haha. Yeah, I tihnk I'd rather just get it all done at once, honestly!

Today I made the pumpkin rolls to bring with us tomorrow, a pumpkin crunch with the leftover pumpkin for tonight.. except we didn't eat it because we also made peanut butter kiss cookies. :P

And for dinner tonight we just had.. apps. Or girl dinner, apparently :P Shrimp cocktail (OK, mostly me), cheese and summer sausage, refridgerator pickles, devilled eggs, and weinies in crescents haha. It was all good, though! Oh, and chip dip. And cookies :P

Sounds like a good dinner to me! Except the pickles and maybe the shrimp cocktail. Not sure I ever had that. I like shrimp, but mostly like, popcorn or battered shrimp LOL

I made the peanut butter kiss cookies a week or two ago, when Shane brought home all those kisses, he asked me to make some so when he swung by he could get some. I have three regular peanut butter cookies left from the end of the batch (I got tired of peeling wrappers so the last batch I cooked was plain pb cookies LOL)

Mmm pumpkin rolls and pumpkin crunch sound good, but whats in pumpkin crunch?

I made the broccoli/rice casserole with FRESH cooked broccoli, because I went to Colliers again (that little market) and did TWO orders this time because they had such good stuff that I liked. And it was worth it. I didn't get any of the "dry goods" except two cheap two-liters of grape soda. But they were supposed to have sugar, cereal, flour, juice and other stuff like that but thats ok, I didn't really need all that. I got the fruit and veg - broccoli, cauliflower, 10lb bag of baking potatoes, a honeydew melon, four BIG plums, THREE 1lb boxes of strawberries, a big box of blueberries, the 2liter of soda, and a 12pk box of mandarin orange cups. - so double that!! Since I got two orders. And one bouquet of flowers. Not a whole box this time, and only one bouquet per person, but still :) a pretty rose bouquet! One fell apart when I went to trim and put them in the vase, so I only have 5 instead of half a dozen lol I am taking some of it over to Wesleys moms house (Katies boyfriend, errrr fiance) as they've invited me and Nathan to come eat with them and Katie and Wes. But Nathan doesn't want to go. I said I would tho. I don't know how much I'll eat hahahah As I'll probably fix our lunch early (like 11) so Nathan can eat, and they're eating at 2....and then I'll have dinner between 6 and 7 a little later than normal.... I will make devilled eggs I think and take them, and I made the broccoli/rice casserole, so I'll take some of that, and ONE of the pumpkin pies I guess, tho I don't like to share that hahaha I'll have to buy and make more pie things when I go shopping this weekend.

Awww, that was nice of them to invite you guys!

And that sounds incredible, Kat! What a bounty!

Pumpkin crunch is my FAVORITE thing, and it's so easy.. it's like a pumpkin pie filling on the bottom, kind of, then the top is a box of yellow cake mix, two sticks of melted butter, and some nuts supposed to be pecans, we do walnuts because we always have them). But it's just so yummy!

We had breakfast this morning.. leftover devilled eggs, bacon and scrapple.. and cookies and mimosas (the kids had sparkling grape juice in them!). And then Lily went over to Connors house, they're eating around 11-12. And then I'll pick her up and bring her over to my in-laws.. and Connor is going to his dads. Then Connor is coming to our dinner around 5, apparently. Poor kid is going to die :P

Well Nathan didn't think he'd wake up early (guess who was up at 9am) so I didn't fix lunch, so I'm starving. LOL I did make bread, and pumpkin pie this morning. I ate a mini loaf of bread and butter for lunch. I didn't do the deviled eggs. Oh well.

Scrapple? Girl. You got to stop naming these things I don't know what they are LOL I saw the mimosa picture of Iz. Whoa so much food for Lily - she'll be stuffed, unless she moderates how much eats.

About to separate some of the casserole so I can take it over, Katie said Wes liked it and was excited I was bringing it. And sort out what goodies from Colliers I'm taking over. Katie said they were going to start playing games around 3, so I might stay and play a few games since Shane said he won't be here til after 6. I do need to come home so I can finish the ham (Nathan said he'd put it in for me, it'll take 2hrs) and I DO want to still so some deviled eggs for me. Just a few tho, like 3? Its harder to make less but I won't eat a bunch of them. So I never do more than 6 and even that is still too much so I want to try doing just 3 eggs LOL

I forgot about the parade, but its a good thing because I never would have got the tv figured out, but Nathan put it on when he got up, so we watched the rest of it :) Got to see Santa and thats the big thing lol

We made 6 eggs for devilled eggs haha.

Scrapple is.. kind of? like sausage, but.. not quite. It's got everything but the oink, apparently.

