The Christmas cheer begins

This past weekend we kicked off our Christmas celebrations with David's company's annual holiday party. The first couple of years we attended this party, getting ready was always chaotic. We never started getting ready on time, things always took longer than anticipated, and there always seemed to be tons of traffic slowing us down on the drive to the location. As a result, the first few years we always missed drinks and appetizers and only made it to dinner with minutes to spare.  My mom will never forget the year David drove her Tahoe through Boston like it was a race car just to make sure we arrived in time for the first course. 

The last couple of years we have improved our holiday-party-time-management skills and have calmly arrived on time (even early sometimes!). That doesn't mean we don't have our own quirks - like David always takes longer tying his bow tie than he thinks he will (30 min does not equal 5 min) and I always say I'm ready and then think of five things that need to be done as we are walking out the door. This year's party was held at the Boston Science Museum. David has never been there before (it's on our Boston sites to do list), so we tried to arrive early enough to have some time to walk around the exhibits. That didn't prove to be possible, but we did spend some time wandering the halls (and playing with the musical stairs!) before enjoying the party. Here is a picture David's sister Katie (our chauffeur) took before we left. Notice that my mother's dog Coal doesn't want to be left out. 

Saturday we took it easy and began to organize for Christmas. We first had David's work friend and his wife over for waffles (they stayed at a hotel in Boston after the party), and then we went Christmas tree shopping. We had talked about cutting down our own tree, until we learned that all cut-your-own trees in the Boston area were $65! That might sound like a reasonable amount to other city dwellers, but this seemed high to us. We decided to first give a local flower market a shot, and ended up with a nice narrow tree for $45. This is still much higher than we are used to spending for an equivalent tree in Vermont, but that's not unexpected :) We spent the evening listening to Christmas music and decorating our living room. The ornaments are a collection of things each of us have been given (or made as the case may be for many of mine) throughout our lives. We purchased the snowmen stockings last year at Michaels. The green stocking with no name is Pepper's - we got it last year expecting it to be be temporary! Now that he is officially part of the family, we'll write his name on there as well. 

We don't have an abundance of holiday decorations, but we are slowly acquiring more. I personally like the house to look festive but still simple. This candle was a gift at the Milne Family Party last year and it is officially the only scented candle that David has ever liked. It smells like Christmas trees :) 

More Christmas decorations! 

David and I have had seven Christmas's together. Several of those Christmases were spent physically together (we have found an arrangement that works where we spend two days before Christmas with my Dad, Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with David's family, and Christmas afternoon/night and the following day with my mom), and one of those Christmases was spent as an engaged couple. This Christmas doesn't feel a whole lot different, but it does make us smile a little bit more often to think about it being our first Christmas as husband and wife!

Has anyone else gotten their tree yet? Do you like to decorate with homemade and "random" decorations collected over the year, or do you like to decorate using "theme" decorations (e.g., balls and/or bows of all the same color)? We hope you all find some great holiday cheer this year!

Kitchen Drawers

As a reminder, we bought our kitchen cabinets used and as such, had to live with the modifications the previous owners had made to them. Other than a few holes in the back (covered by a new panel), the major modification was that the drawers in the cabinet next to our sink had been removed where a range had previously been installed.

No drawers, just a left over slide on the left. Ugly pulls are still on in this picture!

Now, these drawers are prime real estate, being directly next to the sink and on the side of the kitchen that we use 90% of the time. I decided that it was time to add drawers to it.

I heard from my dad that David Hurwitz (of Hurwitz Originals) that buying premade drawers was a lot easier and overall cheaper than trying to do them yourself. I'm pretty sure I'd struggle making perfect dovetail joints, so I was more than happy to get drawer.com to do them for me. I later found out that newenglanddrawer.com is probably a lot cheaper, but they didn't reply to my online quote request. The drawers looked great when they came, and with shipping and drawer slide hardware, were just under $100 per drawer. Expensive, but worth having the storage space there.

The drawers looked good when they came, and were right on my specification. I later found out that I should have asked for them 1/4" wider, but all that required was a small shim between the slides.

I took off the drawer faces (held in with a block of metal channel) to inspect what I was dealing with. You can see an old slide on the left. You will notice that on the old slide, the slide actually starts about 1/2" back from the face of the cabinet. This means that the style drawers we have, with the face having a protrusion which fits in to the opening, don't work with the new drawer slides I bought. Most modern drawers have the face entirely exterior to the cabinet, which is why the slides are designed to go all the way to the edge of cabinet face.

