NILL FAMILY news

We had THE most wonderful Thanksgiving weekend! We truly did. It was a bit wild at times, specifically when I was casually peeling beets and chatting with Karen in the middle of Jason’s kitchen tornado. If you’ve ever hosted Thanksgiving, you know those last 15 minutes are a flurry: things are coming out of every direction to converge on the buffet, the oven and fridge open and close a thousand times, serving dishes need utensils, the sink piles up with dishes and pots and scraps, everyone needs more wine…and if you know Jason, he does this for a living, so an innocent beet-peeler such as myself, who doesn’t “appreciate” the urgency involved with 15 minutes until service, will get the boot. Literally.

Besides THAT, it all went incredibly smoothly food-wise. Our turkey was gobbling pretty much right up until we got him (her? Oh gosh! We’ll never know, will we? Bet you have never thought about that!). It was a 28 pound, free range, organic, all-the-credentials kind of bird. Jason brined it on Tuesday…

EQUALLY as important as the turkey was my tablescape in my opinion. As you know we just finished our dining area so this was our first meal around it. We had 9 grownups total: Me, Jason, Grandma, Grandpa, Aunt Lizzie, Uncle Chris, Aunt Karen*, Uncle Berg* and Uncle Bob*.

(*honorary)

There were also 4 kids so it was definitely busy! I didn’t get any group shots but the “before” table looked like this!

I love me some faux decorative gourds with sparkles on them:)

Besides the turkey and gravy, we of course had the best mashed potatoes anyone has ever had (THEY HAD CREAM CHEESE IN THEM), Ina’s apple/herb/sausage stuffing (I always make that), Bobby Flay’s chipotle sweet potatoes (also unbelievable), Karen brought a green bean casserole and we also made roasted brussels sprouts with pancetta, a butternut squash bread pudding, and I did the beets in our crockpot! I tossed them with an orange zest/juice/thyme sauce after they came out and I have to say, they were awesome. Beets-in-the-slow-cooker FOREVER! See foreground:

They were like shining jewels. I love beets 😀

Here are a few random shots from the day. Still waiting for Grandma to upload her pictures so I can steal some. I didn’t get that many

Oh, and this is me, about 9:30 pm.

I was tiiiii-ERD! I missed the whole game of Cards Against Humanity. Probably lucky for them I was asleep because I would have won.

If Grandma has a group photo I will update this post with it – we had a wonderful fabulous lovely time. I would not have changed a thing.

So that’s a wrap on Thanksgiving. Christmas of course is in full swing and Ashton literally hops around the house with excitement. Pete the Elf! Advent calendars! Gingerbread houses! Toy catalogs! It’s only December 2, stick with me, there is a LOT to cover this month!!

Well it was that lovely fall time of year when the colors are all out and every family including us wants to capture happy faces amongst pretty leaves. So capture we did. Well, our photographer did (at Wellesley College). Don’t get me wrong, I’m always happy that we have these photos in the end, but getting there is such a pain in the you-know-what. You want your outfits to be complementary, but not match exactly. Natural smiles, not forced. Candid, but not staged. And you’ll promise your kids just about anything (A.N.Y.T.H.I.N.G.) if they don’t scowl for the next 30 minutes.

So you get through it, the coaxing and the bribing and the cold fingers and constantly smoothing your hair from the wind. And then…you get the photos back a few weeks later (after they have been professionally edited, mind you). There is simply no hiding from the number of lines around your eyes and the realization that your teeth are not as white as you thought. And you don’t know what you were thinking when you chose that jacket to wear (frump alert).

Luckily, you don’t need that many good ones. Our photographer gave us more than 150 images and after weeding through the closed eyes, the frowns and the bad angles, here are my favorites.

First the boys. They are the main reason I drag everyone out to do this each year. I simply can’t capture anything like these photos and cherish them.

A few family shots:

I kind of felt like most of our pictures were the four of us looking straight at the camera (see above note about candids), but I was easily able to build my Christmas card and since that’s the most important thing ever in life, it’s fine. Jason and I each got a few headshots taken (see above note about learning what you really look like) and that was it for the session! CariAnne Kreml was lovely too. Now, off to order my personalized pillowcases and coffee mugs…or maybe just some prints 😉

First of all, far more important than a new place to eat is the fact that I have a new nephew! Holden Taylor Brayden was born last Thursday weeeeeee!! I can’t wait to (take a solo trip to Colorado and) meet him! Here he is, in one of Alex’s old outfits 🙂

Before…

After!

