Let me show you around!

Here's the table by the front door:




Here's a closeup of the compotes:



I like the old-fashioned look of fresh greenery with herbs and fruits. I was standing in line at Trader Joe's the other day (replacing everything we'd lost when the fridge died, from butter to BBQ sauce) when I noticed the guy in front of me had a lovely little crate of clementines. "Well, Mr. Man", I thought, "you're not the only one who's walking outta here with those citrusy treats!!", and off I dashed to the produce section. Note: I am so thankful that people can't read my mind-- they'd just think I was bizarre.


Here's the top of the entertainment center, with fir boughs (which I pulled out of the free bins at Lowe's) and ivy (which I pulled out of the yard):




Here's a closeup of one of our Jim Shore Santas:




The Christmas tree, which we decorated with friends. That's the way we do thing around here, see: we invite people over for potlucks and then force them to decorate Tallulah House. You'd think they'd have learned their lesson by now ;)





A pine garland from Ace Hardware, with ivy from the yard:




The chandelier, with ivy and rosemary:




The dining room doorway:




The pyramid that my parents brought back from Germany many years ago:





Now for the kitchen. Here's a primitive, folk-arty tree that my friend Lib gave me:





Next is our little nutcracker and some apothecary jars filled with festive M&M's!





Next is the top of the new refrigerator (yes, as much as it set us back, it has to be featured!!). I confess that I keep my gargoyle out year-long, though not usually here. I am very fond of my winged Christmas elf, and of his combat boots :)





Here's a few shots of the vignette in the sitting room (pardon the gap under the pug picture: I have been trying to get Chris's help in hanging things to balance it out, but he hates drilling into plaster as much as I do!):




Here's a closeup of my Dresden angels. My parents also brought these back from Germany and they're one of my favourite things:





Another closeup:





In keeping with the idea of greenery and natural materials, I decided to show off my ginger jar with some huge stalks of rosemary (I noticed today that the rosemary has bloomed, I suppose due to being inside. It's wonderful!):





I kept it simple in the bathroom as well, decorating with a silver tray, a candle, and my favourite Christmas linen: the flying pig towel!





Here's a closeup of my pig. If he doesn't make you smile, then there's nothing I can do for you and I suggest that you seek medical attention quickly!





From all of the denizens of Tallulah House, we wish you a merry Chrismas!

Bathroom ceiling project finished!

Huzzah, hooray, three cheers, etc :)

The end result is clean and lovely, which is exactly what I wanted. It makes the past few days of standing on the ladder whilst muddy plaster rained down on me, of holding the Mr. Toad-like sander-- think his Wild Ride-- above my head for hours, being covered to the eyelashes in plaster dust, and the seemingly endless round of patching, sanding and painting (I ended up doing two coats of primer and two coats of paint) completely worth it.

Also worth it are the various injuries I sustained, confirming my theory that Tallulah House occasionally demands blood sacrifices... or that I'm a klutz :) All that remains is to re-hang the shelves and towel hooks, which I'll do today. I plan to go back and do some re-caulking, as well, but prefer to think of that as a separate project, so that I can say I'm done with this one!

In other news, I've finished Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows! Never fear, I won't give anything away: I'll just say that it was really good and is a satisfying ending to the series. Chris and I went to a Grand Hallows Ball event at our local Borders bookstore on Friday night, and it was fun. Chris kept asking all week if I was going to dress up, and I kept saying, "no", but then changed my mind at the last minute ;) We ran into one of my colleagues there and she took some photos, which I'll post for your amusement when she e-mails them.

My plans for the book (namely, staying up all night reading it) were all thrown off-kilter by the fact that I didn't get the bathroom finished Friday afternoon. Things just kept getting delayed: the spackle didn't dry as quickly as I thought it would, the two coats of primer took longer to dry, I had to do some sanding, and then! just when I started to get the first coat of paint on, I opened the can to discover that it had separated. I called the hardware store up the street to ask if they had a paint shaker and they did, so I called Chris and asked him to stop by the house after work and take it up there to have it shaken. I would have done it myself, but the prospect of stopping to get cleaned up was too much for me :) Anyhoo, I finished the first top coat around 7:30 and stopped to get cleaned up to go out. Chris fully expected me to be unable to resist temptation and dive right into the book, but I knew that there was no way I could enjoy it if all of that mess was still waiting for me. So, I went to bed around 2am, got up the next morning and got the last coat of paint on, and then proceeded to scrub the tile, bathtub, and floor, and clean up all of the mess. I took a bath, went and got us a pizza from Fellini's, came home, started reading and didn't re-surface until I was done (well, I did stop to iron the bathroom curtains and get those re-hung). Good times!

