Pulling your card

The first Christmas after we got married, I was so excited to be able to send out legitimate Christmas cards. It has been the bane of my existence ever since. It takes me a month to pick the card I want. Everybody in my family hates me for making them get dressed up to take pictures. Buying stamps means I have to run an errand, which I really hate doing.

This year, we decided that we would rather keep the $150 we spend on Christmas cards dedicated to the budget for our boys' Christmas presents. And that we would use this online medium, which most people who would receive a Christmas card check from time to time, to deliver our photographic wishes for a Merry Christmas to all of you.

Not because we don't love you and don't want to send you a printed 5x7 piece of cardstock with an adorable photo of our kids and a delightfully warm and sentimental holiday phrase on it. But because we love our children more than we love you, and we want to give them more Christmas presents.

So, if you are our grandparent, parent, aunt/uncle or sibling, you got a Christmas card. If you're our cousin, co-worker, boss, friend or neighbor, you get to see it HERE, on this blog.

One year ago this day we were going to retrieve Corey from the Plaquemine Armory. Our year of deployment had ended.

They look like such babies in this picture.

This year has been delightful and painful, for the love, equality and strength of opinions Corey and I share as a married couple, and for the rewards and challenges of raising two boys. I feel the blessings of the good thoughts of our friends and family, and complete strangers, who share this journey with us on this blog. I hope your year brought you more delights than challenges. More nice than naughty.

You might not know it from all the complaining we do, but the Allbrittons have a lot of "nice" to celebrate this season.

Space Planning, Neurotic-Style

I am a plan ahead-er. I look forward. Way forward. Forward to the point of “why are you thinking about that right now?” I have not yet revealed to you my guest room converted to a guest room/home office SIX MONTHS AGO, because it is not finished, yet I am constantly imagining ways to make room for baby in this room.

(The reason the room is not finished is because I also share it with Lily’s food and litter box. I have devised a solution for the litter box and cat food, but have not had the time to implement. We are going to put a pet door in the unused cabinet under the sink in the boys’ bathroom, so that Lily can go potty where people are supposed to potty. And the smell of poop already permeates that bathroom, constantly. But it makes no sense to do that until we paint the bathroom. I’m hoping to do that during the Christmas holidays. Don’t worry. If you come stay at my house today, I put the litter box in my bedroom. But I digress.)

I currently have the almost-ideal professional situation to accommodate a baby, the ideal one being a loaded husband so I do not have to work. Obviously, a nursing, pooping baby needs to be in the same room with me, so this room will eventually (in the next two years) need to become a baby nursery/guest room/home office. I considered moving the desk into my bedroom, but I like the retreat of the office in a room that is not often used and has NO dog or children traffic.

The one thing this third bedroom, which is the smallest, has is a good closet. It has two bi-fold doors and is about 18 inches wider than the doors on each side. Currently, it stores four plastic bins that hold Christmas decorations, a small box of unused blue and white porcelain (no Cydney, you cannot have it), my wedding dress and a folding bookshelf, all of which could find homes in other parts of the house.

Enter my genius idea – the OFFICE CLOSET. Check out some Pinspiration. Please also check out the sources.

This one is smaller than mine (yay!) but is tracking on the mirror. I love all that bin and shelf storage, but I am not expecting to be so precise in my own space. Nor will I put anything on my doors.  From here.

In this photo you can see the shelves on the side, though I do not understand how they get stuff in them. I'm liking the wall lamp, but doubt it would work if I hung a mirror. And LOVE the pretty wallpaper. From here.

This is more what we would be working with for my space. My closet option is a big deeper and much wider than this. But look how clean and functional it is, and those sliding doors at the top. Be still my heart! From here.

See those shelves on the side that face the desk? Let's plan on those on both sides of my closet office. I really do not keep much office stuff at home, but it would be nice to store extras, and for the printer to not sit on the floor. From here.

I just realized, from looking at those pictures, that it is a sin and a shame that I do not have a garbage can in my home office. How improper and unofficial.