Going way back, this was the night we moved in…

And this is now:

YAY! Let’s talk about the project! 

We began knowing that we were going to build a bench seat under the windows. It was a good space saver and gave us a guide for how big a table we needed (most days, we will just have three chairs on one side and the bench on the other- the armchairs on the ends will live in the basement). We also knew we wanted a pedestal or trestle table in order to avoid people hitting table legs as they slid in and out of the bench. 

Ultimately we chose this table. We waited over 2 months to get it and I am in love. Here’s a better shot of it by itself:

This table was selected for one very important reason: it is distressed. And since it is already imperfect, I cared slightly less when THE BOYS TOOK THEIR TOY TOOLS AND PRACTICED SAWING ON THE EDGE.

Yep, I barely batted an eye. See? It blends right in. *grits teeth*

Let’s go over something that makes me much happier and that is my token DIY project: the faux roman shades. 

The color is a green stripe, hard to tell. I followed this tutorial for the most part, but used hot glue for the seams. It was so simple! You basically cut your fabric, glue the sides, glue a loop at the top, and then glue the bottom to the loop to make one continuous piece.

(Jason intentionally made sure my wine glass was in that picture.)

Then, you put the whole thing up with tension rods (Target), adjust them as you go to get the drape how you want it. See how I have them in this picture? They are going across on the two little windows at the top.

Anyway, I unintentionally made things more complicated (don’t I always?) by picking a fabric with stripes that needed to line up. So that was a big pain. In the end though I love the finished product.

Back to the actual building of everything, of course that goes to Jason. We special ordered the cabinets for the sides but he did the rest! The platforms, the faux walls on each end, the lights, the bench…

And then yesterday, paint paint paint. All the trim and windows were like a cream. If you recall the mudroom, you know I love me some nice white trim. See the difference?

Trust me it was big. After all the painting, Jason cleaned up all his tools, we vacuumed, put the cushions on…voila.

Left to do: hang artwork on the walls and fill the cabinets with all our glassware. I also can’t wait to set the table for Thanksgiving, it is going to be beautiful!

General notes: we got pretty much everything from Pier 1 – the side chairs, arm chairs, cushions and rug. The bench cushion especially was a tough call for us because to have one custom made would have been $550+, including the cost of the fabric. Pier 1 made a great boxed cushion for $80, so we bought two and added a pillow to the ends to make up the extra inches we needed. I think it works! We also bought an extra side chair, we can technically seat 10 now with 4 on each side. 

One last before…

and after!

Ashton has turned into a little drawing machine. He made me a very nice birthday card that he claimed “only had the rainbow on it because he loved me”. He likes to do representations of what he thinks our family looks like and lately has been recreating important scenes in his life. He gave me this last night.

“Mommy! Let me tell you what this is. This is me right here, see? In the middle. And then this is my dinner on the counter that I’m eating. Yes, that’s my dinner and this, on my other side, is the cabinet with my Halloween candy in it. And I’m telling you that I am all done with my dinner and I really, REALLY want a special treat from the cabinet and here is you and you are not happy and you are saying no to the candy because I didn’t eat any dinner and you spent a lot of time making it. You really are not happy, see Mommy? See? This is you.”

To ease your understanding, here is the decoded version.

I mean I was a bit speechless at first. But then, it’s based on a true story, so I put it on the fridge and started to make dinner, thinking I already knew how things were going to turn out.

Well, we’ve gone and done it. We’ve turned the clocks back which, as any mother will attest, spells doom. NOT ONLY do the playground trips and bike rides after work cease entirely, but all of a sudden we have newly minted “early risers”. It’s a vicious cycle because, at least with my kids, after it has been dark for 3 hours I am ready to put them to bed, even though it is barely 7:15. Kids only need so much sleep, so 6:00 am and BAM! Loud mouth breathing straight into your face by two expectant children wearing dinosaur pajamas. Long gone are the 8:30 pm – 7:30 am days. The darkness shifts everything earlier because there is flat out NOTHING TO DO. For months.

