Voice of Reason

It feels these days that we have a lot of pots boiling on the stove. Even before our laundry room is finished, Jeff and I are trying to make some decisions about our kitchen redesign but have been quite overwhelmed by the incredible number of choices out there in everything from cabinet door profiles to tile to oven features. Usually, I'm the dreamer and go off on all sorts of wild and wonderful ideas before reigning myself in and coming back to Jeff, who is quite rooted in reality. That was, until we went shopping for kitchen appliances last weekend and Jeff fell completely and totally head-over-heels for this:

Jeff sees this cooktop as a thing of mechanical beauty. I see this cooktop as a mass of unnecessary moving parts that will inevitably go wrong and that probably can't handle my big soup pot in the first place.

We decided that "Star Trek Stove" (as Jeff has affectionately named this one) needs to stay in the showroom and we need to go back to the drawing board. Jeff is quite heartbroken about it. I keep looking outside, expecting to see pigs flying around because this kitchen has totally upended our usual roles. Me- the main voice of reason while finally planning a new kitchen?! It was a little more fun when I was the dreamer.

Christmas Recap

I did fairly well, taking photos up until Christmas dinner. That was when we started getting sick.... and the photos stopped. Here's a recap of our holidays, with the few photos I managed to snap.

Cheap & Cheerful- ivy cut from the backyard for this year's front door wreath

FINALLY ripe! 29 pounds of kiwis picked in early December and made into jam.

This year's tree in green, white and gold.

The new addition this year, inspired by a photo I saw on pinterest and created by a very handy husband. 

Staying with the green and white theme

My first attempt at decorating sugar cookies. Not bad, eh?!

The only craft this Christmas, also inspired by something I saw on pinterest

The family room tree in every colour under the rainbow

Christmas dinner table. After being gifted with red flowers, I made the centerpiece, added some beautiful napkins my mom sewed me a few years ago, threw on some candles and called it done. I'm not usually a big fan of red but for this year, I think it was just perfect 

Someone (AKA Jeff) has been in the candy dish... 

Celebrating the New Year with a cross-country game of Ticket To Ride

Have a heart

Photo from pinterest

Outdoor decor

Several of you have asked about what we did for outdoor Christmas decorations... it was pretty simple this year. The Christmas lights never made it up but I was able to collect enough pine and cedar boughs from my in-laws amazing yard to fill my outdoor planters and trim the door (and have a few fresh garlands inside). After everything we did inside in December (rebuilding the basement stairs, repainting the basement entrance and laundry room, moving out of my office and turning it into another guest room, repainting the living room, and decorating for Christmas), it seemed more than enough. 

Christmas Wrap Up

As I spent yesterday taking down the Christmas tree and decorations, I thought I'd share a photo recap of our Christmas.  

The other very important baby boy in our Christmas

Decked out and ready to celebrate

Opening presents

My only craft project this year- special soothers for Tobias (or for his dad....?!)

Bonding with my very alert and attentive nephew

Two nuts testing the flammability of veggie chips

Happy New Year!

And so a new year has begun. We hope it brings you peace, hope, and many bright moments of joy. 

Merry Christmas

As writing a thesis has interfered with writing a Christmas letter, we hope you will instead enjoy a tour of our past year through picture and song.

Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

Christmas 2011 from S Unger on Vimeo.

36 Musical Days of Christmas

My post about music earlier this week got me thinking about the ways that music is an integral part of life's celebrations- both the happy and the sad.  This year has not been a particularly easy year for us (even with many happy moments along the way) and it feels like we are more aware than other years about how much we have to be grateful for.

Jeff and I are both really looking forward to Christmas this year. We have had a very busy few months of work and thesis research/writing and are really looking forward to a break over the holidays. My family will be here for Christmas and, after my dad's heath crisis this summer, we're so thankful to just be together. There will also be very special celebration of our newest family member, a nephew, who was due to arrive yesterday!  For the first time, Jeff and I will have members of BOTH our families around our table for Christmas dinner (and around our piano for post-dinner carol singing) and we are so excited about this. As this tough year comes to a close, we are very thankful to be ending things on a bright note.

For Jeff and I, celebrating Christmas without music is not an option. There is something about Christmas music that makes our souls sing and fills us with radiant hope. As we enter December this week and an official countdown to Christmas begins, we thought it would be fun to share some of our favourite Christmas music here each day. So from this weekend until New Year's Day, we will celebrate 36 Musical Days of Christmas. It's going to look something like this:

I'll explain what each category means as we come to it this week. It all starts Sunday so stay tuned!   

Being Thankful

The pace of life is pretty monotonous for Jeff and I these days. Today however, we are breaking out of the monotony with some special visits. This morning, I had a great lunch with two friends from school who were passing through Nanaimo. It was so great to reconnect and chat about our thesis projects. As we work through the challenging (and uncertain) terrain of thesis work, it is SO very good to have the support of others facing the same challenges.

This afternoon, I'm getting the house ready for a weekend visit from my brother and sister-in-law (and nephew, who is scheduled to make his debut in about six weeks). We're all headed to Jeff's parents tomorrow night to be part of a crowd of 14 Thanksgiving dinner; I expect we will have a slightly boistrous but very wonderful time. 

Whatever your plans this weekend, we hope you are able to spend time with people you love. We really all do have much to be thankful for. 

New name. New look. New year.

Jeff and I thought that ringing in 2011 was cause for celebration and a little updating around here. We hope you like the new look and thank you for tuning in to make the conversations and sharing here much bigger than we ever imagined this little blog to be. We sincerely wish that the new year will bring:

The warmth of home and hearth to you.
The cheer and goodwill of friends to you,
The hope of a childlike heart to you.
The joy of a thousand angels to you,
The love of the Son and God's peace to you.

Sunshine!

Most of the week before Christmas, it poured rain here. Poured, and poured, and poured. For days. I have a hard time seeing pouring rain as festive, even though the cloudy and wet skies made an easy excuse to say indoors and partake of more holiday treats.

Delo's amazing Snowflake Cake

Eventually, we had to face reality that our front walk and parking area had become a landscape of mini-lakes. When the sun FINALLY came out two days ago (along with unusual sub-zero temperatures here that I won't complain about), we were ready for action. In the space of a few hours, a load of gravel, a load of bark mulch and two energetic rakers yielded some happy results.

Christmas Greetings

Christmas 2010 from S Unger on Vimeo.

A larger version of this video can be seen here

Deck the halls

Jeff and I are looking forward to a relatively quiet Christmas with Stanway relatives here on Vancouver Island. While it would have been great to spend Christmas with our siblings or my parents, we are a little relieved not to be travelling very far.

Since the beginning of December was spent locked in my office labouring over a term paper, decorations this year are fairly low key but that's just fine with us. This Christmas Open House/Tour is for my mom and sister-in-law, two of the most enthusiastic Christmas decorators I know. Welcome to our holiday home!

Living and Dining Room

Entrance and Kitchen

Family Room

My first job was making Christmas ornaments out of nuts (a filbert for the head and a walnut for the body) and the lady I worked for gave a set to my Mom. These ornaments were on a small tree in my parent's dining room until two years ago, when they were passed to me.

Bathroom

Master Bedroom