So today I'm bound for the grocery store and Target to pick up everything we've run out of over the last week. When I'm involved in a project, civilisation can just go hang, obviously ;)

Ohhhh, the pain!

Welcome to the continuing adventures of the bathroom ceiling. By working hard all day yesterday (and also because the bathroom is hobbitt-sized), I managed to not only get all of the popcorn stuff off, but also to get it sanded.

Yes, the sanding *sigh*

I started out using a Black and Decker Mega Mouse sander (my husband's), but quickly realised that that wasn't going to work, mainly because the dang thing is so heavy and hard for me to control. So I searched out my Mouse sander (muuuuuch smaller)-- would have preferred my orbital, but couldn't find it due to the wretched state of the attic (our mutually agreed-upon project for this winter)-- and that was much better. Of course, keep in mind that I was standing on a ladder the whole time with the sander over my head. I am incredibly sore today and actually had to get up in the middle of the night to take some Aleve: Kimberley = wimp :)

Today I got out the spackle and took care of some cracks in the ceiling-- nothing major, just cracks due to settling, thank goodness! I was actually pleased by the condition of the whole ceiling. You know how it is when you begin a house project: you THINK everything will be fine, but there's a little, Gollum-like voice whispering that you'll discover something horrible! ..... Um, maybe Gollum just talks to me, then? In any event, the ceiling was in great shape, and I got the cracks taken care of. Around 7pm today (yes, I started out waiting for the spackle to dry, then had to go pick up my veggies, then started talking to one of my awesome neighbors...), I started priming the walls and ceiling. There was some drippage that I'll need to sand off once it dries, but on Friday I'll apply the first (and hopefully only) coat of paint.

I'm taking tomorrow off from the bathroom project, as I've been invited to lunch at a friend's house and have convinced myself that there's no way I could get any work done and still get cleaned up in time for lunch :) I had meant to come diligently home right after and get to work, but another friend called me up and asked me to go shopping with her for her house. Now, what kind of friend would I be if I said no???

I'll leave you with this quote, which I like very much. I believe that its original context had to do with wikis, but I feel its just a good general rule of thumb: "All of us know more than one of us".

Hope your rest of the week is great!

Bathroom Ceiling project, cont'd.

So after I got back from Home Depot (oh, and Whole Foods, 'cause there wasn't much of anything to eat in Tallulah House), I made us some lunch and got started with the ceiling. Here's the recipe for the yummy sandwiches we had:

1. Take one freshly baked (err, bought, but still) baguette and slice off two pieces, however long you want your sandwiches to be; ours are usually about 6 inches.
2. Slice your pieces in half, and then scoop out the bottom slices. This is a good way to "anchor" your sandwich fixings, and also eliminates some unnecessary calories that you'll never miss anyway.
3. Spread some chevre on your "bread canoe"-- I like Sweetgrass Dairy's because it is oh, so delicious, and they're a Georgia (and therefore more local) company.
4. Spoon out sun dried tomatoes (use the finely chopped kind, so that you don't accidently pull out an entire tomato and spill olive oil down your chin-- so embarrassing... not that that's ever happened to me) onto the bread.
5. Add finely chopped, fresh basil (again, whole leaves will lead to the sort of incident described above; plus, chopping the basil releases more of the taste and fragrance)
6. If you're not a vegetarian, add some organic turkey or chicken. I don't recommend beef because it would overwhelm the mild flavors of the other ingredients. I don't recommend pork at all, ever, because its bad for the environment.
7. Enjoy your delicious sandwich!

So, on to the scraping.

I took down the shelves and doodads, the fancy towel, etc, to get them out of the dust. I then moved my ladder in and started scraping... it went slowly. Finally I remembered reading that you can lightly wet the popcorn stuff to make it easier. Whew, what a difference that made! (I know now that there was a reason I never got around to mixing up my garlic mosquito repellant in the sprayer thingie :) )

In spite of wetting it, it was still slow going and MESSY! It was also disgusting to see mildew underneath the popcorn, ugh. Though I am hippy-crunchy girl and use environmentally-friendly products whenever possible, I will confess that it gave me enormous satisfaction to purchase primer and paint with mildewcides in them! Never again will I be forced to watch the inexorable march of mold and mildew across the bathroom ceiling, never again!!

I am going to wear goggles and a respirator today, just in case I'm messing with lead-based paint, which in a house of Tallulah's age means I most likely am.

I couldn't help but think yesterday, as my arm was aching from scraping and I was thinking unkind thoughts about whomever had put in the popcorn ceiling, what some future owner of Tallulah House might be cursing me for one day-- you know, Chris and I do some project that we think is just FABULOUS and one day someone's going, "Why in the world did they do THAT?"

:)