Re-doing chairs sucks.

The other blogs make it look so easy.  Just pop those staples out, recover it with your fabric of choice and voila!  Brand new chair!  It's not - don't be fooled.  Let me be the PSA - if you're going to recover seat cushions, prepare yourself.  Because it sucks.

Back in June, we got a table and chairs for the breakfast nook.  I repainted the table and set about finding fabric to re-cover the seat cushions.  When I redid the seat cushion on the other chair, I bought some fabric intended for the breakfast nook chairs.  It sat there, for months and months and months, when finally, on Sunday, we finished recovering the the seats for the breakfast nook chairs.  Five months.  That's a mess.

Drew came in to help me because I had been whining for five months about re-doing my chairs - he offered to help if it would shut me up.  So we spent about three hours taking out twelve million staples from the three chairs that were left.  I had done one a week ago and was so defeated by the number of staples in the seat that I intended to leave it as it was.  Lucky for me, Drew is OCD and wouldn't allow one chair to be mis-matched so he gave me the motivation to finish them.

He was pulling them out very machine-like, assembly line style.  I told him not to go so fast, but he didn't listen - he stabbed himself with the screwdriver shortly thereafter.  My method takes longer but I don't get stabbed.  There's a lesson in that, people.

He didn't care and just wanted this project finished so I would quit whining.

After the twelve million staples had been removed from ONE of the seats.

I was very careful this time about making sure that the pattern of the cloth was nice and straight so this time they're not AS crooked.  However, there was a piece of felt between the seat cover and the seat itself that insisted on sticking to my fabric, making it very difficult to align the pattern.  There was some swearing involved.  Lots of swearing.

But, we finally did it.  Drew got the remaining three seat covers off in record time and the actual recovering of the seats went remarkably quickly.  I'm very happy with how they turned out and very grateful to my dude for lending a hand.  Thanks baby!

A before pic for reference. 

Drew doing his best bikini model impression.

Our lovely chairs - minus the bikini model.

So now we've got horizontal stripes on the walls, vertical stripes in the curtains, and chevron stripes in the chairs!  I got a mirror to hang between the cabinets in the breakfast nook and I picked up another mirror at a garage sale on Sunday that I'm going to refinish and put in there as well.  With all the tan, cream, and bone in the room it looks pretty formal - more formal than our dining room, actually.  But that's okay - it's fast becoming my favorite room in the house.  I'm really loving this whole 'feathering the nest' thing!

It's good for the soul...

Thanksgiving with my husband

Given that the dust settled from The Great Shitty Event in early November, we were very tentative about making Thanksgiving plans.  I knew that I wasn't really in the mood to mix and mingle in a lot of social events, but I wasn't sure if I wanted to be entirely alone.  After all, Thanksgiving is about spending time with family and whatnot.  However, I wasn't super pressed about following tradition - I kind of feel like all the shiny-ness about the holidays is a little tarnished this time around.  Just a little.

My family was going to come down but decided at the last minute not to.  We had talked about driving up to Kansas, but we didn't have the money to board the dog and frankly my heart really wasn't in it.  We had also talked to some friends about coming over but in the end, it was just Drew and me.  And the dog.

Have I mentioned Drew is a phenomenal cook?  Even though it was just the two of us, he went all out.  He looked up some great recipes on the internet and went to town Thursday morning.

My baby was so proud of his work and I couldn't wait to dig in.

Yes, there are two glasses of wine because different bottles must never be mixed. 

And we love wine.

We had ham because I'm not a huge fan of turkey.  Drew came up with this coffee-chipotle-brown sugar glaze for the ham that was DIVINE!  He also made brussel sprouts with sage, apples and sausage, mashed sweet potatoes, and the most amazing fabulous tasty chorizo-cornbread stuffing!!!  He ate the cranberry sauce - we always had it at Thanksgiving but I could never eat it.  Something about the consistency and that sluuuuuurp sound it makes when it comes out of the can that just kills it for me.  It didn't bother Drew - that's cool, he can HAVE it.

We had some music playing in the background, the dog was sprawled out on the floor between us and we had a very peaceful meal.  We talked and laughed and it was so great.  My best friend called and between she and her fiance, they have five kids.  He implored us to cherish the kid-free times, saying that once you've got them there's no going back.  I knew he meant well; I know five kids can be overwhelming at times.  But coming off a miscarriage makes me wonder if this will be our last kid-free Thanksgiving or the first of many. 

Thankfully, there was none of that talk at the dinner table and we were both simply present in the moment, enjoying our fabulous dinner and tasty wine.  Drew is such an amazing cook and such a great person, I'm so lucky to have him.  I've often said that even if we weren't together I'd want to just be his friend.  I really like the guy.  Him on the other hand?  He says I'm a mean bitch and wouldn't want to be my friend (Oh no Andrew - I'm NEVER letting that one go.)