My desk will fit straight into the center of it, along with the mirror that hangs above it, which would reflect light from the window behind it. The clothes bar could be removed and the top shelf could remain a functional storage space. Into the deep sides of the closet, we could put shelves using boards and brackets for the printer and MORE storage. And I could paint it a bold color – maybe even the leftover turquoise from the front door! We would lock it somehow when not in use so a crawling baby could not make trouble or a mess in there. Since I am removing the clothes storage purpose of a closet, I could opt to replace the current chest of drawers with an armoire or chiffarobe.

I made a pact with Corey that I would stay in this house for at least five years, so we would be in a bigger house when the boys are teenagers and a Wilson-Allbritton child starts school. Who knows what my professional conditions will be then?

See, way forward.

I like to make accommodations to our current needs and situations without completing ruining the future resale value of our home. I believe in neutral walls (except in bathrooms where you can go bright. The boys’ bathroom is going to be light kiwi green on the walls and a darker grass green on the cabinet.) A bright color in a closet is not going to decrease the desirability of our chalet garden home.

I’m inspired and excited and impatient and want to do this right now. Spaces evolve to fit you. But, promises were made (to not make him move again for a while) and priorities adjust. This is the current home project list we are endeavoring to complete right now:

            1. Paint the boys’ bathroom ($)

            2. Adjust the cabinetry in the kitchen to accommodate an over-the-range microwave ($$)

            3. Paint the lower cabinets in the kitchen a darker color ($$)

            4. Create an office closet in the guest room ($)

            5. Paint our bedroom (four doors and lots of trim=daunting) ($$)

           6. Have custom built-ins installed in the living room to hide the TV and display Corey’s book collection) ($$$$)

And then, we'll move! I kid, I kid.

A Literal Sh!tstorm

This is a post about how what we put our parents through when we were little comes back to haunt us when we are trying to raise children of our own. I was nearly perfect, but obviously with the spawn of Corey Allbritton, we have a long road ahead of us.

I love you, dear.

Actually, this one may be my bad. See, when I was in the fourth grade, my mom taught at the school I went to, though she did not teach my grade. In the mornings, I would hang out in her classroom instead of socializing outside. I hated the heat more than I loved my friends. If you were a girl in grade school, you remember that you had rotation of best friends and fell out with other girls your age all the time. So in one round of falling out with a particular friend, I wrote that she was an asshole on the chalkboard in my mother's classroom. Then the bell rang, and I left and forgot to erase it. Then my mom's students came in to read my declaration. And my mom followed. And I got in big trouble. Big. Huge.

Tonight, Corey called me to tell me that the boys had drawn a picture on the bus that they were fairly proud of, and eager to show him when he got home. And the babysitter before he got home. I'll share it with you now. You'll be proud for me.

It's good, right? Let me zoom in a little so you can see the important little details.

Wait, I just want to make sure you do not miss the one spectacular detail that appears seven times on the front of the page, and one time on the back.

That's right, internet. My little angels spent a thirty minute bus ride peppering a drawing of people dying in war with exclamations of "sh*t." My husband will attest to the accuracy and frequency of that word's use in battle, but my children a) have never been in battle and 2) are not allowed to use that word.

That sentence is a nod to my seester, who has watched "Home Alone" 812 times, and loves when Buzz uses a, 2 and d in a sequence.

Yesterday their dad told them that they needed to be sitting together on the bus, because Landen is getting picked on by two older kids. So today, they apparently did what they were told. And found a way to creatively entertain themselves through the pen-and-paper medium. It was Jake's idea to spice up the drawing with a curse word. It was Landen who decided to make a theme. Repetition is important in getting your point across, my communications professors always told me. This fits with the broader theme of giving Landen an inch and having him run off with your whole entire tape measure, which is something we battle daily.

I'll spare you the lecture they got or the punishment we levied and leave you to laugh/be glad you're not me/dread when your boys are my boys' age/nod with the knowledge that this is what we can expect when we curse in front of our children. That last part you can keep to your f*#king self.

