A new look for the kitchen and dining room

We were sick of the white walls, so with less than a week to go before Thanksgiving we painted them. (And yes, mom came over to help!) The pictures are just of the dining room side right now. I wanted to wait until our island was done in the kitchen before taking those. (It's done now, I've just been lazy and haven't taken the pictures.)

It's not too drastic, but we love it. We plan to do this same color in the half bath downstairs, and our bedroom. We'd like something a little bit darker for the living room.

Before:


After:

(Yes, the table is also darker. No, we didn't paint it. This summer while mom was looking for a table for Patrick's apartment, she found this one at a garage sale. It was identical to ours, so we took the dark one, and Pat has the light one.)

Another before:


Another after:

More pictures of the kitties

We thought that Cali and Pickles should get into the holiday spirit. They didn't seem to agree with us.

To make up for that photo shoot, we gave them their Christmas present early. May I present to you a cat in a bag:

We felt so bad when we saw them like this that we went and bought another one. Unfortunately since we've done that, we can't get a picture of them in them at the same time.

Like father, like daughter

Pickles and Jason taking a little "catnap" together ...

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had Thanksgiving at our house for the first time this year and everyone had a great time! It was Jason & I, my mom, Karen, Patrick, Susan, Roland, and Matt.

First, my favorite part - the table!


A close up of the napkin, with the chocolate leaf "favor" that I made for everyone.


Just a neat angle of the table.


The Felts family always deep fries the turkey, so that's what we did as well. The night before we injected it with strained italian dressing, white wine, and then rubbed it all down with Tony's Seasoning. Then on Thanksgiving, before putting it into the fryer, the guys tied its legs together.




Then came the fun part! The guys all sat outside (in freezing weather!) and fried the turkey - while enjoying some beverages and cigars.


At various points, the ladies took a break from the inside cooking (and munching!) and joined them.



The turkey, ready to be carved! After they were done frying it, we let it sit for about 45 minutes to develop the flavors even more.


Carving was a family event ...


And now for the rest of the food. In this picture, starting at the top, there was a relish tray, green bean and corn casserole, sweet potato puffs, deviled eggs, jello/pretzel salad, stuffing, turkey, gravy, and rolls.


But that wasn't all! Here (again starting at the top) there is macaroni and cheese, broccoli casserole, creamy mashed potato bake, and peas.


For dessert we had pecan pie and a caramel apple layer cake. It's the first cake that I've ever made from scratch and I think it turned out pretty well!


After dinner we laid around, watched tv, looked at the ads, and took some naps. Before the Colts game started we also played a few games on the Wii and Catchphrase. Then we watched the Colts win and headed to bed!

What a day!

Yummy!

My new favorite snack = puppy chow. How can you go wrong with chex mix, peanut butter, chocolate, and powdered sugar?

Cali and Pickles at the vet

Cali and Pickles had their yearly checkup at the vet yesterday and weren't too happy about it. When we got there, they quickly found a corner behind the paper towels, where they seemed to think that if they looked away no one would see them.



Am I a bad mother for thinking it was funny and taking pictures with my phone? :)

Jason aka "Top Chef"

I wasn't feeling well today so Jason made us dinner. Afterwards he told me to go upstairs while he made brownies. I stayed, trying to help, and he was pretty insistent that I go upstairs while he made them. I came back down and caught him doing this:



Come to find out, the only reason he didn't want me helping was because he wanted to leave about half the batter in the bowl to eat and figured I would tell him not to. He was wrong - I just grabbed the spoon from him and helped him finish it off. :)

Oliver Winery

Finally! After almost 6 years, Jason took me to Oliver Winery. We went last weekend and it was such a beautiful day. We tried about 8 or 9 different wines (free tastings!), took the tour, and then shared a bottle of wine with some bread and cheese with a couple we met, down by the pond. We ended up going away with 36 bottles of wine! (Not all ours, I promise!) We've branched out from just the soft red, and also bought some Gewurztraminer, Riesling, Catawba, Muscat Canelli, Camelot Mead, Blackberry (yum!) and a fancy dessert wine called Vidal Blanc Ice Wine. We're saving that one for some sort of special event (to be determined at a later date) because it was SOO good. It's made from frozen grapes - hence the "ice wine."

Here we are with the couple that stood next to us during the tasting. We split a bottle of Gewurztraminer, some french bread, and habinaro cheese.