Cedar Shingles

This is my project that I will be working on for the next few weeks trying to get it ready for Christmas. This is going to be Savannah's Doll House. We have some really good friends who are hooking us up all the time with great stuff. In fact they are the ones who gave us the Christmas lights I mentioned in a previous post. They gave us this dollhouse that had been made for their daughters. Now their kids are older and they've passed it on to us. I am really excited. I have felt like a craftsman sanding it down and getting it ready to stain and paint and fix up different things. There is something therapeutic about working with wood I've decided. The smell of freshly sanded wood has triggered feelings that are a little unfamiliar to me. I have had very strong urges recently to go and buy power tools. Lots of them, I walk through Lowes and I see saws. There are so many different types of saws and I have to ask why? I have no clue what they all really do besides cut wood. But for some reason I must have them, even though I would have no clue really what to do with most of them. Up until now we have not had the space but now I have a garage and this work bench with shelves and hooks and all sorts of space that I know must have held tools prior to us living here. I remember when I was little and watching my dad glue little wood shingles on a dollhouse for my sister. Well we ordered some cedar shingles from a website that specializes in doll house accessories. www.earthandtree.com One of the things that we have learned rather quickly is that doll house stuff is a very specialized market and can be very expensive. It is amazing the different things you can buy like furniture, sinks and fireplaces. Every little detail for a house you can think of and someone makes it on a miniature scale. We are not going to venture into that realm. At least not now anyway, I will see if I can come up with some alternatives. The little blocks of wood you can see on the bottom floor of the dollhouse is some remnants of doll furniture that was made using mostly cut up 2X4's. So I will see what I can put together but I will definitely keep you all updated as it comes along.

Dear Santa

It is always hard going back to work after a four day weekend, I think the thing I was most excited about was my little Charlie Brown tree. It was $1 at Wal-Mart. I know you can probably picture in your mind what a $1 tree looks like and your probably right. It stands about 18 inches tall. It has maybe 24 tips, but once you put a strand of 20 lights in it and add some little mini red ornaments and some white snowflake garland it looks rather festive. I have gotten a lot of compliments so far accompanied with some good natured chuckles. The kids are getting very excited. Hunter asked me the other day why we were putting up all the lights. I told him it was because it is Christmas time. He seemed very excited about my response. The next morning after I had left to put up Christmas lights at Grandma and Grandpa Gollmers Kira told me that she noticed Hunter seemed to be in a little bit of a funk, kinda moping around and he seemed like something was bothering him. So Kira asked him what was wrong and he said "Why didn't Santa come mommy?" The poor boy had thought me saying it was Christmas time meant Santa was coming tomorrow and he had woken up looking for his presents. Kira said it was probably a good hour before she asked him what was wrong so he had spent all that time thinking he hadn't gotten anything for Christmas. I think I have the most adorable kids in the world. We have since reassured him that we will let him know when Santa is coming. Yesterday he told Savannah not to worry because he would make sure and wake her up if he wakes up and finds the presents.

To C9 or not C9?

So we drove around tonight looking at Christmas lights. There are quite few up and it was a fun outing. I think our house looks awesome this year. Last year all we had was some clear C9's. The lights were given to us from some friends who do major bargain shopping and they cleared out Lowes of thousands of dollars worth of Christmas decorations for .05 on the dollar. The lights however were kinda intense. C9's can be bright and these strands had 25 lights on 16 feet of wire. So needless to say last year I had a few fears going through my mind. Besides my power bill I was afraid an airplane would mistake us for the airport and try to land. Can you imagine the news headline, "Christmas lights reek havoc on air traffic" "Breaking news as we go live to the scene." "Sue, what is happening there in that small neighborhood?" "Well Stan, as you can see (camera pans around to show several airplanes lined up in the street) this house right here was so bright the pilots thought the runway had been moved and proceeded to land" "FAA officials have not commented yet but we were able to speak to the owner briefly several moments ago" (clip from earlier) "Sir, what were you thinking?" Me: All I wanted was to put up Christmas lights! (tears roll down my face)

Since we barely avoided catastrophe last year we figured we shouldn't tempt fate a second time. The only question was what did we want to do? I thought that it would look really sharp if we replaced the clear C9 bulbs with red and green. I did this with Kira's grandparents house and it looks great. The only downside to that was we would have to replace 150 bulbs. Let's see, divide that by four bulbs in a pack and $ .96 a pack comes out to be $36 in just bulbs. No fun. Then Kira had a brilliant idea. She suggested we keep the clear and add red. I would like to say I'm joking but heavenly music literally started playing the moment she said it. Pure inspiration.

So I single handedly cleaned Lowes out of every single red C9 bulb they had. Sorry to everyone out there who showed up after I did. I added a few windows and Kira is the sole inspiration for how great our front door looks. The large ornaments were .97 at Wal-Mart. The pictures do not do it justice but I think you can get the idea.

So our house is the sharpest looking one on our street so far. What we lack in quantity of lights we make up for in quality! :)

On a family note the kids have been under the weather again. This time it is a cough that comes with a fever. We have just been taking it easy the last couple of days. We have watched The Polar Express probably ten times. The kids don't know it yet but we have tickets to go this year. I am so excited, we wanted to go last year but we didn't call in time. Kira called about a month ago and they still had a couple of spots. http://www.thetrain.com/

Kira has crocheted us some way cool hats to help with the cold weather in Arizona. Don't they look adorable?