Fireplace makeover

So we have some hip, young neighbors who moved in this spring and they had the same affliction of a shiny brass fireplace that we did.  They just went ahead and painted it.  On their lead, and seeing how well it turned out, we tried it ourselves.  Of course, we had to take care of some prep work.

 The last shot of the 80's.

 About a roll of blue tape, the Sunday newspaper and a half an hour later, we were ready to go.

The first coat!  We wanted to make sure it was nice and dry before it got the second coat and we did the inside.  But then it rained, I got sick, and so on.  It looked like this for a week before we could do the second coat.

And finally, the finished product.  We don't know if it will withstand the heat of a real fire so the candles are just doing the job for now.



November update

 

So now we have family members flat out refusing to update their blogs unless we update ours.  To be quite honest, we have been busy around here.  I had a craft show on Nov 11 and 12.  More on this later, but I took lots of orders that I am trying to fill before Christmas.  Also, basketball season has started and there is a lot of nonconference play that is interesting to me.  Love watching the Butler bulldogs play the Hoosiers!  Anyway, try to get comfy on top of your toy box and read up on our month of excitement.

November 10th was our first snowfall.  Of course, the kids had to run out right away and play in the snow.  They were out in their light weight fleece jackets and caught snowflakes on their tounges for about 7 minutes.  Then they came in and asked for hot chocolate.  No dice.  If you don't even zip up your light coat, there's no chance I'm making you brown sugary milk with fluffed sugar on top.  Have a banana.

maybe you heard about our Crafty Mamas Holiday sale.  I have 10 very talented friends who displayed their works in my house for an open house and sale.  The dinning room was only the Seibert women.  Me, Mom and Becky. 

Mom's aprons sold well as did my head wraps and chunky cowls. 

The head wraps.  I was even able to take orders for about 12 more items.  This is keeping me busy until at least Christmas.

The hair acccesory table.  I sold about half of my headbands.

And some of my infant hats.  I was pleased with my overall profit.  It went to pay for my plane ticket to India.  I do have to say, if you totalled up the time I had into this, I'm probably still in the hole.  But it kept me off the streets and busy while Jim traveled for 2 1/2 months.

Everyone at the sale contributed to a raffle basket that benefited a local family who's 5 year old daughter has cancer.  We were able to raise close to $150 for them and someone won a sweet prize.

Our good friend and neighbor, Mr. Gavin became an American recently.  He is a native of the UK, but has been working, living, and raising a family in the US for quite a few years now.  I guess he wanted to be taxed WITH representation now.  Anyway, I thought this was a good Civics lesson for my kids so I pulled them out of school to take them to the fair grounds to see him sworn in as an American.

There were 191 people from 65 countries being sworn in.  Since we weren't family or anything, we stuck to the back.  We are proud of our newest American Friend.  Congrats Mr. Gav!

And then it became that time of the year.  The girls were at a Birthday party for our neighbor, Paigie.  While they were gone, we set up the Christmas tree and Jim made sure that all the lights worked.  There is a song out there called Grown up Christmas wish.  It's all about world peace and illnesses being cured and other junk like that.  My personal grown up Christmas list is that all the lights on my Christmas trees stay lit for the entire season, the kids keep their feet off each other, and no one is sick for Christmas Eve and Chistmas Day.  Is that too much to ask from Santa?  It's not world peace or anything.

The girls spent lots of time sorting and hanging their ornaments.  They all landed on three branches on the tree.  It's charming.

A Taller Thanksgiving Tradition is to make these Turkey cookies using candy corn and orange icing.  Annalise is getting pretty good.  All I had to do is pipe the beak and legs.  next year I might not have to do anything.

Another Thanksgiving tradition is the preschool Thanksgiving program.  This was our 5th year of watching kids pick their nose, cry on stage and ham it up.  Annalise is now in the oldest class in the school and they did a nice job performing.  Maybe I will upload some videos when I recover from this massive update.

This year, we celebrated Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa Taller's in Cleveland.  Of course, other than eating, there was time to take the antiquites out to amaze and scare everyone.  Jim's Grandpa Koch used to be a barber.  He had some very strange equipement that was supposed to make your hair grow.  All it really did was send a mild electrical shock through your body.  Jim remembers getting the snot shocked out of him by his Grandpa.  Grandpa Seibert bravely checks this out.  We are happy to report that it didn't give him too much of a shock and we left it in Cleveland. 

Evie and Annalise and all their grandparents.  can you believe that Annalise is now as tall as Grandma Seibert?

After Thanksgiving, we recovered from our Turkey coma at the Great Lakes Science Center.  They had lots of hands on activities.  We didn't use the camera much because we were having so much fun. This is Evie working with the giant bubble wand.

Annalise and Mommy blow some big bubbles too

Evie faced her fear of falling by being strapped on a board and dropped backwards. 

Then we went out to Lorain County for the walk through Christmas light display.  WE marveled on how fast we walked through it but then we remembered that the last time we went was when Evie was 4 and Annalise was 2.  Their legs were much shorter back then and I think we had them in snowpants and boots.  This time it was much warmer and way more muddy.