Off to a Shaky Start with my Tannenbaum

Remember that I love Christmas and count down the days every year, all year until it's appropriate and not obnoxious for me to start singing Christmas music and decking my halls?

My Christmas tree is going to be the death of me. I cannot win for losing with this thing. A real tree cannot sustain the weight of my adornments and droops. Assembling and fluffing a fake tree makes me want to commit hari kari. Where is the win here? If I had a house with more space that I could use, I would store a tree upright, but I have tall ceilings and no storage, so that will not work. I may, *may*, MAY bite the bullet and buy a fake tree after Christmas, when they cost zero dollars, and try it out next year.

In keeping with tradition, the plan was for the Allbritton Christmas tree to be selected and brought into the home the day after Thanksgiving. I took the advice of several friends who convinced me that trees from the tree lot were cut weeks ago and therefore not able to sustain in a watered pot for six weeks to find a cut-your-own-tree farm and select a tree from there. I informed Corey in July that this would be the method we would employ in getting our tree. Friday, before kickoff, the four of us loaded up in Dad's truck and headed for the Christmas Farm in Zachary to chop down our tree.

It was hot and humid, perfect Christmas-tree selecting weather. You will only think that's funny if you've ever spent a tropical Christmas season in Louisiana. Vehicles drive into the farm and they hand you a saw and tell you to only cut trees with white tags. The first thing we came across was this

Death and decay 'neath a Christmas tree. We did not pick this tree, nor any tree in its vicinity. This really set the standard of excellence for family outings for the boys though. They identified teeth and speculated the entire time we were there about what kind of animal it might have been and how it met its death.

I really do not care how other people feel about the tree. Ask my sister. I am the one who strings the lights and hangs the ornaments. I find a possible tree and walk in a circle around it looking for giant holes, examine how crooked the trunk is and give Corey an ultimate veto power. Jake and Landen were involved in that they asked their dad "is she ever going to pick a tree?!" a whole bunch of times.

She did pick a tree, about a quarter mile from where she got out of the truck. It's allegedly nine feet tall (it's not) and it was full with no holes and was the right price. No bones were at the base, so Corey cut 'er down.

While the children either watched for it to fall over or tried to walk away. They also decided that the tree was too heavy for them to help Corey carry it 100 feet to the truck, which I had relocated since we identified a tree so far away from where we parked. We just threw it in the back of the truck, paid for it on the way out and hit the road.

When we got it home, there was some arguing about how to get it in the stand and some threats about throwing it away immediately, but within twenty minutes it was in the house and watered, and it barely shed during that process.

These trees are not fir trees. The needles are different. They also do not come in tall and skinny. They only come in fat and expensive. A tree the correct height would have been way too wide to fit in the designated corner, which is really the only option for Christmas tree display that doesn't require rearranging major pieces of furniture. So it's too short and it's too fat, bah humbug. But I have a lot of pride in my ability to adorn a tree, so it's decorated very glamorously in all red, white and silver embellishments. And I'm pretty sure it hangs a little lower when I get up every morning, but whatevs.

The experience was super easy, but I did not have the "Thith tree is the thymbol of the thpirit of the Grithwold family Chrithmuth" moment I was hoping for since July.

Yesterday Jake plugged the tree in and no lights came on. 2011 may not be the Year of the Tree for me. I am going to Jena this weekend to put up my mom's tree, which is also the tree under which Santa leaves my children their gifts, so by that description it is probably the more important of the Two Trees of Christmas.

Everything else pretty much looks the same as it did in this post from last year. I do have a prized addition though. I got a Nativity scene!

I hung the Fat Elvis of wreaths in the dining room this year, because it actually blocked entry into our house on the front door last year.