Lily ate two pieces of bacon and one glass of juice for breakfast, so I'm sure she'll be fine :P She doesn't really eat much generally, only one big meal a day.

What? WHAT? Ok I really thought it had something to do with apples.

I really didn't eat a lot of dinner, not after eating at almost THREE pm at the ..... fiancé's parents' house :P How do you say that? they aren't MY inlaws, they WILL be hers, but like, uuummmm lol i dunno. So much to type out "Katie's fiancé's parents" :P lol surely there is a shorter word for it. (I said boyfriend and she corrected me hahahah) Pie later. Ham biscuits for breakfast I think. :) 6 eggs is what most recipes call to use I think. Because it makes 12 halves. Most people I know double it and do a dozen eggs. WAAAY too much for just lil ole me. Three eggs would probably be too much. I didn't do them because they'd made deviled eggs over there so I ate some there, even tho theirs included relish or pickle bits or something (most people do use that I know, but I do NOT use relish, just a tiny bit of pickle juice to get the tang...i tried apple cider vinegar one year, but I don't normally have that, and I almost always have at least one jar of pickles I can steal a few drops from)

anyway. YAY FIRESIDE!!!!

Yeah, we just use pickle juice too.. my BiL used relish yesterday and I didn't like it at all, I've NEVER had them like that?!

Mmm I might have to get some fake snow. (cotton batting type) I decided to hide all my flowers/cats that I normally have on display behind the gnomes and the countdown to Christmas truck...but I can still see them sort of, so maybe some fake snow behind them. Or maybe a bit of christmas wrapping paper or tissue paper to help hide them. I have LOTS of white tissue paper...

I put up my decorations. Nathan says it is way too much for the day after Thanksgiving eyeroll :P The eyeroll was HIM and ME at him LOL

But anyway I divided and conquered and so I have all my gingerbread things on top of the china cabinet, the M&Ms are on the dvd shelf, except the plate, it didnt' fit...and the trucks/gnomes/bears are on the fake fireplace And the tree is up. And I am thinking instead of all the individual ornaments I might just do the glass ball ones this year. I go back and forth, and sometimes when we had real trees and they were huge, we did both. BUUUT, Belle is inside due to the cold a lot, and the glass balls break. If she knocks down the others, they don't break...maybe I'll do the others after all. I dunno. I like the glass ball idea, last year we did the other ornaments. Its a white tree with colored lights (fake) - Nathan picked it last year after I didn't let him get the rainbow tree. I prefer green trees honestly, but this is pretty. And I think the glass balls would look really nice. I dunno yet.

edit: hahah I just looked at my photos from last year. Well I used mostly glass balls last year. Lovely memory I have. I did use SOME of the other special ornaments, just not all of them. Hmmmm....

edit again : Ok so I went with the special ornaments and not the glass balls, BUT if after Nathan puts his ornaments up, then if it still looks bare, I'll add glass balls.

I don't see why you can't use the special stuff AND the balls, honestly! A tiny bit of cohesiveness? Or something? :P

We spent all day cleaning.. and did not put up decorations.

Still lots more to clean tomorrow, but then we're going to put the stuff up! At least the tree, but probably everything.

But like.. we were REALLY cleaning.. SCRUBBING floors, cleaning the walls, dusting everything, getting rid of tons of stuff, etc etc etc. Just a few rooms to go! Who needs spring cleaning when it's almost CHRISTMAS?!

Oh wow. MAJOR cleaning there. I kind of dusted off when I moved stuff and then put the stuff up lol on the fireplace area.

I need to deep clean sooooo badly. But it's so much effort. And I'm too lazy. Mostly I surface clean :P I look at my baseboards, or my walls and think "need to scrub that good" but never do it.... I would like to wash the walls and even repaint them to be honest. But so many other things need doing too. one day I'll at least do the small stuff. Although I REALLY need to do the big stuff. Just can't afford it (like fixing the foundation and then releveling the floor and that would require replacing the kitchen cabinets (I've noticed some cracks in the wall in the kitchen) :( and also redoing the flooring too as all that would have to come up and be replaced. Oh and the bathtub in my bathroom as well would have to come out to relevel the floor.

I think it will depend on my mood once Nathan puts his stuff up. And how I think the tree looks :) AND if I decide I want to deal with broken ornaments from Belle's lovely huge heavy whacking tail :P I did put some white tissue paper behind the decorations to hide the other decorations. Nathan says I need to add small snowflakes or snowflake stickers to make it look like its snowing and not just have plain tissue paper. LOL So I will see what I can find next time I go to the store :P

Yeah, we need to do some big stuff.. especially including painting, I noticed the stair walls, especially, are REALLY bad.. and the downstairs bathroom could use some touchups. Painting is really a small thing though, so that we probably COULD do!