But we’ve had a few things going on in the three days since this catastrophe. Jason and I hit the Giants game on Sunday with Evan and Kaelyn and Chera and Eric. It was a bright sunny day (but I had a zillion layers on) and perfect for tailgating and football!

We left the boys with Grandma and Grandpa allllllll daaaaaaaaay (insert fireworks and cheering). Actually it was funny, on Sunday morning Jason and I were heading out, packing up the final car stuff and Alex came running over to me. I bent down because I thought he wanted a goodbye hug, but he pushed me and said “Go ‘way Mommy!”  I was like geez, I’m going, I’m going! I guess the feeling was mutual 😉 But the boys got to go to McDonald’s for lunch, on the big carousel in Greenport, and spent time with their cousin Owen who they love. Bedtime songs with Grandma:

The Giants game turned out to be an important one (who knew?) and they won, so everyone was quite happy.

We rolled on home on Monday and Jason started up on the dining room built-ins…

Things are looking good. Our new dining room table got delivered today, FINALLY! I have only been waiting for ten weeks. Thanksgiving is around the corner and that is our deadline to get this all ship shape and magazine-like. [The (temporary) salvation with the time change is that you’re distracted by all the holiday stuff coming up. I don’t become suicidal until January.]

And then of course, yesterday was election day. I was at the polls at 7:03 am and it was hoppin’! I got my sticker, took an obligatory selfie, told Facebook I voted and went off to work.

Today I woke up to discover that we picked Donald Trump to be our next president. I really have nothing further to say about that except he will be in office the next time we change the clocks. There is a lot to survive between now and then (and of course, in the next 4 years overall). But, one season at a time.

[WARNING: Halloween is filed under “Major, MAJOR Holidays” in our house and as such, this post will be a monster.]

Madness to the Nth degree. That’s what last night was. You want to know the funniest part? I don’t think either kid ate a single piece of candy. It’s like the treats were secondary; tearing through the neighborhood after dark with their friends whilst wearing a superhero costume is all it took. We’re talking bona fide frenzy.

So here are the boys, right before they completely lost their minds.

Ashton struck that pose on his own, by the way. Maybe that’s how Captain America sits leisurely, I wouldn’t know.

But let’s back up. The Halloween prep this year was ridiculous. A week ago we went to our neighbor’s party. Then last Saturday was the Natick Spooktacular, Sunday was Brae Burn’s kids’ Halloween, Monday was Ashton’s school parade and wait, don’t forget the pumpkins! I’d like to say we went to a pumpkin patch and cut them off the vine like true pioneers, but the truth is they were $4.99 at BJ’s and it was too good of a deal.

On Sunday afternoon Kayleigh and her mom (our neighbors) came over and we all got to work scooping out the guts and drawing our faces.

Done! The dress rehearsal:

From left to right: Kayleigh’s puppy, Alex’s smiley one, my nervous nelly and Ashton’s dental nightmare.

Now, let’s get to the costumes. It started about a month ago when I began encouraging cute complementary ideas. I thought it would be nice to give Alex a day in the sun and have him go as Batman and Ashton go as Robin. No? Santa and an elf? How about Mario and Luigi? Woody and Buzz Lightyear? I mean, for Pete’s sake, what good are kids if you can’t dress them up on Halloween. Ashton warmed to the idea of coupling up with Alex only if he could be a pumpkin and Alex could be the seeds. Uh, next.

For awhile after that, Ashton wanted to be some kind of dragon/ghost combination. Specifically, a half of each. Then, he thought he could go as a lightbulb. After that, a witch (I corrected him, “You mean warlock” and he said “No, I mean witch.”). Finally, they settled on the most original costumes ever in the history of little boys on Halloween: superheroes. Captain America and Spiderman, to be specific.

As an aside, superhero worship amongst kids is a real thing. The thought is that children sometimes struggle with their vulnerability and lack of strength and superheroes, by contrast, are extraordinary and powerful, they get the bad guy and they always win. Especially with boys, it is so easy to see why they love dressing up as these characters. People need them to “save the day” and they get to pretend to do so, which can really give their confidence a boost. The boys smiled so big every time they put on their costumes. They raced around striking poses and flexing their “muscles”:

The night broke down as follows. We had our new awesome friends come over (Ashton and Elijah are both 5 (they met at camp) and Alex and Crosby are both 2) for round 1.