My mom has a nativity scene that she got from Horchow "a million years ago", making it unavailable for me to purchase and present in my own home. She is also unwilling to part with hers, as we've enjoyed it as a part of our holiday adornments for as long as I can remember. After Christmas last year, I mentioned to my cousin, who has a flair for the decor, that I was holding out for a terracotta nativity scene like my mom's. And hallelujah! She had one in storage that she does not use any more and donated it to the Allbrittons. Added fun: she bought it at a church fair when she lived in Baton Rouge twenty years ago and attended St. Jude, OUR church and the boys' school!

I stuck the angel in the Fat Elvis wreath, because where else should she go and look down on the Baby Jesus and light the way for the wise men?

A thorough person would have ironed the burlap runner she pulled out of the dirty clothes basket on the dryer before putting the nativity scene on it, but it is flat now, so relax.
 
I love it. It completes me. And my holiday home.
 
Also, the Baby Jesus comes out of his manger, and he has a naked butt and a butt crack and Jake and Landen think that is the most hilarious thing ever.
 

Saturday afternoon I was walking through busy Perkins Rowe with Jake and Landen going to meet my parents for lunch and could not get my companions to keep up, walk normally or kept their hands to themselves, so right there in the middle of the sidewalk, with people all around, I started singing "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" at the top of my lungs. Both of them looked like they had been electrocuted and Jake ran and hid in a corner of a building. Landen started begging me to tell him what they should do to get me to stop. It was highlariously fun and effective.

 
I hope I get the chance to threaten them with that at school.
 
There is joy all around in the Christmas season.

Adventures in Wreath-Making

This post could also be called “Crafting with Wine.” Or, most accurately, “Sh*t I Will Never Do Again.”

No, it was not that bad. It was tedious. And it took forever. And the outcome was neither symmetrical or perfect, which are two unrealistic outcomes I strive for during every DIY project, the unsatisfaction of which is the reason why this is not strictly a DIY blog and why I do not craft for a living. I’m not going to tell you not to do it, because it was simple and relatively inexpensive. I will share with you why I hope this wreath lasts me forty years so I do not have to do this again.

Me loves ornaments. Specifically red and silver ones, which are the only ones allowed to join the festivities in my house at Christmas. Last year I wanted an ornament ball wreath for the front door, but splurged on a wreath that is so bodacious my children had to open the front door all the way to come inside. It is the Fat Elvis of Christmas wreaths. I worship it.

This year with the addition of our uber-fabulous turquoise front door, which my short, walking, talking units of testosterone and boogers still think is odd and does not match our house, I resolved that I would make a red-and-silver ornament ball wreath for the front door. Because buying one from here or from here would have been too simple and impersonal, and I’m all about personal touches.

The opportunity for a seizing of creativity came two weekends ago, when the boys were in Beaumont and Corey was in New Orleans for a class. This girl hauled off to Hobby Lobby to score some supplies at 6:30 on a Friday evening. I know women are supposed to be “gatherers,” the historical term for “shoppers,” but I defy that characteristic because I hate to shop. Order your supplies from Target. I bought 130 PLASTIC red and silver and white ornaments of various finishes and sizes, all half off, and a straw wreath, which you will leave the plastic on. The hot glue melts and fuses to the plastic on the wreath, so there is some extra hold there. You can also use a foam one, which I’m told works just as well. It’s also probably more visually pleasant from the back.

I recommend you start here, but this step is completely optional.

You have to pull all the little tips off the ornaments and throw them away. I glued ornaments in a circle all the way around the outside of the wreath, standing them out where the tip used to be. I wanted a wreath as wide as I could get it.

I did the same thing around the inside. It is not going to matter if the ornaments do not meet up perfectly. That gap will be covered when you fill it in.

Stability in your wreath, which at this point is floppy when you pick it up, is achieved by putting a dot of glue between each perimeter ornament and sticking them together.

After you wreath is stable, start filling it in. I could have done it a little tighter, but I was trying to make 100 large ornaments work. My bad. I could have used 110 or 115, but by the time I realized that, Hobby Lobby was closed.

Now, I will blame it on my frustration and partial boredom at this point that that pictures stopped, because this is around the point that I realized that I did not have enough ornaments and since Hobby Lobby was closed, I would be schlepping back over there on a Saturday.