But basically half the house needs new flooring.. the bathrooms, the kitchens.. anything that's not the hardwood. And that needs refinishing, but that can wait until the kids move out.. or grow up the rest of the way :P

Yea. I dunno when I'll be able to get ANYTHING done. I hope to manage to include the foundation stablization in my mortgage, but with the interest rates up, and the property taxes up, I don't know if even stretching it back out to 30yrs would make me be able to afford it :( I have to try and keep my payment around what it is now or I KNOW I can't afford it. Lower is better. I only need a 39k mortgage atm, but the foundation people said 20-25k to stabilize it :o And I think I'd rather finance that with my mortgage than with them. Because their "payment plan" required 4-5k down, and then paid off in 10yrs, (not 30 like the mortgage!) So that'd be another $200+ a month payment and I do NOT have that. And I know I'd end up paying more in interest in the long run, but a cheaper monthly payment is something I need. Once that is taken care of is when I'd have to look into what else it would cost to do the other stuff. Slowly I guess, even tho I'd rather do it all at once and be done. MAYBE one day in the future I COULD do it all at once with a mortgage refinance (Like 10yrs down the road) because there is TONS of equity in the house I could use, BUT I'd have to pay able to make the payments on that you know what I mean?

Yes! Buy a can of paint and do one room. Then another can of paint and another room. We were able to afford paint for all three kids bedrooms one year, it wasn't too bad. I think they all chose 2 colors, so we had 6 cans of paint. We got the paint+primer paint cans (that have the primer mixed into the paint). Of course, that WAS like 10+ yrs ago. Paint IS probably more expensive now :P

I even have paint to do the bathroom, it's still not that old. Just have to do it :P

The stairs won't take much honestly.. except the problem is, we'd also have to do the 'living room' where we have our computers, and the old dining room. Because they're all the same. And the ceilings.. and the stairs are two stories and super hard to get to to paint, because.. stairs?! haha.

Oh gosh, yeah, that's a lot of really big stuff. At least the floors can wait until we're ready, they're just.. blah. Well, our bedroom is just naked concrete, but.. IDK that's fine too honestly :P

Oh well in that case...one wall at a time hahah! Stairs, then one wall at a time :P Make it a painting party? My kids had a blast when they got their friends to come help paint...Of course, I did end up with handprints in the kids bathroom for a few years before I got tired of seeing it and repainted the bathroom myself (they'd almost run out of paint and decided to be cute and put their handprints on the wall in the area they didn't paint with the little bit of paint that was left) LOL Paint is good for quite a while, as long as you mix it back up. Give it a look :)

Noooo I couldn't have concrete (I mean, I DO have a concrete slab under my carpet) I'd have to at least get throw/area rugs !! :P I hate cold floors.

I have uhhh.. old pillows and a dog bed across the floor, step from place to place :P It's VERY bougie :P

I'm sure I could AFFORD the like, $75 worth of paint.. it's just such a HUGE project.

That honestly, has to wait until spring because it's too cold to paint right now, already :P

LOL well I guess that is better than cold floors to step on! Thats why you break it down into smaller parts, so its not such a huge project ;)

Oooh I got a forum point, go me!

yes but it's all one room! I'd go insane if it was super mismatched hahaha.

Though.. the ceiling over the stairs never finished getting painted the first time :P

YAY for forum points!

lol yea, I get that. I'd probably be that way too, want to get it all done so it didn't look off. I also hear that "not finished painting" thing LOL My bathroom, and the kids bathroom honestly, and the kitchen, never got done. The edge by the ceiling in the bathrooms, and one and a half walls (the smaller not so visible ones thankfully) in the kitchen LOL I wanted to put up some sort of glued on strip of decor in the bathrooms. Never did. Thats why I didn't paint all the way to the ceiling.

I want to repaint my door. And I will, once I get the siding and windows fixed. It's a metal door, I love it because I can use this super strong magnet to hold decorations on it (Like I'm about to put up a tinsel candy cane thing for Christmas time) But it needs to be sanded and repainted, its nasty filthy dirty stained and scratched lol The other contractor is going to come next week to look at it and give me a quote. STILL have not heard back from my first contractor. Ugh. SO annoyed.

Ooooh, that does sound nice though!

I CLEANED our door today, that made it look a LOT better haha.

Scrubbed it with lysol wipes.. along with the walls :P Honestly though, I can't believe how much nicer the house looks, it REALLY needed it!

Oh yes. Scrubbing makes a big difference. When I clean the door it does look nicer. It DOES still need to be painted tho ;) I haven't cleaned it in a while either tho :P lol Not the outside anyway. I did kind of half-ashed scrubbed the inside a few months ago.