Christmas Past

I know most of  you have already started your Christmas decorating and many of you have already finished...

 

I need to get busy!

 

Christmas is only 26 days away!!!

 

At least the  Fall decorations are put away and the house is clean and ready to be decorated for Christmas. (I know I will have to clean it up AFTER decorating, but I just couldn't decorate over and inch of dust. lol)

If all goes well, I'm hoping to get most of the Christmas decorating finished by the end of this weekend. 

 If I get some help.

 (hint hint, Mr. Fanatic and Daughter Fanatic)

Mr. Fanatic may be the handiest, hardworking, diying, husband anywhere (who also cooks and bakes), but Christmas decorating doesn't put him in the best of moods.

 

Will be bringing out some of the pretties from Christmases past...

stencilled burlap table runner...

 

 

...burlap stockings...

oops, I only made 3 last year and a our oldest daughter is flying home from California for Christmas!

Time to make one more...

 

 

Still haven't decided how to decorate the mantel...I'm hoping it will come to me.

 

 

 Need to collect a more branches from the backyard  for a few more rooms in the house...

 

 

Ah, my favorite space in the house to decorate...

The Breakfast Room...

 

 

Can't wait to put the wreaths up!

 

How are you doing with your Christmas decorating?

Are you finished or just getting started?

 

I hope I'm not the only one just getting started!

 

Pam

Garlic Romano Cheese Pull Apart Bread

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving celebration.

Mr. Fanatic cooked an awesome meal, as usual.

 I bought  pecan, pumpkin and apple pies from Trader Joes because Mr. F was out of town Monday-Wednesday and he didn't have time to make them.  It was just the 3 of us this year, quaint and cozy.

 

My favorite part of the meal, next to the stuffing, is the bread and Mr. Fanatic made garlic romano cheese rolls. They are oh, so yummy.  The are a combination of two recipes I found on Pinterest.

 

The first recipe is some no knead rolls that I found on I Lived On Wisteria Lane. They are super good and great for making sandwich sliders.  I recently found a whole wheat recipe similar to these no knead rolls, which Mr. F. is dying to try since we bought wheat berries and grind our own flour...but that's another post.

 

Mr. Fanatic combined the no knead roll recipe with another pinned recipe from Melissa's Southern Style Kitchen. Melissa uses frozen, pre-made dinner rolls and parmesan cheese.

You can vary the size of the pull apart bread depending on how it's going to be served. I prefer little pieces if it's going to be served with dinner and larger if they are going to be used to make sandwiches with them.

These are just the right size to serve with dinner. No butter  needed.
They also taste great dipped in marinara sauce, gravy or with oil and vinegar in a dish.

 

 

Thought I'd share some pics of our Thanksgiving meal... Nothing fancy this year...

 

 

...of course the yummy pull apart bread.

 

The veggies were grown in our garden and fresh picked for Thanksgiving dinner.

 

 

One of my favorite little pitchers...(Majolica- found at HomeGoods)

 

 

Hope you have a lot to be thankful to God for this year....

I know we sure do.

 

 

Pam

Solar Tube For The Upstairs Bath

Mr. Fanatic finished another project on the list. 

It actually wasn't on any of my lists, but Mr. F. though it would be a great idea to put in a solar tube skylight in the upstairs bathroom while we were getting our house re-roofed. The upstairs bathroom doesn't have a window and definitely needed some natural light.

We had the roofers put in the top part of the solar tube.

I don't know about you, but I would have a difficult time cutting a hole in a perfectly good roof!

Velux.com

A hole was cut in the drywall ceiling in the bathroom and Mr. F. put the flange on. Looking through you can see into the attic.

The ducting was connected with the part that goes through the roof.

  

Another piece of ducting attaches to the flange in the bathroom ceiling. All the light you see is from the hole in the roof. As you can see here, an additional piece of ducting was needed to connect the two.

The ducting comes in a couple of pieces and had to be connected with screws and duct tape.

Here's the  duct-work all connected.

Notice how dark the bathroom is when the solar tube is covered up...