I wanted it to be more than just round sparkly ornaments, but could find no inspiration for what that extra glitz should be. I hung it on a door and looked at it for a while before going to bed.  The next morning, I braved Hobby Lobby for twenty more small ornaments and some accents. I ended up with a silver "Noel," a red reindeer and a white snowflake. I also bought a wooden "A" and modge-podged some candy cane wrapping paper to it. All of these items are stuck to the wreath with high temperature hot glue.

There are about 150-160 different sized ornament balls on this wreath and there are STILL holes. I just got to the point where a) I could not add any more and take myself seriously and b) realized no one would see my small holes from the street.

For the size, which measures about 28 inches across, the $50 I spent on it it way less than I would spend for a similar wreath of a smaller size from my favorite Christmas stores. It may have to be an indoor wreath next Christmas. We will just have to see how it holds up. So far, in the six days it has been on the door, I've only had to replace two ornaments that fell off, and closer inspection revealed they were not glued that well to begin with.

I am getting much braver on the crafting. Look out, Martha.

The Official Chili Recipe for People Who Don't Eat Ground Meat

Could also be titled "Cooking Chili that Picky Eaters Eat."

I do not eat ground meat. Any of it. Ever. This means I do not dine on breakfast sausage, hot dogs or hamburgers. It makes me a social pariah at cookouts and tailgates. It means I have to be quick and creative in the kitchen because the easiest weeknight dinners are spaghetti, lasagna, tacos, chili dogs and hamburgers. I love beef, chicken and pork in their boneless, slab forms. Just don't put it in a grinder and then make me cook it. I often substitute chopped chicken or shredded beef in recipes.

Enter the chili dilemma. Who doesn't love a good pot of chili? Over Fritos with a bunch of cheese and spiced-up sour cream on it? I certainly do. So for the last four years I've been looking for a chili recipe that did not have ground meat it in. Every one I tried was unsuccessful - either because it just tasted like beef chunks in well-flavored tomato sauce or set our orifices ablaze at both entry and exit. This was the exact day I learned that the smaller you chop something, the more intense the flavor. So when you put a couple of honking big chipotle peppers in the food processor and make them a paste, you'd better ready yourself for the Fiery Colorectal Rejection that will occur before bedtime. I thought I was going to have to run Corey by the Emergency Room.

The losing streak ended Sunday.

I found this recipe for Steak Chili at Tasty Kitchen, and decided to try it (judging by the quantity of chili powder), but I could tell there were some tweaks I needed to make to the ingredients. On Sunday, at the same time that we were painting the "B" side of our front door navy blue, I was testing a chili recipe. That knowledge of surrounding activities should explain why I took a picture in the middle of prepping the ingredients and then did not take another one. At all. Until I put leftovers in a bowl two days later.

Steak Chili, Allbritton-style

2 pounds chuck steak, cubed (I used a tender chuck, less fat)

2 tbsp vegetable oil

Season salt

Black pepper

Kosher salt

1 whole large onion (I used red)

2 jalepenos, without the seeds

4 cloves of garlic

2 tsp Adobo sauce (from a can of chipotle peppers)*

3 tsp cumin

3 tsp coriander

1/4 cup smoked paprika

1/2 cup dark chili powder (not ancho)

3 cups beef stock

1 cup tomato sauce

1 cup beer

2 tsp sugar

3 tbsp cornstarch

1/2 cup water

*An important note about texture: If you like your chili chunky, you should chop the onion, jalepeno and garlic and use one cup of diced tomatoes with juice. If you do not like your chili chunky, use the tomato sauce and finely, finely (almost puree) your onion, jalepeno and garlic in a food processor.* 

*A more important note about spice: This is of a medium spice. We do not eat chipotles in this house, because of that screaming hot entry and exit I mentioned earlier, so I used only the sauce from the can of chipotles. My mother put cayenne pepper in everything we ate growing up, so my spice tolerance is the highest in our house, and I. cannot. handle. the. chipotle. The adobo sauce is quite spicy. Extra beverages were poured at our table but we could not stop eating it. If you do not like extra spice, omit the jalepeno and adobo sauce entirely.*

