Breaking Traditions

Some people think that the holidays are about carrying on life-long "traditions".... but I happen to think at this time in our "young-adult" lives, it's the perfect time to break traditions and create new ones! 

Take for example, Thanksgiving 2010... "our" Schamberger style...

My parents drove in from Oakley.  Kevin's brother (Phil), wife (Sarah) and their 2 most adorable boys (Hagan and Euston) came over.  My brother and his girlfriend came over... and there you have it, our little Schamberger house was full and we were in full turkey day celebration with a smoked turkey, smoked brisket, and all of the "traditional" sides...  The no-so-traditional Thanksgiving factor... I cooked!  (with some help of course from my rock-star mom, Sarah, and my brother, who smoked the turkey and brisket).  We also got to break out some of our great dishes that we got as wedding gifts.  Every time we opened a wedding present and it was a fancy or fun serving dish/plate/glass/casserole pan Kevin would say, "when are we going to use that?"  I would say, "when we have people over or when we get t o have Thanksgiving or Christmas at our house!"  Fastfoward 6 months, and this statement actually comes true!

So after we cut the turkey (with some very dull knives), said grace, filled our tum-tum's with all the great food, watched the Cowboys game, and had some good ol' conversation, Thanksgiving had came and went.  Not the same Thanksgiving I can remember at my grandparents' back in Oakley and Grinnell, but it was pretty darn good.  Thanksgiving is a reminder of how much we have to be thankful for.  We are truly blessed....great families, the best friends, a roof over our heads, good health, jobs, clothes and shoes in our closet (probably too many shoes in mine) and food to eat every night.  Some not-so-obvious things I am thankful for... peppermint hot chocolates, TiVo (I never had this before I married & moved in with Kevin...LOVE it.... hello to lost  episodes of Guillana & Bill, Days of Our Lives, Oprah and any other show on my "must-see" list) , mint M&M's, good books you can't put down, wine, the holiday cheer people have this time of year, my education, and random acts of kindness.

One tradition that I didn't break was shopping on black Friday.  Now I'm certainly not one who likes to fight crowded aisles, but something about black Friday brings out the best in me.  So bright and early on Friday morning... 5 am... my mom and I had 2 big cups of coffee, granola bars and bananas in hand as we set out to find the best bargains yet.  And boy, did we.  I got nearly all of my Christmas gifts crossed off and even got myself a few things.  I couldn't help myself...40-50% off everything.  Yep, you read that right.  Everything.  At Gap, Banana Republic, almost all of the stores in the mall until 10am or noon.  My mom and I gave a new meaning to "shop-till-you-drop".  We had to make several trips to the car to drop off our packages, I had the sorest legs ever, even though I wore my most comfy shoes, but it was the most fun.  I guess it's easy to see where I get my love for shopping...  And I guess some traditions are hard to break.

So cheers!  To starting new traditions and keeping the old ones alive!

Let There Be LIGHT!

This past weekend, we tackled another project on our "house" list...new/updated lighting in the kitchen!  Unfornately, I don't have any before pictures... but take my word for it, it was much needed!  Besides being blah and somewhat outdated, we also needed more light over the bar area because every time we eat at the bar, we had to turn on the light in the kitchen and in the dining area to have enough light over the bar. 

We have been craving pendant lights for this area and finally, on Friday night, while we were waiting on our table at Jack Stack BBQ, we snuck away to Home Depot and found the perfect pendants.  But, I'm the "matchy-matchy" type and wasn't about to put up the cute pendants and have them clash with our out-dated, very shabby kitchen light.  Lucky for us, they had a matching light for the kitchen ceiling.  So, we used up the rest of our Home Depot gift cards and store credits, and purchased the 2 pendants and 1 ceiling light.

Now Kevin is very handy when it comes to fixing/updating/re-doing stuff around our house, however, electrical work makes me very nervous...especially at OUR house because I think some little green men did the original wiring, and nothing actually makes sense.  Case in point, the installation of the new ceiling fan in our bedroom a few months ago resulted in a handful of "extra" black wires hanging out of the ceiling? Yeah, we have no idea what those wires power, but there I was standing at the light switch box striking wires against a battery to see which black wire actually provided power to the ceiling fan.  We did successfully get the ceiling fan hooked up, but it was quite the process. 

So needless to say, this time around, Kevin convinced his brother, Phil, to come help us!  Phil's the next best thing to Bob Villa...and his wife, Sarah and their kids came along, so we had a fun-filled Sunday afternoon, and successfully got 2 pendant lights and 1 ceiling light hung. 

This is the old-shabby light that was removed from the kitchen ceiling. (This is the only "before" picture I have)... it's probably going to get re-installed in the storage room in the basement or in the garage.

This is the pendants up close!   They have a vine-looking "metal thing" around them.  The one on the ceiling in the background has the same pattern.

Just One More Hour...

Finally, daylight savings time came to an end this weekend and we all got an extra hour of sleep last night!  Cheers to that!  Although I'm not a huge fan of it getting dark outside at 5pm, I do love that feeling for the next couple days of looking at the clock and feeling like it's later than it actually is.  Even better, waking up in the middle of the night, feeling like your alarm clock is going to go off any minute, and when you glance at the clock, it's only 2:00am and you have several more hours to sleep. 

After the crazy-long week I had at work last week, this extra hour of sleep last night was much needed.  I had several late nights working well past 7pm, and too many early mornings going in before 7am.  Needless to say, when Friday rolled around, I was ready for the weekend!  We had a very relaxing weekend... dinner on Friday night at Gorozzo's (the original one downtown), one of my favorite Italian restaurants.  And Saturday was the typical house cleaning, laundry and a few errands.  Saturday night we put on a pot of chili and had some friends over to watch the KSU game...which turned out to be fabulous game and a win over Texas, making K-State bowl eligible!  Sunday was church, naps :) (my favorite Sunday activity) and grocery shopping.  And of course, how could I forget, Sunday Night Football.  I'm however, multi-tasking and trying to get a jump-start on what I have a feeling might be another crazy week at work...still hoping and cheering for a Cowboys victory to end another great weekend.