...the solar tube brings quite a bit of natural light into the room.

The solar tube really adds the perfect amount of light and the bathroom looks great with the vanity light on

Now that the solar tube is installed, we he can get back to the list...

How are you doing on your project list?

Pam

Super Simple (No Cost) Mason Jar Candles For Fall

Hope you had a nice weekend and did something worthwhile and fun!  

We worked on a couple of things this weekend and had some friends over on Saturday night. 

One of my projects was made for our Saturday evening get together. I was in need of a couple of candles for the basement patio. 

Last year I put together a couple of Mason jar candles for Spring using items I had around the house. I use plastic Mason jar screw on lids to keep the rain out, since these stay outside on the basement patio.

The ones I made last year were looking kind of tired and decided to put together two Fallish looking candles.

 I had all the items on hand and the candles are super easy and quick to put together. I'm sure you have plenty of things around your house to do the same.

Take a clean Mason jar (or any clean jar) and add sand.

Add some jute string...

...and a dried flower to the outside...

...and finally, a candle.

  Finished in just a couple of minutes.

Don't you just love cute, super simple projects that don't cost you anything?

I know I do! 

Pam
joining:
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Between Naps On The Porch

Dropped Ceiling For The Basement Storage Room

A couple of weeks ago, I showed you how we organized one of our storage rooms in our basement with simple shelving and storage containers. 

What I didn't show you was how we finished the room off. When I say "we", I mean Mr. Fanatic, of course. He spent a few weekends finishing off this space while I was recuperating.

The storage room was drywalled and taped, but it wasn't finished and there wasn't a ceiling. 

More on that in a minute. 

Mr. F was going to leave the walls unfinished and just put the shelving up, but since we had a BUNCH of paint samples and some partial gallons, he decided to mix it all up and finish the walls. The containers shown in this pic were used for the undercoat, which turned out to be a beige color. The beige samples were purchased in my decision to find the perfect beige for our Family Room. He used my 10 assorted Benjamin Moore grey paint samples for the topcoat. The grey samples were left over from when I was choosing what color to paint our Kitchen. lol...anyone else have a problem deciding on paint colors?

Here's the room all painted.The color is perfect...not too light and not too dark. Sooo glad to have more room on. my paint shelves in the garage. hmmmmm

Now about the ceiling...

One great thing about having an unfinished basement is being able to get to pipes and wiring for the projects upstairs. Mr. F thought about leaving the ceiling unfinished like this for easy access, but he just couldn't do it because the walls looked so great, painted and all.

So, he decided to put in a dropped ceiling. There are some pretty fancy dropped ceilings out there, but this is a storage room after all, so we opted for the cheapest ceiling tiles. Sheetrock would have been a lot cheaper than a dropped ceiling, but we needed to have access to the pipes and wiring, so it was worth the added cost to have access, but we weren't going to spend more money on fancy tiles. It's a fairly easy project. 

Mr. Fanatic started by putting up the tracks around the edge of the room.

The next step is to add the tracks lengthwise in the center.

Then he added the tracks that connected the lengthwise tracks.

The tracks are suspended by wire to the ceiling joists.

Once all the tracks are up, then the ceiling tiles are put in and sit on the tracks. You just push up on the tiles to get access to the ceiling.

Mr. F installed two can(pot) lights in the ceiling, which now looks clean and finished.

This storage room looks so clean and organized now and the drop ceiling allows for easy access to the pipes and wiring above....

One of our next projects will include accessing the basement ceiling. We just happened to order a new gas cooktop for our kitchen. I've wanted a gas cooktop ever since we moved into our first house back in 1990. It had an electric stove and for some reason, we added a glass electric cooktop(which we've always hated) when we built our home 12 years ago. No one was putting in gas cooktops then and I'm not sure why we didn't ask for one.

Sorry for the rabbit trail....

Before we put in the cooktop, we need to work on the Barn Doors for the Basement and finish up the Solar Tube Skylight, which is partially installed. 

So many projects, so little time.

What do you have on your project list and how do you prioritize it?

Pam