Now we are back home and in the Christmas spirit.  We have most of the decor up and are thinking about cookies.  Only two more weeks until Christmas break.

Ok, Uncle Kevin and Aunt Becky.  There's your update.  See you in three weeks.

pumkin chunkin

The second annual Stoney Creek Circle Punkin Chunk happened the Saturday after Halloween.  After all, you have to do something with all those jack o lanterns and they are going to end up as compost anyways.

This year, instead of just throwing them around in the street, Evie and Jim constructed this contraption.  This allowed the girls to get some air under those pumpkins

Taylor could really make it fly.

Paige's whole pumpkin took a flight.

And then Dad sent one soaring.  Stand back everyone!

Don't know why this picture loaded so big, but it is a very good shot of Glen busting up our simple machine.   Fortunately, we had extra lumber.  After this shot, Jim broke a board too.  Man is more powerful than pumpkin.

Evie's cute pumpkin before it hits it's fate

Evie sends her pumpkin flying we all had a great time watching them get smashed up.  Then they threw them all into the wheelbarrel to be compost for next year's garden.

Halloween

I am bound and determined to get caught up on this blog without skipping anything.  We've had some big stuff go on lately, but now things are settling down before the holidays.  Want to catch everyone up.

We returned home after CeCe's baptism and the girls wanted to carve their pumpkins.  Remember, this was back on Oct 30.   We threatened that they had to clean out all the junk in car before they started.  It took them 5 seconds and they were ready to go.

The spooky finished projects.

Then they decided that they wanted to make these spooky cupcakes.  Since we had everything on hand, I gave in and helped them.

Evie stirred the cobwebs.

annalise stirred the brownie.  They didn't look as good as the picture but they tasted awesome.

Finally Halloween was here and it was a beautiful night to trick or treat.  Another year without winter coats.  that's a success in anyone's book.

Who ever heard of a spooky fairy?  The ghost was spooky enough.  They collected a nice full pumpkin of candy which we gorged on right away.  There is still a good amount left, but Jim and i have already eaten all the good stuff.

It's a real bomb

inspired by the kid in the Indianapolis newspaper last week,   Evie and JIm set out to create ther own bomb in the basement




,

Here's her first trial run.  It was pretty exciting and held promise for things to come.

This was the big one that she and Jim worked on for about 45 minutes.  They said that once you get weaving, it goes pretty fast.

And then they wastched more youtube videos and learned a different technique to make this one up the slide

Meeting Baby Cecelia

We finally got everyone healthy in the family and Jim returned from many business trips so we could take a trip up to Ohio and meet our new little cousin, Cecelia--or CeCe or C4 as she was called this weekend.

I made her this cupcake hat.  It is newborn sized, but she is so tiny that it could come down to her chin.  She will have to grow into it.  When we met her, she weighed just 7-6.  That is smaller than Evie and Annalise were when they were born and this kid was a month old at the time.  Tiny.

We met up with the Seibert family at a firestation for a benefit pancake breakfast.  When we got back to their house, the men all went out to pick up C's cake.  The girls all posed for the picture.  Can you believe how big they are getting?  All except for the shrimp in the middle.

Another cupcake hat.  No wait, that's Aunt Jenni's pumpkin muffin from Langes (it tasted awesome, Aunt Becky).  That muffin is as big as her head!

Out at Sauder's farm, it was the woodcarver's show and also Butchering weekend.  What kid doesn't want to go stand out in the cold to see a hog butchered? 

C4 was all bundled up inside of her mama's coat and she slept right through the toenails getting pulled off the pig and handed out to kids. 

Our kids were  in the front row when the pig's head was cut off.  It was a really sharp knife that sliced easily through all the meat.  When he got to the spine, the head butcher just rammed his fingers into the pig snout, grabbed ahold and twisted the head right off.  And then plopped it into a rubbermaid tote.  So our kids can't make it through a Disney movie without an emotional breakdown, but they can watch a pig head get twisted off.  Circle of life I guess. They like their hot dogs.

This was the last we saw of the hog.  All of the exciting stuff was over then.  Does this bring back good memories of FHS, Miss Erica?

We stopped by the Potter's barn and watched him finish some vases on his wheel.  A technological leap in comparision to our friends at Connor Prairie.

As if pancake breakfasts, giant muffins, and hog butchering weren't enough, Cecelia Ann was baptised this weekend too!

Proud Mom and Dad.

The Seibert Family.  Zoom in on Oliver--it's worth it.  I suspect that the next few years may be a little hectic around their house.

Cousins.  This one is for you, AB.  We missed you.

Cecelia and her pround parents, grandparents and great grandma.

While we were snapping pictures, there was a choir of angels up in the choir loft.  That big one is kind of funny looking.

This was probably the only time all day that Cecelia wasn't being held.  I tried to get a nice picture of her in her baptismal gown.  But, she didn't like be put down so someone scooped her up right away.

Four Generations.

Cecelia's godfather is Nick Meyer.  He's everyone's favorite jungle gym.