Thanksgiving Weekend

Check out Violette's work. I love her use of color - and the way she just goes for it everywhere in her life.

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Thanksgiving was nice. Steve and I went to his brother's house. It was the first time I've ever spent Thanksgiving with Steve's family, though Steve has come to ours a number of times. Simon went with his dad to his inlaw's, which was nice for him so he didn't end up in a tryptophan stupor from attempting to eat two Thanksgiving meals. Mom and Dad bought a brined turkey breast which they crockpotted (is too a word) and Gretchen and Paul went on a little adventure in New York City. A fine time was had by all.

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Anyone who has known me for more than 5 minutes knows that my number one pet peeve about where I work is that we are open the day after Thanksgiving. The service department, I can understand, but not the rest of us. Sorry, I'll spare you my usual rant (my family can probably recite it in their sleep at this point), but let's just say IT'S DUMB. Yes, that was me shouting. This year, I told "my staff" to take it off and I'd work the Friday, because that's the kind of gal I am. There are usually only about 10 or 15 of us working that day and no one works past 3:00 at the latest. This year, most of us left at noon. (We have to use vacation or comp time, it's not a freebie.)

I brought in breakfast treats for all of us - donuts, muffins and bagels.

I spent a couple of hours Friday morning painting our ladies room! Just the stall walls and door actually. Pictures? You bet I got 'em. You know how I loves me some before and after shots.

Last spring we had our building dude (no, really, that's we call him) paint the bright orange tile walls (yeah, I know) this lovely blue. It's kind of a French blue, with just a touch of lavendar. We had asked him to paint the stall door and walls one or two shades darker. He bought the paint but hadn't gotten around to painting them. It's so weird how his priorities don't seem to align with mine. Whatevah. A couple of months ago I asked him if he minded if I painted the stall. Heck, no! I couldn't quite bring myself to paint on company time when I thought I should be doing more important work, but I wasn't going to give up any weekend Stefani Time either. So last week I decided Friday would be the perfect day to do it.

I took in some of own painting supplies and my painting clothes and got it done in about two hours.

Doesn't it look divine? I painted the inside and outside of the big bathroom door too. I have just about a cup of paint left, just enough in case I need to do some touch-ups.

I may have shown you this skirt before. I bought the fabric and Jen sewed the skirt, which we attached with Velcro. A more perfect match you'll not find, thankyouverymuch. (Plus, the print is hydrangeas - can you stand it??)

This is one of those decorative flags people hang outside their houses. It hangs inside the stall. I just didn't like sitting there (ahem!) staring at a blank wall. The idea was that we could change this seasonally but no one has yet, me included.

It was formerly a men's room though we've always used it as a ladies room. Urinal? What urinal?

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So I left around noon, came home - and Steve and I switched the living room and the family room. It's now how we always wanted it - the living room with no TV, in the smaller room, with the fireplace and the view. When we moved in, we set it up based on where the cable hookup was and now, 5-1/2 years later, pulled the old switcheroo. It's cool - it's like having two new rooms, yet they are very familiar and comfy. I got out a bunch of my snowman decorations and candles to put on the mantle. I'm very strict about not celebrating Christmas in November - that's Thanksgiving's turn. December 1, it's okay to start decorating for Christmas. But, you see, the loophole is that snowmen are winter decorations, not Christmas decorations. So I'm legal. Got it?

Just before we started moving furniture I told Steve we should paint the old living room space first. Thank God he saved me from me because clearly, I was still high on paint fumes from painting the ladies room that morning. It was a lot of work just moving all the furniture. Those couches are heavy - and do not mention moving that giant TV to me. My feet and legs were so sore, I "made" us go into the hot tub at 4:30, before dinner even. Felt great in there and directly after but I stiffened up again while eating dinner and was still sore a bit the next morning. I'm an artiste, dahling, not a physical laborer.

But the rooms look nice. In fact, I must tell you that right now Steve and I are both in our new living room, sitting on the couch, both working on our respective laptops on TV trays in front of us. Are we adorable or what?? (Did you just roll your eyes like Steve did when I said that to him??)

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