The Holidays

Well, I have no excuses....other than work and prepping for our first Christmas in the cabin (actually, our first time hosting Christmas EVER).  The shopping/crafting/wrapping has been done for about a week or so.  But work has been busy and stressful.  The tree skirt looks great, the presents are sitting and waiting, and the Xmas Crackers are tempting me daily to pull and POP! one.  :)

Tomorrow I make an early run to (the dreaded) Wal-Mart for a few necessities and lots of food for the weekend.  We are having a Winter Solstice Party (aka End of the Mayan Calendar Party) Friday night.  Then Saturday is brunch then an 'early' Christmas Eve Party.  Lots of fun food, prizes and crafts/fun things to do.  The Xmas Fairy has been busy...

Lon has assembled a fantastic bunch of holiday movies to run with or without sound while we play and celebrate.  For example, on my two days off last week we watched the Christmas classic, Gremlins.  Yes...think hard, it WAS a Christmas movie.  Billy got Gizmo for his Christmas present and all hell breaks loose after the midnight snacks and late night swim at the Y.  We also have such favorites as Elf, White Christmas, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, Year Without a Santa Claus, The Santa Clause, Fred Claus, Scrooged, and E.T....just to name a few.

Besides, we have Pandora for excellent mixes of Christmas music (I highly recommend creating a Jack Johnson Holiday station...most chill and excellent) and some fun mix CDs from years past.  Thank you, Kris, for one of my faves...The Girls Do Christmas.  Best take home party gift ever!  :)

After my Wal-Mart run, I come back home to prep some goodies (Vegetarian Sausage Balls) for our work Holiday Party, clean the house for weekend company, go to said party, prep weekend party fixins and find time to relax during my first off day this week...ha!

I am very much looking forward to hosting our first Christmas, but wish I hadn't had to work right up until the day before.  Such is life.  And it will all get done and I'll have so much fun once everyone is here.  It's really been so nice NOT to stress about the holidays and only have to stress about work.  Oh yeah, and the gray squirrels that have apparently taken up residence between our ceiling and roof (we have no attic...they had to have eaten a path out of the insulation.)  But have no fear, we have someone coming tomorrow afternoon to rid us of the rodents and hopefully patch up their entryway!  If we had an attic, I wouldn't be as surprised, but our ceiling is directly under the roof...crazy.  The life of a log cabin owner...we learn new things everyday.

Anyway, sorry for taking so long to post.  I do have pics to post, but the phone-to-laptop cable is downstairs and I am upstairs...maybe after the holidays I'll have time to post more frequently...and maybe I'll have a new phone-to-laptop cable.  :D

Hope you all have a Happy Christmas, Merry Hanukkah, Blessed Kwanzaa and a Freakin' Awesome New Year!!!

Pre-Thanksgiving Weekend

Since I have to work all of Thanksgiving weekend (and I mean ALL...Thurs-Sun), Lon and I have been blessed by Mother Nature with gorgeous weather and four days off together.  We have played, watched college football, put up Xmas decorations, wrapped presents (yes, I am almost done) and painted.  The weather was nice enough to open doors/windows and we painted.  You may remember from our earliest pics of Cabinooga that they had a very sad baby blue painted on several walls.  A baby blue we were not fond of from Day 1.  Today we changed that.  We chose Hazy Stratus from Valspar and we LOVE it!!!  Here are some 'before' pics.  Will take some 'after' pics tomorrow and post them.  I still have to work on the trim, so don't expect 'after' pics for a day or so...

Wow...the cabin looks so nice and clean when it's empty...the baby blue also went up on the balcony (over kitchen).  I can't wait you to show the new and improved!

Happy Turkey Day!!!

Fall Project #1...almost complete

**Note** This was supposed to be posted last week...saved in drafts.  Oh well.  :)

We successfully cut up my corner desk to make a 5' long rectangular desk top to fit in our little nook upstairs.  My office view is now our gorgeous view of the trees and mountain to my left and our 'art gallery' to the right.  I can look forward right over the balcony wall and see our M GO BLUE sign (and the TV if I shut the laptop).  I love my new office space!!!  Now we just have to clear out the corner it used to occupy (by the wood stove) and bring in the dining room table from the porch.

Of course, the weather is still nice enough that we ate lunch out there yesterday.  Maybe the table can wait a while longer.  We are also planning to do some painting, install a light fixture and move some more things around.  But my office is almost complete!  Just need to hook up the printer and get it tucked out of sight.

Yay for pictures!  Here they are...

The mushroom lamp will move soon (you can see it from downstairs), but we are looking into some rope lighting for under the balcony railing.  Should provide some nice atmosphere.  :)

New office space.  I love it!

View from my desk...not bad, huh?