They were off like rockets as soon as we blew the whistle (metaphorically speaking). My pictures all look like this.

Round 1 was a blur. Perhaps because I had (hot cider + bourbon) in my travel mug 😀 But honestly, the boys ran around at full throttle. Ashton took off his mask at one point and said, “I can’t wear this anymore Mommy, there’s too much water in it.” (Um it was sweat.)

Around 7:15 pm we regrouped at the house, our friends said goodbye and I tried to serve the boys some semblance of dinner (BAHAHAHA, as if they could focus on anything at all). 7:45 pm? Round 2 baby! We hit a different corner of the neighborhood and the decorations were pretty impressive.

The new thing seems to be this little device:

It is FRIGGIN’ CREEPY. For example, if your house is totally blacked out and you put this on one of your windows, people outside will see this:

See Ashton’s dazed look? Halloween wore him out good.

Same with Alex. On our way home from Round 2, he just stopped and laid down in the middle of someone’s driveway. Really, he did.

Well we just hit the one year mark (we moved 9/30/15) on our life in Natick Massachusetts. It’s gone by fast and slow at the same time hahaha. True to form, we did not let much time pass before launching into our projects. Our major ones included the mudroom and kitchen, as well as some updates to our downstairs bathroom. But, you know how some things stay the same for so long and you just live with them to the point where you don’t even notice them anymore? It doesn’t make it any less awful, just that you’re immune to the sight of it.  For example, we had a mind to paint our guest room right around this time last year. We put some samples up but beyond that? Nada. The squares are still there.

Oh, and our foyer remains completely unfurnished. Not only that, the shelves next to the fireplace have looked like this since, well, we moved in.

There are tools and contact paper and a picture hanging thing and a shoebox full of Jason’s random paperwork and a camera…this room will eventually be a piano room even though no one in our house plays the piano but a baby grand would fit perfectly along with two chairs so, it’s a natural choice for decoration. Utility is secondary here. I just want a pretty room 🙂 But wahhhhhh pianos and rugs and furniture and the lamp I want and all that is so expensive so, it’s kinda empty and I’ll probably be whining about it next year too. People that come in the front door DO ask, hesitantly, if we are moving. I don’t blame them, it is an odd way to enter a house.

But basically, we love it. Here, exactly, are all the things I love.
1) There aren’t too many neighborhoods like ours – you aren’t driving back there unless you live there, really. So it’s quiet, there’s no traffic, no cut through streets, no shortcuts. And it is all perfectly flat, which makes bike riding super enjoyable. The outer perimeter is over a mile, and zig zagging through all the little streets makes for some pretty long rides! I put Alex in the toddler seat on the back of my bike and off we go.

2) Our neighborhood has a pond! A great destination for when we are out walking and feel the need to go see if there are turtles or frogs (there never are, but I up-sell the possibility to the boys to get them excited about leaving the house) or throw some pebbles.

3) On the other side, we also have a little playground, with tennis courts and a big field to run in.

4b) Speaking of decorations, we had two Christmas trees last year!! One in the front foyer window seen above, and one in the back in the family room. Dizzy with happiness, I tell you. I love Christmas trees.

5) I also love Wayland Town Beach. This gem is about 6 minutes from our house.

I’ve already written about that. But it was my zen spot all summer.

There are so many other things too, truly! The boys have their own bathroom. The trees are beautiful. We are within 10 minutes of any shopping experience you could ever want. We have met so many new people and our neighborhood even has its own Facebook group. Jason has plenty of projects to keep him busy. We are living the dream in all its suburban glory. The only con is that everyone else is too. We live in a pretty trafficky, busy area in general, and my commute to Waltham can be a little nightmarish. If Jason were here he would jump in and tell you that it’s because I leave too late (7:30 am), but I wish it were a quick zip to work no matter what time it was and it’s not. There are a lot of turns, waiting, lights, stop signs, cut throughs, etc. It’s 30 minutes on average of not-the-easiest driving and I’m still working on accepting it.

