To recap, our house is on the local Altrusa Christmas Home Tour. Our house is small, the smallest on the tour – but we think it is interesting. As you walk in the front door, this is what you see…

And here are detail shots… This is the ornament wreath that Linda made for me years ago. I have to do a little re-gluing each year, and I've broken and replaced some ornaments, but it's a wreath that has held up really well. I love it!

I used to collect the North Pole Village houses, made by Dept. 56. The Claus's house must be at least 25 years old but it still works. Of all of them, it's my favorite.

I also used to collect Santas. I say 'used to' because I have run out of room to have any more, and I'm OK with that. I put them out on the mantle. The crazy-looking Santa on the right in the next photo is my favorite and I'm not sure why. I would not want to see him coming down my chimney!

Look at what's holding the stockings. I just don't like the stocking holders you can buy, but I do love rocks. In fact, you can see some rocks in with the Santas. Anyway, I wrapped bigger stones with wire, making a hook to hold a stocking. Then I tied a ribbon on the stones to make them cute. 

FYI – my stocking is 56 years old, made by my Aunt Helen when I was a baby. I made Steve's about 35 years ago, when we were dating.

I saw some ornaments pre-wrapped in cellophane but they were more than I wanted to pay. So I made my own! This is not hard and it makes a nice centerpiece. I used florists wire to keep the twists tight. Mom suggested running ribbon through the openings in the sides of the basket but I had this wonderful garland and used it instead. Looks good!

I love my twisty sticks with little ornaments. And you might notice the bow on the floor lamp… bows are inexpensive and festive!

I put some vintage tinsel around the front door and tied little bows on the tiles that hang on either side of the door. 

More tomorrow!

We made amazing progress yesterday and today. Here it is, in pictures:

Steve gutted the bathroom. Look on the wall and you can see the concrete squeezed through the back side of the metal mesh from the other bathroom. That's next summer's project. Below, Steve is standing on the subfloor, all concrete and floor tile removed.

Then he carefully removed the tile and cocrete from around the plumbing. Hooray! Nothing broke!

Next, Steve built a new floor for us to tile. It had to be built up 2" to match the adjacent floor. He put in a vapor barrier, insulation, and 3/4" plywood on top of 2/4's that had to be ripped to the right size…

Meanwhile, Chris and I finished replacing the 3 windows. I forgot to take before photos, but imagine bad aluminum windows, with worse aluminum storm windows on top of them. TIP: Just break the glass to remove old aluminum windows. It's the only way.

Here is one new window, trimmed out with Hardie planks.

Here is a different window, painted, with Chris. I did not pose in my working garb :-).

Chris trimmed out the inside of the windows. Elanor helped Chris – here is her first ever cut with a power saw:

I painted the trim, inside and out. So very glad to get that done because it is easy to put the painting off, forever.

The windows were birthday and Christmas presents for Chris and Lorna. I'm glad to have them in now, while the weather is pretty. One less thing to wrap!

Today, Saturday, I taught Chris how to lay tile in the bathroom. He had placed the tile squares on the floor and made sure that everything fit. Amazingly enough we did not have to cut any tiles! He did have to cut some the the 12" tile units to fit, but that was easy.

Chris and I took turns spreading mastic and laying tile. It's not hard, except on the knees. Chris is going to do the grout tomorrow. He's not done it before but I have complete faith in his ability to follow directions. Honestly, if I can apply grout, so can he.

Aren't these pretty tiles! And you know what? They were $3 a square foot. It doesn't get much better than that.

Tomorrow, Sunday, Steve and I are driving to Oklahoma City for his dad's birthday lunch. It's going to be nice to relax a bit. That said, we really do enjoy a good project. Both of us are happy with what we've gotten done this weekend (and I didn't even mention weather-proofing our fence and mom's). Honestly, neither of us sits well. We prefer motion. We're lucky we found each other because I think we would drive other people crazy.

Steve has the turkey cooking and we are going to be having dinner in an hour or two… but this morning we got a lot done that has nothing to do with turkey!

I promised I would share some photos of the bathroom project. Here are some before pictures. 

The color of the fixtures is not horrible but the blue tile was not in the best shape and the walls above the tile were very cracked: up one side, across the ceiling and down the other side.

This built-in cabinet was just not good. Looked bad, wrong size, all bad. We figured we'd take it out and leave the floor tile…

…except that it turns out that the floor tiles are sitting on about 2" of concrete that was poured around the base of this built-in, on top of the subfloor. This is a pier and beam house, it doesn't sit on a slab. Why did they pour concrete?! To top it off, the wall tile has concrete behind it, poured around a metal mesh. What a mess! It all has to come out. 

Steve got this far yesterday and today, Thanksgiving he got farther. Chris and I put replaced the two kitchen windows while Steve worked in the bathroom and then cooked dinner. I'm out of time to write more but I'll share more photos tomorrow. Chris and I have one more window to install, Steve will be back in the bathroom to finish gutting it and to build up the floor so that I can tile on Saturday. If all goes according to plan, that is.

Enjoy your time with family – I know we will!

I don’t know about you but I have been way too busy! My house is on the Altrusa Christmas Tour this year. My house is small (under 1800 sq ft) but at this point I am very thankful that I don’t have 4,000 sq ft to decorate. As it is, it’s as if a Christmas-flavored glitter bomb has gone off in my house! Steve is about to declare it done no matter what I think.

I never decorate for Christmas before Thanksgiving but I decided that I’d better start early this year because next Tuesday, right after Thanksgiving, they are coming to take photos of the house for the newspaper. So far I’ve spent 4 solid days decorating – my usual time is 1 day.

The tour is December 9 and in between the photos and the tour I’m going to to NYC to visit Jeff. To top it off, this weekend (over Thanksgiving) we are gutting and remodeling Elanor’s half bathroom. I’ll post about that starting tomorrow. Next week I’ll show you pictures of the Christmas decorations.

Today, I’m going to share with you a movie I uploaded a few days ago showing the fundamentals of English paper piecing. You can see it here plus there is a link on the Lessons page at pieceocake.com. EPP is fun, portable, and perfect hand sewing for when you are sitting and visiting with family and friends but still want to sew. Happy Thanksgiving!

I don't think I shared the news of the total amount raised by the AAQI Celebrity Quilt Auction – $15,545 with profits going to research to find a cure for Alzheimers! I am amazed and thrilled to have been a small part of this wonderful event.

I have other news… the ePattern went together much quicker than I thought it would. It's up and ready. Click here for more info.

If you are on the newsletter list, you'll get message about this in your inbox tomorrow morning. 

As busy as it's been around here, I should have more news for this post. There is some, I just don't have time to write about it. I'll try to post earlier tomorrow before events take over my day.

I am not a hot dog eater but there must be millions and millions of people who are. How do I know this? Because I just watched the following video. It is an amazing display of the mechanization of food production. It's like a dance – with latex gloves, hair nets, and smocks. 

Alert: If you really love hot dogs I don't know if you should watch this. There's nothing bad that happens, it's just that the magic of hot dogs might be over for you. Now that I think of it, the 'meat' in a hot dog looks like it does because of how it's made. Just watch, you'll see.