After I cube my steak, I dump it in a bowl and coat it with Lawry's Season Salt and black pepper, and use my hands to coat it evenly. In a large Dutch oven, heat the 2 tbsp vegetable oil over medium heat until it shimmers. Add half the beef, turning until brown on all sides. Remove to a plate and cook the rest. Remove all meat from the pot, leaving the oil and cooked fat. Put the onion, jalepeno and garlic, either finely chopped or chunky, to the pot and cook until soft. (That's about 90 seconds for finely chopped and five minutes for chunky.) Add the adobo sauce and cook for one more minute. Add the cumin, coriander, paprika and chili powder and toss around for one more minute. Add all of the beef with juices and turn to coat.

Pour in the beef stock, beer, tomato sauce (or diced tomatoes) and sugar and bring to a boil. (Your instincts will tell you to add salt, but you should wait.) Once the pot starts to boil, turn the heat to your simmer settings (mine is 3.5 on my electric stove) and put a lid on the pot, but leave a vent for the steam. Cook for two hours, stirring every half hour or so.

After two hours, you need to taste it. Then you should start salting it. I prefer kosher salt, which is less salty than table salt, and ended up using three big pinches, which is probably a little over a teaspoon. Start small, taste, and keep adding until the flavor explodes in your mouth. When you like the taste, cover, vent and cook for another hour.

By this time everybody on your street can smell that you have cooked chili, and they will be trying to get in your door to eat it. You may need to leave a bat by the door. After the tortuous three hours are over, the meat will be shreddable, so I used my potato masher to just push on it in the chili and get it to shred. Worked like a charm. If you find that, after you shred your meat with the tool-that-has-many-purposes-beyond-its-name potato masher, you would like a thicker chili, which I did, mix a few tablespoons of cornstarch with 1/3 or 1/2 cup of water and add it to the chili. If you use a thickener, you will need to bring it back up to a boil, stir it for a minute, then turn the heat back down.

The recipe says you should serve it with some shredded cheese, a dollop of sour cream and some green onions, which sounds just divine. I would typically put fritos UNDER that combination. Corey, Jake and Landen all crumble Saltine crackers into theirs. On this night, I made an accompaniment to my chili, and was ostracized by my entire family for doing so. I like food more than they do, so you'll want to listen to ME and put your chili over these here mashed potatoes. I did not use any milk and went instead with seven tablespoons of butter, but if you're not adventurous, or you did not eat pats of butter as a kid, you should stick to the low-butter-add-milk recipe.  THEN you put all that in a bowl. . . .

And reject the judgment from your husband, your children, and your seester and ENJOY your steak chili over your cheesy chili mashed potatoes. Stand up for what you believe in.

I believe that anything is better with some taters in it. 

Turquoise Front Door: The B Side

If you are not a child of the 80s who remembers buying cassette tapes with a hit single on one side and a random song from the album on the other (the "B" side), this title makes no sense to you.

If you have not already, you need to join Pinterest. It's basically an online bulletin board where you "pin" pictures of things that you like or inspire you or items from websites you want to buy, and it keeps it all organized by your "boards." I have board for projects I want to do, stuff for the boys, Christmas decorations, Christmas gift ideas to give others, rooms I love, upgrades I want to make to my house, food I want to cook and stuff I want my husband and my mama to buy me for Christmas. If you click on that little "P" icon over on the right under each of our names, you can see what we are "pinterested" in.

I love blogs almost as much as I love Pinterest. My favorites are the ones where common, untrained people like me work on their houses and then tell you what they did and how they did it. Two of my favorites are Young House Love and Bower Power. They happen to be best friends who came up with an idea over the summer to do a non-affiliated "Pinterest Challenge," where they would complete a DIY project they liked on Pinterest and then blog about it. They invite people with blogs to also do a "pinned" project and link to it on their site. I was planning to do this project anyway, so I just time it for this past weekend so I could put it up on the Pinterest Challenge.