When we were looking at houses last year, I was looking for a place where the kids could ride their bikes and with top notch trick-or-treating. The latter is not so much about collecting candy of course, it’s symbolic of the type of community I wanted to be in. And our neighborhood is a party on Halloween. It is fast approaching, the boys have their costumes and can not, will not be stopped! Start guessing…

If you have a child/children under the age of 12, and live near enough to Sterling MA, sweet christmas go to Davis Farmland straight away. This place, this nirvana, is not just kid-friendly, it is actually designed for them. Like, you wouldn’t even come here if you didn’t have kids. I simply don’t know where to begin regarding the completely awesome wonderful time we had there yesterday. There is so much to do and see, but somehow it is a manageable, easy, and relaxed environment. We stayed all day and it was not hard to do!

Not pictured is the Halloween parade and candy hunt they participated in, as well as learning how to milk a faux cow, the pony ride, and all the playgrounds. There were play structures all over the place – plus little interactive and pretend areas, plus a bounce house, PLUS in the summer they have a huge spray park. I just can’t even describe how much there was to do here.

At this point you may be thinking this all sounds busy and nightmarish. It was not! There was no sensory overload in any way, for kids or their parents. I would not have objected to a beer tent, but other than that, I literally have no recommendations for improvement. It was perfect.

On our way out we noticed that the orchard across the parking lot was still open for apple picking. We were like, well, we’re here, so…$7 bought a half peck and off we went!

Well I’ve done it. I’ve overposted for no reason. But I couldn’t help myself. Our day at Davis Farmland was a 10 so if you meet my initial criteria, go. You are guaranteed to have fun AND get naps on the car ride home! What else is there to want 😉

Our house has kind of a strange floorplan, having been converted from a cape to a colonial about 12 years ago. The original living room is now just a pass through from the new main living area to the guest room/bathroom and staircase. It is an empty space still (and we just passed our 1 year mark in the house) and oh how I wish I could borrow from it to make a proper dining room.

Alas.

So the “new main living area” is one big open space that includes the kitchen, family room and dining area, which is off to the side that looks out over the top of the driveway. It is framed by two doors – one leading outside (left one) and one leading out to the screened in porch (right one):

There are two walls to contend with. One big one:

And one smaller one.

We really want to warm up this space to make it cozier and a more welcoming part of the room. My go-to idea when it comes to making things feel customized…built-ins! You may recall the ones Jason constructed at our old house. Those were pre-built Home Depot cabinets that he raised and built shelves on. They worked for that living room but…I wanted fancier this time. Glass! Lights! And we went back and forth a lot on how to do this. Should we make the cabinets a color to offset the kitchen? Maybe a dark gray like our old fireplace? Should they be off to one side, using that one big wall?

But the more pictures I looked at, the more I knew something like this would be my inspiration photo:

And because the space is shared with the kitchen and living room, keeping the cabinets consistent was probably the safest. We turned to our trusty Martha Stewart catalog, picked out a few options, sat down with our designer at Home Depot and came up with a rough rendering.

Here is the space pretty much straight on.

 We are going to put floor to ceiling cabinets on either side of the windows and connect them with a bench seat that runs the entire length under the windows. Akin to:

Except with glass cabinets on top, three little drawers and then a box at the bottom.

The built-ins should add some much needed height and character to the space.

NOW for the fun part…design elements! I created this mood board for my ideal choices. You know, if there was no such thing as money.

It’s a hard thing because our whole room so far is white/gray/blue/tan. It’s very muted, so I can’t go out of the box and introduce a crazy new color in the area. The whole room has to flow so I fear my choices for the bench cushion and the roman shades on the windows might end up being a little safe.

So that’s where we are at! We actually did order the farmhouse pedestal table you see above – it’s from Ethan Allen and we are in the middle of our 7-9 week wait time for it. Hopefully only another couple of weeks before the cabinets are in as well, We are hosting Thanksgiving this year so Jason needs to get a-buildin’!

Yesterday was our annual apple picking adventure! We headed to Tougas Family Farm in Northborough and we had great company once we got there: the entire state of Massachusetts. I kid you not – the line to park (just to park!) was almost a mile long. That may not sound like a lot, but when you are snaking up a hill after driving 40 minutes and you know they have just opened at 10 am, how can so many people be ahead of you?? It’s nerve-wracking and I swear I almost made Jason turn around. I have lost the ability to wait since having kids.