The End of Year Rush

It’s been hectic people. The last time I updated the blog I was frantic to finish painting the exterior trim and my parents gave up an entire weekend to save me. Since then this stuff has happened:

• Got all the construction stuff put away and thoroughly cleaned the house.
• Had my mother and grandmother in law stay with us for a week. And liked it!
• Yes, I said I have in laws. We got married! And in spite of planning the whole thing in a whopping 6 weeks and losing our photographer a few days beforehand, everything came together and was nice!
  Photo credit Nick Raimondi. And we learned from this photo that City Hall’s most photogenic portal is the East Portal.
• I drove a bunch of stainless steel staples into all that antique wood trim I just restored and cut and spliced the hell out of my grandfather’s old Christmas lights.
• This year’s Christmas tree actually fits in the house, which was mildly disappointing, but I’m relieved that Ninja has no interest in attacking it.
• Finally restored the vestibule door and put the hardware on. Back story: the house came with a newer door. I was gonna keep it even though it was poorly installed and had a big boring for boring tubular hardware. Then my neighbor across the street offered me his vestibule door because he ripped the vestibule out because he hates them. I don’t know why it was necessary to tell me that he hates an architectural feature I chose to keep, but I’m not complaining because now I have a vestibule door with beveled glass and a mortise lock and a slightly different style of 1930’s hardware. I’ve installed it with the art deco living room hardware on one side and the hardware it came with on the other, and when we get the new-old front door in, I’ll be using the other back plate there so each room has a matching set. Clearly I’m not a wedding blogger if I had more to say about a door knob than the most important day of my life.
  

  

  

  
  
• We had our annual Christmas party, and started it early so we could invite my parents’ friends who have been begging to see the house. My cousin snagged December 15, so we moved ours up to, eek, 2 weeks after the wedding. I don’t remember what was going on in this photo, but it looks like that’s because I never saw it.
  
  Also, because it sounds like tips and tricks for entertaining are useful to a lot of people, here was my party menu. I had 2 soups out all day in crock pots to keep them hot. They were both vegan. And we had a cheese board, Turkish lentil balls, and quiche for brunch. I was going to serve pork at dinner only, but it came in 3 pieces so I had it come out at 4, 6, and 8 instead, except we skipped the 8:00 one and then wished we hadn’t when the 6:00 roast got eaten. So there. Now I’m a lifestyle blogger.
• And then that brings us to this week when I had 3 days of online software training so I worked from home and didn’t put real pants on the whole time.

So, it’s been an eventful fall. I’m very much looking forward to the fact that in 2019, there shouldn’t be any projects that take over my life as much as the facade did. We are looking forward to tying up unfinished painting projects and other loose ends.