The simplest explanation for why I keep slapping paint on everything I can think of and find the energy to complete is because we are not currently budgeted for the two main things I want to do to my house: built-ins in the liviing room and adding cabinetry in the kitchen. I do keep convincing Corey to not only entertain but assist with these little projects of mine, and he's always pleased with the results. Recently, we painted our front door turquoise, which has gotten quite a pleasant reaction, because it's bold and suprising, and I revealed it in this post, but, here's a photo to remind you:

Then I kept looking around Pinterest and home magazines and those decorators kept telling me not to ignore color on the doors INSIDE your house. This led me to the conclusion that the inside of my back door needed to be painted as well. And the obvious color was Navy. See? Look how dull it is in this picture of the house readied for Landen's First Communion party, painted the same color as the walls with white trim:

This is very sad for me because I have since been forced to get rid of this couch.

This weekend, the weather was lovely and the boys were in Beaumont, so we reserved our Sunday afternoon to do a bit of painting. Corey taped up the windows and the top and right trim, thinking we would have the door cracked open to paint the left side of the door. We ended up taping the left trim after I ran the paint brush up and down it, screamed like an injured walrus and washed it off quickly with Pine Sol.

Corey also sanded the door with a fine grit sandpaper. We did not use primer because we were painting dark over light, but we should have used a rougher sandpaper to make sure we could get all the sheen off the old paint so the new paint would stick. This would be a lesson learned during Coat Two. But "thin and even coats" is the tedious and correct way to go, so after one coat, we had this:

While Coat One was drying, I took the hardware outside to strip and paint it. Ultimately I am going to paint all the hardware in the house (instead of paying $12 per door to replace with eighteen doors). So it's a commitment to paint the hardware on this door, because the rest of the hardware will soon follow. They did not have the Cobalt Mist I used on the front of the door, so I went with the similar-but-more-brown and very trendy oil-rubbed bronze. Step 1 is to clean the hardware with something that does not leave a residue. I use watered-down Pine Sol. Step 2 is rubbing the entire thing with a deglosser, because you cannot sand it. Step 3 is sticking them into a paper plate, or that's MY step because I spray paint my entire arm if there is no shield. Step 4 is applying a primer. I use a spray auto primer, because it is meant to go on metal.

The paper plate allows you to pick it up and turn it so you can spray in all the angles you need. I find that spray paint needs to cure, cure, CURE for a very long time between coats - up to two hours. It may be the sub-tropical weather I paint in. I just do not add coats of paint until the previous coat is no longer sticky. I ended up doing three thin coats of oil-rubbed-bronze spray paint, which I did not photograph again until the hardware went back on the door.

After about an hour, Coat Two was ready to go on the door. Coat Two actually redistributed the paint from Coat One, which was followed by another injured walrus yell and then a hearty Lucy Ricardo wail/whine which ended with resolution to let TWO HOURS go between Coats Two and Three, to make sure the paint was bonded and would not removed under the brush strokes of wet paint.

Okay, I'll back up and let you see the full door after the second coat.

This puts us at 6:30 PM applying the third coat to the entire door. Then at 8:30 PM we put another coat just around the windows, which is the area that really needed the stern rubbing with coarse sandpaper. If I had used primer, we still would have put three thin and even coats on the whole door, so the fourth coat of paint around the one area did not end up being more work. Before we went to bed, we put the hardware back on and closed the door.

Monday morning we admired our blue door (Laura Ashley's Navy matched to Valspar Latex Interior Semi-Gloss) and removed all the tape. My husband and children always sound surprised to me when a project I devised is finished and looks tremendous, and I really feel that constantly having to declare that you are really good at something chips away at your credibility. But I insist that I have a vision for this house, and my vision will never be wrong. It's again a bold statement in the room, but there's enough navy in the rugs and porcelain and lamps that it does not look out of place here. Plus it's a great interruption to these too-neutral beige walls.

