Deck the Halls (and paint the walls)

My apologies for the terrible rhyme. It was the only witty thing I could come up with this morning, which should tell you something about my present state of mind.

This year marked the first Thanksgiving since Craig and I started college in 1997 that we haven't traveled. We (well, I) therefore decided it was a good idea to pack it as full of work as possible.

We had a nice Thanksgiving with Dan and Barb in Woodbury. Barb made the turkey and some sides, and I contributed potatoes, rolls, green beans, and apple pie. Our car smelled very good as we drove across town.



Phoebe enjoyed her Thanksgiving dinner of a spiral shaped dried beef tendon.



The Friday after Thanksgiving, we eschewed early morning shopping for painting our bedroom. Good thing, too, since we had a nice wet snow that day. Very picturesque, but I prefer not to drive in it on a day when people are already willing to maim each other for cheap digital cameras.



The new color is Benjamin Moore "Saybrook Sage," a grey-green-blue shade that is remarkably close to Martha Stewart Everyday's "Quaking Aspen." (I drove to a K-Mart in a seriously not nice part of St. Paul just to get the MS paint chip, then got home to discover that it was essentially the same thing as the BM color I had already decided upon. At least I know I like it. Twice.)

The ceiling wasn't very well done, so we re-painted that. We (okay, me, again) wanted to try the cool ceiling paints featured in Menards commercials that go on pink or purple but dry white, eliminating the need to guess where you've already painted. We tried it, but I don't think we'll be using it again. The purple tint, which was profound in the can, stayed on the ceiling for about 10 seconds, and the paint didn't cover well at all. We might have gotten better results by systematically licking the ceiling.

Can you say "gimmick?" I knew you could!



Dan and Barb proved that they will paint for pizza, which we really appreciate.



Goodbye, foul olive green!





Goodbye, foul yellow that previous owners were too lazy to cover up in the closet!



The end results are still green, but a nice, quiet, restful green.





We finally hung a few pictures on our bedroom walls, including this nice antique oak-framed mirror from Bob and Mikki in Jefferson.



On Saturday, we put up the Christmas tree and drove all around town for various errands and decorating supplies.

The tree looked like one of the slimmer models in the display at Michael's, but it's apparently been sitting in the basement gorging itself on candy canes, because it fills up a whole lot of our living room. We don't mind, though. (Note the lovely tree skirt made by Ellen's mom.)



We haven't figured out if there's actually a power supply on the exterior of our house, so our decorating is limited to candles in the windows. But that's all right, it looks nice and homey that way.



Now, on to the baking!