Danielle's Baby Shower

Christian's cousin Danielle was pleasantly surprised on Saturday afternoon to walk into a room filled with women who love her and all wanted to shower her with baby gifts for the soon to be new Mommy. It was a fun lunch with wonderful women, many of whom are expecting their own little bundles of joy or have recently brought them into the world and had the new Mommy glow.

Danielle's nursery for her baby boy is going to be a jungle theme, so her closest girlfriends brought the jungle to the party and created a really cute baby shower theme.Everyone at the party was truly amazed at the cake that Danielle's friend Vanessa made. Vanessa is a mother of three little boys, and seems to have so many hidden talents. She never ceases to amaze me. Look how adorable this cake is, with the sleeping baby under the leaf on the top. It was so cute!
The Mommy (Carol) and Mommy-to-be. Both looked so beautiful and couldn't stop smiling the entire afternoon. My beautiful family. Mother-in-law and sister-in-law and niece were all smiles, and look stunning with their touch of animal print. (Kathy wore a zebra inspired dress, Shayla stylin' in her animal print faux fur, and although I didn't get any pictures of her shoes, Krysty wore these amazing leopard heels.)
Let the gift opening commence!
Among a few cute baby items that I just couldn't resist, my main gift for Danielle's little one was a personalized name plate. He will share the same name as his grandfather on his Dad's side, Joseph. This was my first boy name plate and I really enjoyed making it. It seems that all the women around me are expecting little boys, so perhaps I'll have a few more chances to create different styles of a name plate for the little guys! So fun!
Danielle is a truly beautiful woman and I know that her little peanut has picked a remarkable family to join, and in April we'll all get to meet him face to face.

Look at my floors!!!!

Our contractors are not 100% done as of today with our upstairs (We're still working on our bathroom, therefore our hallway has not been stained due to high traffic and bathroom fixtures threatening to damage a polished finished floor), but the four bedrooms now have newly stained floors that look simply stunning. I was going to wait to post these photos till the walls were painted and trim was up so you could see the finished product but I'm too excited and can't wait.

In the collage below, the photos display the transition that our floors have undergone in the last month or so. The first photo I call the "Oopsie color." Unfortunately Christian and I didn't care for this red color, so our contractor spent close to two weeks stripping the wood and then sanding the floor by hand. By the time he was done sanding the floors, which are close to 200 years old, they looked brand new. (Great work Konstantine!!!) The third photo is of our tester color, which we picked out and LOVED so we gave the go ahead and they stained each bedroom, applied three coats of varnish (You see coat one and coat two in the last two photos in the collage.).....

And then... drum roll please..........
Finally our finished floors look like this!!!!! Sooooo beautiful and really breath taking. The floors were something we fell in love with right from the very beginning and we knew we wanted to restore them to their original beauty. Konstantine and his Uncle Andrew did a wonderful job! I can't wait to post more photos of the work they're doing. But for now I love gazing at my gorgeous floors!

How Peculiar!

I only caught the tale end of this. The birds flew back and forth for a good two or three minutes before it dawned on me to get my camera, and then of course, once I had the camera it was as if the birds knew they were caught in the act, so they all fled. But still, how strange!

The Joy of Christmas

A few days before the 25th the East Coast was hit with it's first real snow storm of the season guaranteeing that we would all have a white Christmas. Christian and his Dad set to work right away shoveling the white stuff along with the rest of the neighborhood.
I'm a strange bird because I love shoveling snow, but sadly I could not participate due to my having surgery just two days before the big storm came. So I swallowed my pride and forced myself to watch from the warmth of the living room and played with this little guy. (Sure was a tough morning for me, let me tell you. *wink*)One of the many things I love about the Christmas season is that people dust off their address books and discover the long lost art of using the postal service. Here is just a handful of the wonderful holiday messages Christian and I received. For the past six months I've been guarding a box because it's contents are more precious to me than any purchased gift could ever be. So as an early Christmas present to myself, even though we haven't begun work on our living room, I opened the box that held the two paintings I picked out that where created by my Aunt and I displayed them on our mantle. Tears were shed as I gazed upon the beautiful work, and I know that my Aunt was standing next to me that morning, happy as a clam, that part of her is now officially in my new house.Christmas day was spent at my in-laws house. Kathy had a slightly smaller group to feed than usual. Luke, who recently got engaged spent the afternoon and evening with his future in-laws in Connecticut. While John and his wife with little Shayla spent their dinner with Krysty's family. This is just part of the wonderful shifting dynamic that is family. We're ever growing and ever changing, but we always feel the love we share no matter the distance.Grandma and Grandpa K came up with Christian's cousin Jessie, whom we were so happy to see because it has been far too long between visits.Melissa and Brianna, along with their parent's Anne and Bruce (Christian's Aunt and Uncle) also joined us for the day. I can not get over how grown up these little ladies are. Melissa will be graduating high school this year, and I remember when Brianna was just a little kid blowing bubbles and running around her yard. Kathy's best friend Helene stopped by, and stayed for a bite to eat. Here she is in her new hat, complements of Kathy. She's such a sweetheart. Look at those baby blues. Like father like son.Dinner was great. Kathy always creates such a wonderful holiday meal. And dessert had quite the spread, cookies, cheese cake, and how cute was this little Frosty ice cream cake?!? At the end of the day, when all out tummies were full, Coby took a lesson from his big brother Keith and headed to a soft spot for a holiday snooze.From the Kaufman family to yours, we hope that your Christmas was truly wonderful, filled with love and laughter. Merry Christmas !

