Catching up on November!

Well let's see, what did we do this month! First, Ashton has been playing a lot of hockey and in my next post I will tell a super cool story about that. But we love to go to the Bentley games now (say hey for $7.50 staff tickets!) and it's been consuming our schedule for the most part. In fact I'm at the rink right now writing this post while Ashton has practice haha. Friday night fantastic.

Anyway the first weekend of the month I traveled to Austin for my cousin Jason's wedding. It was beautiful and we had the best time (made even better by the fact that I went solo!). And it was great to see all of my west coast family including Papa and GG. These are some of my favorite pictures:

That was an amazing weekend, for sure :) Back to reality though, I came home and promptly turned 39. GG sent me flowers: 

And as mentioned in the first paragraph, I spend a lot of time near ice now (= <32 DEGREES) so Jason got me a Canada Goose jacket :D 

Happyyyy Nessssssss.

And then of course, the major part of November which was Thanksgiving. What we have here is a case of "sometimes things just don't work out as planned." :( It was supposed to be a Vermont Thanksgiving for us and at the last minute, I got sick and we had to call everything off. I have to admit, it was pretty bleak, the idea of being home just the four of us when we are used to either hosting or traveling. But, as luck would have it, I was feeling better by turkey day and we still pulled it off! We had our whiskey sours, cooked a turkey and made mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce (thanks Brae Burn), green bean casserole, stuffing and beets. The boys even helped! We did not let a quiet day slow us down and it ended up being some great family time for us. Jason took the boys to the annual Natick-Framingham high school football game in the morning, we went for a nice long walk, played some football, games, etc. At the end of the day, we made the best of it and actually had no complaints :) 

Beets are hard work:

So are turkeys!

Some outside time:

HAHA that's such a blurry picture. It's hard to shoot a family photo on a timer with a phone that's propped in the storm drain from the street.

Getting ready to eat. Honestly, this is pretty normal in our house ("But Mommy, we had to take off our clothes, we were so hot.")

The legs were a big thrill, it was like "the thing". Who knows. Anyway, November is done and gone and just an appetizer for December anyway...let Christmas begin!

Halloween 2019

So Halloween at ages 5 and 8 happened and here is the skinny.

In the pumpkin department: 
The usual scooping out of the guts and all that. Alex commanded me to do a skull and crossbones and I modeled mine after my favorite emoji.

I didn't do too bad! Jason and Ashton did pointy teeth AGAIN. That's all they ever do - have some creativity, sheesh.

In the costume department:
For a long time Alex wanted to be a parrot. Parrot as in the bird and if this choice is a mystery to you, well, same. But then after about a month he was like, "Now I want to be a vending machine. I will walk around and pass out snacks." Well that was sufficiently funny so I said fine. But it turns out making a vending machine costume is no small feat so on the weekend before Halloween, Jason took both boys to Party City in hopes of inspiration/diversion from the parrot and the vending machine.

Now, this whole time Ashton was easy because he was just going to wear his football uniform and go as, you guessed it, a football player. But he scored himself a funny wig at Party City and Alex, oh Alex. He came home with an <adult sized> zombie hunter outfit that was basically a vest wrapped with faux bullets, camo pants and a bloody ax. He was so happy. Me on the other hand? Well there was no way he could wear that to school - like the principal would have called me (no violent costumes).

And so, on the day of the Halloween parade, Alex had to wear a hand-me-down ninja and he was, shall we say, quite grumpy.

Up close, that's:

By the time we saw him for the K parade at school though it was all smiles.

And then the rest of the day was sort of, like, crazy smooth?! Grandma and Grandpa came up, the kids got off the bus, and our usual crew (Elijah and Crosby) went out to trick or treat.

There was a little mayhem afterwards with the sorting, trading, and inventory, but when I told the boys they could not eat more than three pieces they said "Ok Mommy, no problem" and didn't protest their 8:30 bedtime. Not going to lie, I pinched myself haha.

So yeah ummm that's pretty much it lol. No severe maniacal behavior or candy craziness in 2019! I wonder if that will carry over into the Christmas season, we shall see... :)

Before and After: Family Room Fireplace and General Overhaul :)

So this is a monster. Our living area has been pretty much totally transformed since we bought our house (we just hit our 4 year anniversary on 9/30/19!). 

Here is the main listing photo:

And here is what it looks like now:

I can break it down in small steps. We added a really really long curtain rod and hung panels on the entire back wall. We got some chairs, a new rug, and a huge sectional. But all of that is really brought together by our fireplace, which is now several months into its existence but hey. 

So basically we were working with this:

I mean, it was fine. But the cabinets on either side were actually not even secured, the doors were warped, and the TV blocked the windows behind it. There is literally not one wall to put a TV on in this room so above the fireplace is the only option. And we just wanted to do something a little... grander. 

So Jason sat down to think about it. Here is a picture of Jason thinking about it. 

The first thing we did was take out the cabinets - we knew we had to just box in the existing fireplace surround (and that we would be covering those smaller windows in the process) and it needed to be a certain size. See the blue tape?

So we took out the cabinets and of course the floors were unfinished, so we had to get that fixed before we could do anything. It looked very naked.

We I mean Jason also did lots of research on the stone we were going to use - it ended up being a super cool product with interlocking corners.

And now I'm just going to give it to you. In between January 24 and February 5th, 2019... 

Notice the PVC pipes behind the TV mount - those are built in for the cables so we appear wireless ;)

There were a lot of very tricky parts. We had to stack the stones in the right pattern (they all had different reliefs) so that it was consistent overall, and also our ceiling is slanted so Jason had to get those cuts just right. But of course it's Jason and he did.

I am loving decorating the mantel for all the holidays and seasons and the added texture warms the living room up so much. Another project: CHECK!