Christmas Joy

We've been enjoying our Christmas present to ourselves as the Old Year draws to a close.

Herb couldn't wait to try it out, so he fired up the grill as soon as it was done--and after it was too dark to see!

The open fireplace has one grill cut to fit inside it for grilling over charcoal and a larger grill cut to fit over the top, leaving enough room to burn logs underneath for grilling over wood--Herb's favorite way to cook!

Dusty, Anthony and Joe Palmer, the owner of McKinnley Excavating, did a fantastic job, and we're so excited with our new patio.

All that's left to do is to get the stone top to fit over the round bench that covers the old cistern (once the quarry opens again in the New Year.)

As you can see, our Christmas present didn't fit under the tree, but we did have some awfully nice elves to thank for it!

We had another Christmas present, too--a surprise!  And it didn't fit under the tree, either . . .

Katie!

And Cameron!  They drove up from Houston and surprised us for Christmas.  Surprise is the operative word here--if you heard blood-curdling shrieks on Monday evening, Dec. 23, that was me when I saw them following Kara out of the study as we walked in the door after having dinner with friends.

We knew Kara would be with us for Christmas, but she had a nice surprise for us too--a beautiful floral arrangement that she made herself.

On Christmas Day we enjoyed some sun for a change and got photos on the patio.  All our Christmas presents in one place!

Kara decked Bonnie and Jet in their Christmas finery and took pictures of them, too.

We feasted on our first Dexter roast done in the oven instead of the crock pot.  Everyone loved it, although I'll turn it over halfway through, next time.  It didn't have a lot of fat on it so I used some bacon to cover a bare spot, but look at that rich yellow grass-fed fat!

On the 26th, Katie and Cameron treated us to another first--a deep-fried turkey!  They brought the fryer and turkey all the way from Texas.

Here's the bird in the fryer . . .

... and ready to be eaten.  It was delicious!

There was more to come, with a homemade plum pudding flambé.  Well, and a bit of tablecloth flambé, too, but nothing that couldn't be mopped up with a towel--and no harm done to the tablecloth!

There!  Isn't that gorgeous!

Of course the fireplace got put to work again, grilling Dexter burgers.

Sorry, that's mean of me!

Everyone else knew just how to get the most out of the patio while Herb grilled.

Here's the master chef with his wood-grilled burgers!

With all of these wonderful Christmas blessings, as I walked around the quiet house on Christmas Eve taking pictures of the glowing Christmas decorations, our theme verse on the mantel seemed especially timely as a meditation for the New Year.

May 2014 be a year full of blessings for each of you!

Feathering Our Nest (July 16)

When we moved here 20 months ago, I thought I could live indefinitely without all the furniture that we left in the old house to stage it.  Apparently, I couldn't.  Recently it really began to get me down not having a couch or rug and using a mish-mash of mis-matched chairs lined up in front of the TV--which sits in all its ugly glory on a bargain table (since I got tired of it sitting on the floor six months ago!)

Our beautiful TV-hiding armoire is still in the old house and will be for some time to come, but we finally have a living room!  And what a difference it makes!  Just having a couch, with the formerly mis-matched chairs meaningfully arranged around a new rug, creates a restful ambience that was missing before.

Last Saturday, Kara spent the day with me tromping from store to store all the way from Tennessee to Alabama, doing the "groundwork" which Herb hates doing.  We came up with this unusual French style leather couch that we found for less than half price at my favorite furniture store, The Furniture Shoppe in Chattanooga.  At The Rug Rack, also in Chattanooga, we found several rugs so beautiful and different that we couldn't decide between them.  It was time to bring Herb in and get his opinion.

He immediately loved the couch, but the rug decision was harder, until The Rug Rack owners suggested we bring our two favorites home for a 72-hour trial period.

After sponsoring a Facebook "contest" for our friends to help us decide between the two rugs, the arrival of the couch and Kara's artistic insights made the choice clear, and this new Pakistani Chobi is now the center of our living room.  Even the striped chair at right, which I thought I would kick out of the living room, finally belongs.  And when the old house finally sells, Herb's French-style leather club chair will find a home just about where I'm standing.

So thanks to Kara for her inestimable help, to Herb for actually enjoying the process--and writing the checks(!), and to all of our friends who voted on Facebook, this mother hen is contentedly clucking in her newly feathered nest!

For any of our local friends who are furniture or rug shopping, we highly recommend both of these merchants.
http://www.thefurnitureshoppe.net/  Both chairs flanking the couch came from here, too.  They will actually come to your house and help you with complimentary decorator's advice.  They are not like many of the discount furniture places where you are pressured and followed around, but you can find high quality furniture at really good prices on sale.
http://www.therugrack.com/  We were leaning toward buying the more expensive of the two rugs when Mrs. Thompson suggested we take them both home for 72 hours because often the light at home changes which rug you think you like.  We might well have ended up buying the less expensive rug, but they cared more that we find the RIGHT one for us!  That is service you just don't find any more these days!

Anything to Put Off Cleaning!

Yesterday we bought this Jacobean Revival (c. 1920) English Court Cupboard, and today I've spent a good part of the day moving dishes, tea, and bottles of alcohol around to get things where I want them!  Of course, rearranging one cupboard-full of stuff means you have to do another one, and so on and so forth!  Anything to put off actually having to clean the house!  But it's so much fun arranging this nifty piece of furniture which hides the messy sink from the dining table, serves as a bar, and even holds tea things, too.  For now, I love it here!  But if we ever get around to finishing off the other half of the attic into a "Grandkids' Dorm," I may just have to move this piece up there.  The theme of the Grandkids' Dorm is going to be "Hobbiton," and this is such a delightfully "hobbity" piece of furniture!  Or I could go antiquing again, looking for another one . . .  Well, not right now; I need to clean this house before Jenny and Jean-Marc arrive--and decide to go stay somewhere else!