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If you are reading this, you’ve found your way to our new home.  Please ignore the boxes and dust while we rearrange.  Things will likely be changing here for a while. 

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Welcome!

This year marks our third Christmas in Chez M and C.  Our first year we scavenged a tree from our land, with predictably depressing results.  The second year, suitably distracted by a new baby and a flurry of snowstorms, we just bought one and remembered what a Christmas tree was supposed to look like.

This year…well… you know our motto:

“Why pay for something decent when you can throw a baby on your back and tromp through the snow in search of a completely imperfect, but free, tree?”

(That’s one of our mottos, anyway.)

We divided duties in the usual fashion.  Cherie carried Annabel and gave helpful suggestions while Michael did the actual work.  It didn’t take us long before we found a tree we thought might work.

(He is actually sawing the tree down in this picture, though it doesn’t much look like it.)

We brought the tree in, shook off all the snow, trimmed off the bottom branches, set it up in the stand, and took a good hard look.  And…hmmm.

Seems a bit sparse, doesn’t it?

It’s not that bad, of course, and it’s certainly light years ahead of that first sad, little tree.  But it could be better.

Luckily, we are very (veeeery) used to making do and thinking creatively.  And we had all those extra branches that were trimmed off the bottom.  Why don’t we just drill some holes…

Whittle down those spare branches…

And use them to, you know, fill things out a bit?

That is better, don’t you think?  Now it just needs some lights and decorations…

And we’re ready to go.

Oh, wait, one more thing.  How could we forget?  The star!  That most valuable star that we made last year when we desperately needed something to top off our otherwise wonderful tree.

That’s what we are looking for.  Now that is a proper DIY tree.

Happy holidays!  May all your trees be jerryrigged and your ornaments homemade!

In our last post, we talked about our new woodstove.  Actually, the woodstove was a hand-me-down from Cherie's mother who in turn inherited it from Cherie's grandfather.  So the woodstove itself is quite old.  The chimney was new.  At any rate, the post was all about how when Michael's parents came to visit they helped us finish up the woodstove.  We were so excited about that part that we neglected to mention the reason they visited.  Hint: it had nothing to do with a woodstove.  It had to with this:

Um.  Yes.  We forgot to mention Annabel's first birthday.  Let's just all pretend that didn't happen and that we aren't posting this almost a month late, shall we?

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANNABEL!  Thanks for putting up with all the sawdust.

Also, weeks ago (or was it months ago?  Yes, it was probably months) we finished the bathroom vanity but never showed you a picture of it.  In our defense, we didn't have a camera at the time.  We considered doing a charcoal sketch of the vanity, or perhaps a nice watercolor, but ultimately decided that such an artistic display would raise the classiness of this blog to a level that we can't support.  So, to maintain the present low-expectations of our readers, we decided instead to just hold off until we had a camera again.  Which we now do!

Here's the finished vanity:

 

HAPPY FINISHING, VANITY!  Thanks for holding our toothbrushes!

The doors and drawfronts are made of Douglas Fir plywood with mahogany trim.  Instead of the usual non-working applied drawfront below the sink, we installed two sink front tip-out organizers, which make a handy place to stash toothpaste.  The mismatched hardware is on purpose, because we are just craaazy that way.  And the doors usually have a white plastic child lock to keep curious fingers out of the cleaning products, but we took that off for the picture because we are vain about our vanity.  (Get it?  Vain? Vanity? *sigh*)

We think that clears up all past obligations.  For the moment.  Likely a short moment.