Ding-dong the plate is dead!

I am happy to report that the great clavicle saga has finally come to it's conclusion, and oh what a happy ending it is! Yesterday's surgery was a fine success, and I left the hospital hardware free! Regardless of any discomfort I was in, the smile on my face never fell. (Honestly, I'm really not in much pain at all. I'm not sure if its just because I've built up my tolerance from the three previous surgeries, or if its because we weren't rebuilding bone this time, but I feel great!) I know that I'm normally a little more long winded with my entries but I'm back to being predominately left handed and typing is a little bit of a challenge, so I shall wrap this up with sending out a thank you once again to all those out there who kept me in their thoughts for the last year and a half. I've felt the love and am utterly grateful! Thank you all so much!

Say Buh-bye to the Clavicle Saga

Just a super quick FYI, that most of you who are faithful readers are already well aware of.... Tomorrow (Thursday Dec. 17th) is my fourth and FINAL surgery for my great clavicle saga!!!!!! I go in at 8 in the morning, I'm guessing the surgery will be somewhere around 10 or 11, and I should be home by mid afternoon. I'll be staying at my in-laws for a little while. As much as I'd like to stay in my new house, there's just too much dust from all the construction, and frankly I'd be WAY too tempted to try and put things away which is a major No-no! So I appreciate the offering from John and Kathy to take care of me and feed me while I'm recovering. Things will go great, I can feel it! I'm a little nervous as always, but more than anything I'm thrilled that the final chapter is going to be written! So keep your fingers crossed for me tomorrow and send good vibes to my surgeon that every things goes smoothly. I'll let everyone know how it went in the next day or two. Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers! Love you guys!!!

Moving Day!

Well, it's been quite some time since my last post, and I have an extremely good excuse for my lack of attention to the blog. WE'VE MOVED!!! Hooray! Last Saturday after Christian closed the office and I got home from my World Lit. class the Kaufman family came to our rescue and in a big blur all our belongings were packed up in a Penske truck and we headed west.

So now our house has become our home, and as of last night, Christian and I are officially living in our home! How exciting! The upstairs where all the bedrooms are is not finished (We had a little boo-boo with the floor stain. Miscommunication really, and sadly they need to be re-sanded and re-stained once again.) so we are currently living out of the family room, which we have turned into our make-shift bedroom. The living room is holding a few items, not too many, but since we decided we no longer wanted the green monster of a couch, there really isn't much in the way of cozy living in the living room yet. (We'll fix that as we go along, I'm sure.) The dinning room is still being worked on. The sister beams are up, insulation is going in under the floor boards for the second floor, and the second batch of new windows have arrived so they should be going in hopefully next week. We're not going to tackle the kitchen until the spring. So for now it's a perfectly fine kitchen that once we clear away all the sawdust and Spackle dust from our various projects will be great! As a welcome to the neighborhood gift, Mother Nature decided to share a little Christmas cheer and snow on us while we were moving in. It didn't slow us down, but my goodness did it sure make everything pretty to look at. And as icing on the cake, we were greeted by four of my favorite kind of neighbors in our neighbor's backyard.The apartment Christian and I moved out of we had lived in for two years. It was our first place as a married couple, and it treated us well. We're happy that we rented it out to a new couple who are just beginning their life together, and hope that it blesses their relationship with love and harmony just as it did for our newlywed life.One of the things we will miss about the apartment is the stellar view of the Manhattan skyline. We had a perfect view of the Empire State Building and each night we would play a game to see if we could guess the color(s) of the top part of the building. (It changes constantly) Also Christian's brother Luke lives in the city and so every night we would look out our kitchen window and say, "Good night Luke!"We truly wish to thank everyone that came to help, you guys are the best! So let the bells ring and chime, the Kaufman's have finally come home!