I did not get a picture of the door before Corey put the plastic back on it. If you are wondering what those little silver dots are or why the bottom of the door is shinier than the top, it's because there is a piece of thick plastic mounted to the bottom of the door so that the dog does not scratch and ruin the door. I had a friend who put this on the outside of her back door, (but her huge dog still destroyed it.) Little Murphy scratches at the door when he has to potty, or he sees us coming up the driveway, or someone or something walks/runs/bikes in front of our house.

Here's a close-up of the knob and lock with the very cured oil-rubbed bronze spray paint.

This concludes a very long post about my completion of the non-affiliated Pinterest Fall Challenge. Thanks Sherry and Katie for opening the field for all of us who tinker with our houses as a hobby (because we have not yet figured out how to get paid for it) to contribute to your blogging event! If you did not get here from their pages, please make sure you go check out what Sherry and Katie and Ana and Erin, the professionals, completed for their Pinterest Challenge, and check out what all the other bloggers contributed.

Does anyone know what a warlock is? Or does?

Friday was Free Dress day with a Halloween theme at St. Jude (if you paid $1 per child to benefit the Beta Club). Fifty-three pound Jake still fits in the jack-o-lantern shirt my mom got him two Halloweens ago, but I did not tell him it was that old. Corey found Landen a new shirt at the Wal-Marts, which he did not want to wear until he found out it glowed in the dark.

Do all little boys look adorable in blue jeans? I have one with no hiney and one with a round hiney, but both are equally dapper when they wear jeans. I told Jake he looked like a small version of a grown man in jeans, and he said "thanks, I'm mature."

Tonight I was at work for the trick-or-treating festivities (darn) and Corey confessed that he was secretly hoping the boys would get conduct marks or in trouble on the bus and he would not have to take them. We are taking the Carrot approach to parenting: no level of removing their right to attend extracurricular activities or power on electronics will get them to adjust their behaviors, so we have started holding desirables in front of them. For the last two weeks they have been warned that just because we bought the costumes does not mean they have automatically won the right to wear them anyway. That right has to be earned.

We reinforced this for two weeks. Predictably, today Jake came home with a conduct mark for saying a game at his Halloween party was "stupid," for which I ripped him a new asshole (via phone from work) about how we are absolutely never rude. I pulled out the full name and demanded suggestions for what he SHOULD have said. Landen got a mark for forgetting to bring all his materials to class. So both of them were allowed to go door-to-door but neither of them were permitted to enjoy not one single smidge of candy out of their full buckets when they returned home.

Apparently this does not prevent the enthusiasm of going galavanting around the neighborhood in a ninja or warlock costume and asking people for candy. They have been on a sugarless high, upstairs giggling and playing. Corey had some notes to share with y'all about taking the boys trick-or-treating for the first time in several years:

• Landen was fifty feet from the house before he started complaining about his feet hurting.
• He had to tell Jake to "slow down" and wait for him before they were at the end of the block.
• They did not grasp the concept of "walk toward the porch lights" and kept asking Corey for which direction to turn.
• Apparently a plastic staff is too heavy to hold upright for long walks.

Behold, Corey's photography (and my cutesy edits.)

I asked Corey why Landen was wearing his Heelys, which always blister his feet, and Corey's exact words were "Because you weren't here and you're the better parent." There it is, immortalized on the Internets for all eternity.

At some point they met Jake's friend and classmate and our neighbor Grant and hit some houses together. Grant was a Dementor and his little brother a penguin.

Don't those buckets look like they are getting heavy. They're about 60% full from just out little neighborhood. I had one piece and Corey had three after the boys went to bed.

And Cydney Wilson partied like a Halloween Rock Star this weekend - first as Darth Vader (in a leather corset?) and then as a wolf (with no hair on her stomach.)

 
I just do not understand where these kids get all this energy. I cannot remember if my last dress-up Halloween was 2002 or 2005 or 2006. I repurposed a prom dress and went as a fairy all three years.