Tree is up!

Here are some pictures of the tree's "becoming", and of all the help I got from my family, two and four legged. Enjoy! They kind of go from last to first... 

To anticipate some questions and comments: We will be hiding the wires under the TV soon, and we are aware how tacky our tree topper is. We don't know how Bugs fits on the chair. Yes, we would beat her ass if she got on the new chair(s). No, we are not keeping Lana even though she is SO cute. No husbands were harmed in the decorating of this Christmas tree.

More cooking, more house pics...

We hosted Bill and Danya tonight for a small "Thanksgiving" meal. We ordered a small turkey from the Avalon Acres farm in Hohenwald, TN... their website is here. It ended up being delicious, as were the side dishes: squash dressing, apples and sweet potatoes, and green bean bundles with bacon. Banana pudding to top it all off--but I still can't get the meringue to do like Mom's! I just reviewed the pictures and they look terrible so I am NOT going to post them--but rest assured they were awesome! To compensate, here are some pics from the clean house, including Paul's "Winter Wonderland" he's turned our deck into :)

The winter wonderland...

The living room... the unfinished (unstarted) tree, and our "new" old bookcase that was Danya's Great-Grandfather's.

The kitchen... with the fixed table, bromeliads and rosemary.

And the bar area!

...and now for your daily sign of the apocalypse!

No, I'm not talking about this, although that's pretty weird. I'm talking about my clean kitchen. Observe, and weep, ye wannabe-domestic goddesses. I don't want to take any guesses on the over-under of how long this is going to last; but it sure is a good feeling.

Yes, that is a yummy crockpot full of ranch stew. And here is my Amaryllis, that I feel like is really coming along well... it's probably four weeks in.

Weekend Update

Well, this was a pretty uneventful week. I was busy with school stuff so I didn't have a chance to do much. I did manage to make and freeze some sausage balls for our upcoming open house. I have seen blogs in the past that post picture of food, and I figured out my light wasn't right because my mix looked horrible in pictures. I did manage to get a decent picture of the finished product. I like to call this the "missing man" formation ;)
...of course, there were kitchen pests. This is Bugs and Lana, our foster for the time being. She is really doing great. Not too many problems out of her just yet... in fact, I wanted to keep her for the first day, but then she kind of got annoying. Still sweet, but annoying. When you foster you want to keep them all on the first day.

She does this, which is pretty rare for the dogs we've seen. She is super snuggly with Bugs and Bugs tolerates her for the most part. Sometimes she gets sort of snippy with her, but this has happened a couple of times... 

Yard Day

Well, today really felt like we were real live homeowners--albeit still sniffly ones! After church we worked in the yard for a couple of hours. We discovered a very invasive vine growing up the side of the house--a trumpet, or cow-itch vine. Click here for more information on the trumpet vine. Apparently it's beautiful, but it's also grown into the side of our house. Who knows what's going to happen with that. We managed to kill the root and remove what we could, but the stuff in the side of the roof is too high for us to handle.

Here is the vine... in between the roof and the house. We're worried, but at least now we know it is dead. What is really disconcerting is that we didn't notice it before--meaning we (and everyone else who's been here) are not too observant, or the thing grows pretty rapidly. I'm going with the latter, especially with all the horror stories I've read about it over the past day. 

On a brighter (really) note, the maple in the front yard is so beautiful. A few years ago we spent a weekend in Lexington, VA and took a beautiful picture of some foliage against the blue sky. Little did we know that one day we'd have a similar scene. But, of course, those unfortunate Virginians don't have the Channel 4 tower in the background.

FIRST!

Well, this only took minutes to set up. Here's hoping it will help us stay in touch with everyone and share pictures of the new house, foster dogs, vacations or whatever the future holds.