Later on that evening, our friends Steve and Michael stopped by for a visit and we sat outside, having more wine and listening to music on the outdoor speakers.  Maya went a little nuts when they first arrived, but once she had successfully determined that they posed no threat to us or her home, she calmed down and sprawled out on the patio.  I made some pumpkin spice bars (which were very yummy) and joined them for a glass of wine in between checking on my dessert.

It was a great, relaxing day.  There was no running around, trying to make sure we make it to our destination on time, no frantic last-minute running around to get some forgotten indgredient for some dish that we have to have/bring, and absolutely zero stress.  

That's a beautiful thing.

Our poor car!

The one and only reason why I was looking forward to going back to work on Monday was so I could blog about our Thanksgiving vacation.  We had a great time and the posts are coming, but I have to share some sad news!

Sunday we were out running errands and getting our Christmas tree from Lowe's was on the list.  We went to the shopping center that we had gone to almost every weekend since we moved in - it's a non-descript spot, anchored by Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Lowe's.  We stopped at Wal-Mart to pick up some things and drove the car over to Ross to see what they had before heading over to Best Buy and finally Lowe's.

We were in Ross for about 30 minutes and we came out to this.

That's odd - it's cold and raining out so there's no way the window would have been left down.

Some horrible terrible no-good very bad person broke into our car!  I couldn't believe it - nothing like this has ever happened to either of us so we were both in shock. 

Luckily, there was nothing of value in the car and they didn't try to steal the car itself.  I mean, they wouldn't have gotten far since we have Lo-Jack - at least I don't think so.  I'm not really sure how Lo-Jack works.  Anyway, we stood outside in the freezing cold waiting for the police to arrive while I took pictures and Drew got on the phone with his insurance company.

The parking-lot security guard came by and of course saw nothing.  I don't blame him - I mean what do they really expect one man on foot to do?  If you're a bad guy all you'd have to do is watch where he walks, time it a bit and hit when he's as far away as possible.  The manager of Ross came out to tell us that he had it on tape AND that they'd been having a problem with break-ins!  He said that two employee cars had been broken into in the last two weeks.  I know they can't give out that kind of information, but still.  "Hi, welcome to Ross.  You better not stay long or your car might get broken into."

The police came and he went to Best Buy because they had cameras too and our car was half-way between the two stores.  Between them they saw that it was a white minivan that had parked a few spaces away from us.  They tried a couple of times to get out of the car but people kept coming by and finally when there was a lull, they broke out our window.  Thank God the window was tinted and it was the safety glass so it didn't completely shatter.  They did crack the frame and scratch the leather with whatever they used to break the window.  The wood grain got scratched up too.  All told, it was over $4000 worth of damage!  They're going to have to take apart the whole door to fix the window, custom order new leather for the seat, and probably replace the seat because glass got in the motor of the seat and now only one side of the seat moves forward and backward.  Can you believe that!  Thank GAWD for insurance!!

But DREW!  When he saw he car I thought for sure he was going to lose. his. shit.  I swear, that man constantly surprises me.  Just a few minutes ago, his impatience in Wal-mart was palpable, trying to navigate through all the people.  I was so glad we only got a few things and got the heck out of there.  Outside, in the freezing cold and drizzly rain, standing in front of his car with a busted-out window, he was laughing.  Not full-out busting a gut, but chuckling.  I asked him a ton of times if he was okay.  He just shrugged his shoulders and goes, "Shit happens."

I nearly passed out.  I was prepared for a full-gale temper tantrum and there he was, calmly talking to the insurance people, the Ross manager and the police.  I thought my chest would bust open with pride.  I know he was upset but he handled himself so extremely well - I think for the first time in our relationsip I was more mad than he was.  I didn't say much but in my head I was on a tirade.  How DARE they pick on him just because he has a nice car!  Why don't you stupid punks get a JOB and maybe you can have a nice car too!  Oh that's right, because you're PUNKS!  You SUCK!  Cowards!  ASSHOLES!

They asked us if we wanted to wait for someone to come out and see about getting fingerprints but it's not like we would be able to make them pay the damages on the car.  Besides, it was freezing cold, neither of us had jackets, it was raining anyway, and we just wanted to get home.  The police had the tapes from Ross and Best Buy and they could go after whoever did it. 

We're taking my car to that shopping center from now on.  Even though Honda Civics are among the top stolen cars, it blends in a little better.  Drew's car sticks out like a sore thumb in Wal-Mart parking lots.

Punks - I hope they know karma is a bitch.