Tag Archives: NaBloPoMo2015

Fare thee well, NaBloPoMo

Let us all greet November 30 with a grand and glorious HELLO. These last 30 days, we have marked my birthday, Petey’s birthday and my dad’s birthday. We have discussed ’80s movies and Thanksgiving movies. We have played pinball and started a book club and spent an entire day together via my camera.

Once again, folks, we have survived National Blog Posting Month! And the world shall continue to turn, and my family shall continue to request dinner. Here’s what we’ll be eating this week:

Monday: Meaty mac
Every now and again Pete grabs a box of Hamburger Helper and says “Hey, can we get some Meaty Mac?” when we’re at the store. And sometimes I say yes. This is one of those time.

Tuesday: Grandma’s birthday dinner
We’re taking my mom out for her birthday.

Wednesday: Butternut squash ravioli
Harris Teeter had their butternut squash ravioli buy-one, get-one-free this week, and it reminded me that Poppy used to enjoy them. We’ll see if she still does!

Thursday: Cracker Barrel chicken tenders

This time last week we were having a slightly larger poultry experience.

Friday: Breakfast for dinner
We’ll be having eggs, veggie sausages and hashbrowns.

NaBloPoMo November 2015

Looking for more mealtime inspiration? Check out Menu Plan Monday at OrgJunkie.com!

The stockings are hung, the eggnog is flowing and Space Ghost is on the tree

Rockford and the kids spent a lot of the weekend getting the house ready for the holidays, and as a result it’s begun to look a lot like Christmas at our house.

There’s a little telephone shelf on our living room wall from way back when people actually had home phones. Poppy took charge of decorating it this year. I love that she gave the Griswolds’ car a place of honor.

santa

Instead of driving out to the Christmas tree farm this year, we decided to get our tree from the grocery store. It’s a good-looking tree, and it cost half as much. We may be grocery-tree people now. We also have small, tabletop trees in each kid’s bedroom. Pete’s is a white tree, and he uses most of Rockford’s “Star Wars” ornaments to decorate it. Poppy’s is a sparkly pink Barbie tree that’s pre-decorated.

trees

Here are a few of our favorite ornaments. Rockford’s grandmother gave me a couple of White House ornaments over the years, and I love them. I’m hoping to get the 2015 one for Christmas this year (a hint I’ve already strongly dropped to Rockford). I’m not sure how long Rockford’s had his Hoosiers champion ornament, but it’s one of his favorites. And of course there’s Space Ghost. Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without the good cheer that Space Ghost brings to the tree.

ornaments

Rockford and Pete decorated the mantle this year. They took a more minimalist approach than I usually do. They did a great job.

mantle

The ornament display trees on the mantle are new to this year’s holiday decorating. I give Poppy and Pete an ornament every year so they’ll have a nice collection of them when they move out and have their own places and their own trees. This is the first year we’ve put any of them out. Poppy chose to display her first ornament, which I bought at Bluestem in Columbia MO in 2005, and her two cat ornaments. I bought the Marsha T. Cat portrait in 2011, and my friend Melissa made the felt portrait of JJ T. Cat for me in 2013. Pete’s picks were his first ornament, the personalized block I commissioned from Robin Plemmons in 2010 and the Flapjack’s Pancake Cabin ornament I gave him last year.

kidornaments

Rockford has been slowly amassing a collection of outdoor lights over the years, and his decorating out there has expanded from the bushes in front of the house to the flower-bed-island-thing in the middle of the yard. I’m thinking of making some of the giant ornament balls we saw in my brother’s neighborhood at Thanksgiving to hang in one of the trees out front. I also saw a how-to for some ginormous light balls that stay on the ground when I was searching for the ones for the trees. There may be some DIY in our future.

NaBloPoMo November 2015

Pete and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad disaster of a bedroom

My plan for today’s post was to share pictures of our Christmas decorations. But then we started cleaning Pete’s room, and it turned into this:

IMG_4943

Bins were labels and reorganized, hidden deposits of candy wrappers were discovered, tears were shed. It took hours and hours and hours. If his room’s ever in that shape again, we’re just going to clear it out with a Dumpster.

NaBloPoMo November 2015