Christmas Eve Dinner

Christmas Eve isn't complete without a ham dinner and Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider.

Cameron's fiance came with her cute kids, Leila loved being chased and read to by them. I got in trouble by chasing them around the house....luckily, nothing got broken.

Before the princess was tucked in for bed, she played Santa's little helper and gave Great Grandpa his gift...and helped him open it, of course. We forgot (didn't really have time) to put out cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer...living between two homes and out of boxes makes for an interesting Christmas. But we sure had a blast spending Christmas Eve with grandma and grandpa.

*Good photos courtesy of Greg Sperry, alright photos courtesy of Cynthia Fuessel.

On Christmas Eve Day...

...We handed out homemade granola. After a late night of working on the house, Eric and I stayed up until 1:00am making delicious homemade granola to hand out to our new neighbors, family, and a few friends the next day. 

We stopped at my brother's house first and Leila had a ball playing with her primo Samuel and her Tio's. We were spoiled with pan Mexicano, ponche, and Mexican hot chocolate.

Thank goodness we stopped at the Sanfords, of course we love them, but Santa procrastinated getting Leila a few Christmas gifts this year and saved it for the last minute. Thankfully, her buddy Bella shared her toys with Leila so we Santa knew just what to get her and made the shopping trip on Christmas Eve that much easier. Thanks Bella sharing your toys with Leila.

Happy New Year

Last night we dined at Red Iguana with friends then chilled in downtown SLC's EVE celebration.

We rode Trax from Sandy to downtown to avoid the traffic, danced to trance music outside, and when it got too cold we moved inside for my kind of music - hip hop. The hip hop room had tons of plastic balloons flying around everywhere. We went a little crazy and started pushing each other around with the balls. Chris and I bounced into each other and I flew like a rag doll...fell flat on my back/head and thought I got a concussion. Though my body was throbbing, I acted cool and like it was no thing by bouncing right back up laughing hysterically along with everyone else (of course they were concerned at first but when they saw I was ok they busted out laughing). My back is still a little sore. You know that didn't stop me though! Sepideh was filming the whole thing and stopped right before I hit the floor, so you just see the start of a bad fall. Bummed we didn't catch the whole thing otherwise it probably be YouTube hit. Hilarious.

These Utah native Guero's like their women brown...and from the Bay Area. We're just representing and throwing up our Bay Area gang signs.

We ended the night watching a laser light show to Pink Floyd. If that doesn't say 2012 is going to be a good year, I don't know what does. Probably one of the best new years eve parties ever.

Progress

Paint:

It seems like we keep running to store for two things: paint and blue tape. I swear we've spent more money on paint and supplies than on anything else.

The lamest part about painting is all the prep work. Taping off trim + walls + touch ups after you peel off the tape = no fun. It seems like the paint job is never ending...especially when you're painting every square inch of the house. Literally. Sure needed to with mustard yellow walls in the bedrooms, pepto bismal pink in the bedroom closets, and hunter green in the pantry and linen closets. Disgusting. Took lots of primer and two coats of paint to cover that ish. Sherwin Williams cashmere was recommended by a close friend and I've loved it so far.  

The light gray and crisp white are much better. 

Texturing:

Here our contractor is texturing the ceiling so the texture upstairs is consistent throughout. It took one coat of primer and two coats of paint to get it just right.

Once the ceiling was textured and painted we could move onto the walls in the main living area. Love love love the color. Our necks were so kinked from painting the ceiling....3x!

Wood Paneling:

Now that most of the upstairs walls have been painted, we needed to start tackling the wood paneling. 

First we sanded. Then that wasn't enough so we went over it again, wiped down with a cloth, then primered. Now we need to decide on a color to paint it. The ceiling and walls are white, we're leaving the wood primered until we decide on a color. We have extra gray from the upstairs but we don't want every room in the house to be the same color. We're thinking a dark gray. I'm thinking just all white. Simple and clean. Eric thinks its boring. Suggestions?

My father in law said we shouldn't paint the paneling because it's coming back in style. Everything always does, all you need to do is wait a couple years. Not this wood paneling Mike, it's gross. The night we got home from painting it he showed me a picture of Matt Damon in his house (I think) and the whole wall behind him in the photo is wood paneling. It looked good because it's updated, not from the 80's. But it did give me second thoughts. Will we regret painting over it? Could we make it work with the right furniture? Nah...this wood paneling won't come back. It's too late anyway.

Cabinets:

Cabinets have been down and are just chillin' in the garage waiting to be given some much needed TLC.  First we went to Home Depot to see if we can turn any kind of paint into a spray can, like the paint we have. I think spraying them would prevent brush strokes, I don't want that. The guy at the paint counter said we couldn't do that unless we wanted to buy spray paint. He recomended we just brush/roller the paint and showed us a smooth roller to do it with to make sure it's extra yummy.

We also asked if we needed a special paint for cabinets, anything will do he said but mentioned we should get a good primer, the can is at the house so I don't know what it's called, but it sticks onto everything so we don't need to sand, sweet! Saved us time and eliminated one step. He suggested we use a high gloss for easy cleaning but said a semi-gloss is just as good. Think we'll stick with the semi. Painting the the trim with a high gloss sucked because it's like elmers glue and you can see every brush stroke. No thanks, I want my cabinets to look brush stroke - free.

So we primered the cabinets without sanding and spray painted the insides white (they don't need to be perfect inside as long as they seem white). The uppers are ready for paint. Hope they come out looking great. We'll have to wait to do the lowers until we tear out the counter top and can afford to get a new one - which will be a while. We're thinking quartz or butcher block. 

Eric learned a valuable lesson, wear long sleeves and a face mask when spray painting. It got all over his long arm hairs and up his nose. No bueno. It doesn't look as bad in the pictures, but spray paint is 10x worse than regular paint.

*Note: It may look like we've done everything in one day due to our clothes...we just wear the same paint clothes so we don't ruin anymore. I'm not really clean when painting and tend to wipe paint all over me.

Baby, it's cold outside.

How do we entertain ourselves with all this cold weather?
By playing indoors at our local bookstore. My mom gave me the idea because she said when my siblings were younger and it was too cold to play at the park, she would take them Toys R Us to play with the toys (but made sure to tell them she wasn't buying anything). Not a bad idea.

As you can tell, she kept very busy.

Elves

Cristina and I took the girls to see Santa's little helpers at Gardner Village. This place goes all out for the holidays and is definitely a go to place for Christmas. It has unique shops and a cool atmosphere. The girls loved playing with each other, looking at the elves, watching the ducks in pond, and throwing food on the floor at Archibald's. It's been way too long since I've seen these girls, missed them.