You can see how the old face extends beyond the side of the drawer, but still fits in the opening.
New drawers don't do this.

I got around this by making little blocks to attach the slides to inset in the cabinet. I used Knape and Vogt soft close slides. They were a little difficult to get lined up correctly, even when I followed a youtube video on how to do it. The video suggested loosely attaching the rear, installing the drawer, and then tightening. Sounded good.. However, it bound like crazy. I ignored the directions for the left drawer and it is a lot smoother! I simply did it all using measurements and tightened it all down. I adjusted the right drawer but it still isn't as good as the left. Having some weight in them also helps have enough mass to make sure they close and hit the soft close mechanism when you give them a shove.

Finished Product!

All in all, they came out pretty well. I both screwed and glued the faces on to make sure they weren't going to loosen up over time. I've also put together some key points I learned doing this in the hopes that I'll remember for the next time.

What I learned:
- Lining up the drawer slides is hard. I think there was a jig I could have bought for like $7, and it would have been worth it.
- I didn't go with undermount slides to match the other slides in the room. In hindsight, nobody would have noticed and I would have had an 8% larger drawer.
- Pick out the drawer slides and then measure for the drawer. I did it in the opposite order and then had to shim as my drawer was a bit too small.

Visiting Gma and Gpa in Delaware

This past weekend we took a trip down to Delaware to visit David's grandparents (Jim and Annetta), who we only are able to see about once a year. It was a fun and relaxing pre-Thanksgiving trip!
As usual, David drove the entire way. I was the happy copilot, trying to think of interesting conversation topics to keep the driver entertained. David says I wasn't always the "happy copilot" and that a couple of times I was the "sleeping copilot". I did my best to stay awake, but something about the drone of a car always does me in... It took us about 6 hours to get down there on Saturday, and 5.5 hours to come back today.

The focused driver

The "happy" copilot

The dogs rode in the back seat. After thinking carefully about the safety implications of having the dogs ride in the front seat on our laps, we invested in a nice soft seat cover for the back (in this picture there is a dog bed in view as well) and two safety harnesses to buckle them in. They didn't seem to mind being tethered, and napped for the majority of the trip. On the ride down we did have one mishap when Ash got car sick (as he often does), but nothing that a few towels and some water couldn't fix. We just threw the seat cover in the washing machine once we arrived at David's grandparents house.

The backseat passengers

David's grandparents had met Ash and Coal last year on our trip down, but Pepper was new to them. His grandmother quite enjoyed snuggling with Pepper, and Pepper was happy to have a lap to sit on and someone to pet him. Pepper also quite liked David's grandfather, and would jump up whenever his lap was available. Per his usual routine, Ash spent the first two days watching from afar or hiding under our bed. By the last day, he was more boldly exploring the house and saying hello to everyone.

Pepper with David's grandmother

Pepper with David's grandfather 

We spent most of the weekend sitting around the table chatting about things going on in each of our lives and hearing many great stories from David's grandfather. Jim and Annetta were unfortunately unable to make it to our wedding, so we spent some time talking them through the event and sharing pictures. We cooked a chicken and veggie stir fry on Saturday night and then steak, broccoli, and mashed potatoes on Sunday night. David's grandfather did the grocery shopping and we did the cooking, which is always fun for us. I share a love of Walker's shortbread cookies with David's grandmother, so these were definitely on our dessert menu each night :) David's aunt, uncle, and cousin joined us for the Sunday dinner - it was nice to be able to spend some time with them as well.

One particularly fun thing from the weekend was the ability to let Ash and Pepper off leash in the big back yard that David's grandparents have. The yard isn't fenced in, but they are located on a very quiet street and there is enough space to run around that we were pretty sure Ash nor Pepper would stay within the perimeter. Pepper, as usual, was very well behaved and stayed right by us. We are training Ash to safely be off leash, so only let him run around with his leash dragging. This helps us catch him if he gets too excited and starts to wander (or run) off. Ash was great though! He responded well to commands (and came running for treats) and wanted to spend most of his time playing fetch with a ball and/or a stick. Sadly, we were so focused on watching the dogs (and staying warm) we forgot to take pictures...

Thanks to David's grandparents for a wonderful weekend - we look forward to when we are able to visit again!