A very nice surprise

Last night we were afforded a rare opportunity--to spend a little time with an elusive cousin of mine, Kathryn, my aunt Angie's daughter. I hadn't seen her in at least five or six years, and Melissa hadn't seen her in nearly twenty! Kate is visiting Omaha to meet her boyfriend Steve's family and will stay until the 2nd, so hopefully we'll get to meet up again. As for last night, she and Steve came over and we all visited for a couple of hours.
















In other news, we have finally finished painting the cabinets! Who knew this would take so dang long for us? Unfortunately, we STILL haven't been able to agree on a color to paint the doorjambs and windowsills. What goes with cottage grey/green and coffee brown? Eric's new kick is a very light mint green, borrowed from an idea I'm going to use in the main-floor bathroom (next project). It's going to look fabulous in the bathroom, but I seriously doubt it'll look good in the kitchen! Any suggestions?? We have kind of a brick/ochre red paint, as well as a light almond-colored paint. Both purchased for other projects and thrown aside at the last minute in favor of a different color. Creative people change their minds alot....right?

So here are new kitchen pictures. If you have an idea of a paint color to complement this scheme, PLEASE let me know so we can finally have this done and move on to countertops and the floor!



Don't mind the refrigerator hodge podge, please. :)

Ahh, festivities

Merry Christmas to you! We hope your celebration was peaceful and fun, with lots of great food and great company!

This year was a little different with a slight undercurrent of sad for us, for two reasons. This is the first year we've celebrated Christmas without the Magnuson fam's beloved Grandma B. We used to have these raucous, fun Christmas Eve gatherings at her cozy house (now cousin Beth's cozy house), where most of the extended family crammed into her living room and shared Sue's famous cheese ball with crackers, fat sandwiches with lots of mayo, two or three different delicious hot soups (steak soup!), and a variety of desserts that invariably left me in a very satisfied food coma. After the meal came a boisterous white-elephant-style gift exchange between the adults, followed by gifts between those who didn't participate in the white elephant. And through it all, Grandma B would perch on her favorite spot on the couch in faded house slippers, popping chocolates into her mouth and laughing at our histrionics, and protesting she'd been given too many gifts. She was a sight very much missed this year.



So instead of gathering at Grandma/Beth's house this Christmas Eve, we gathered at Sara and Dustin's beautiful new home, set in the rolling hills of the Ramble Ridge neighborhood (I just love that name). And I think the family truly had no less fun than in years past! There was a large floor plan for the usual manly capers and tomfoolery, a huge basement for the kids, and PLENTY to eat.



The second slightly sad thing is that my parents moved to Ohio earlier this year, so this is the first Christmas I've spent away from them, ever. Our Christmases were usually more do-whatever and relaxing than raucous, but they weren't any less celebratory. Melissa got to spend Christmas with them and said she spent the whole time being a pile, which is usually how Christmas worked for the kids in our house! I have to say it was really strange and slightly awkward to be at my Grandpa's house with only my aunts and uncles, and not my parents or brother and sister. (No pictures, I'm a terrible granddaughter.)

Since Melissa was going to see our parents and I'd miss Christmassing with HER too, we decided to have a little dinner of our own and hang out all night. And since we were making a vegetarian dinner, we decided to invite a couple with whom we're friends to have dinner with us too, because they weren't going home to Portland for Christmas. So on the eve of the 21st, Melissa, Zach and Rebecca joined us for dinner delights, holiday music and relaxing. Jason was playing a concert, Christmas with the Symphony, so we just kept a plate warm for when he joined us afterward.

On the menu was Rebecca's delectable salad with pears, a fancy schmancy mushroom and goat cheese lasagna, Melissa's prize side dish of sweet potatoes and pecans, a buche de noel (fluffy chocolate yule log) for dessert, my annual wassail to drink, and of course lots of wine. There was plenty, and we ate nearly all of it.



It's been an emotional, but happy season. It's interesting how our lives change, and how we all change toward each other to make up the difference.

Thanks Give!

Happy Thanksgiving! We flew to Columbus, Ohio today to visit my parents, brother and family friends for a fine food coma.

In addition to the Lawsons, in attendence were: the Fays (new San Diego transplants aunt Nenette, uncle Jeff, cousins Jessica and Andrew, and Andrew's girlfriend Jen), the Monahans (family friends Dan, Rachel, Nichole and Kat), some new people we've never met, a guy named Marvin here on TDY for the Air Force (not sure what TDY means, temporary something) and family friends the Mauricios, Gina and Johnny. Fun times and lots of food!

It's also my brother Alex's 16th birthday tomorrow! Wine-besotted, I must've asked three times who was turning sixteen before the cake was set down in front of none other than my blushing brother. Aww.

After the delectable lemon cake, my dad and I gorged ourselves on the dessert table.

We also played a new game called Partini (lots of instructions to read) and sang extremely, extremely Filipino song choices in karaoke (Total Eclipse of the Heart, A Whole New World, Careless Whispers, etcetera), an extremely Filipino choice of celebration (albeit really fun), but I forgot to take pictures of that because did I mention I've been wine-besotted most of the evening? Now we're playing Fable II, which is so completely awesome I can't even describe it. Also played with Loki Loks!

So, happy Thanksgiving! We hope it was all you were wishing for, with plenty of warm and tasty traditional favorites (especially sides, yessss), relatively pleasant conversations and more than slightly riveting entertainment, safety, laughs and sleepiness. LOVE!

We love DIY!

Eh, kinda. We've been toiling in spurts over this kitchen for so long, I've forgotten what it feels like to really cook something that requires more than a pot, cabbage, sausage and stock. There's been drywall dust everywhere and it gets into everything, and when I've gotten it cleaned up, it magically reappears! But I'm ahead here...

So, Eric stripped the awful polka-dot-and-spiral wallpaper we've lived with for over a year, and scraped off the remaining residue. We had an uneven area patched and re-plastered, and primed everything so we'd be ready when we finally chose colors and painted. Mind, we hadn't agreed even ONCE on colors! We have a new stainless dishwasher and will be acquiring a new black fridge and stainless/black range in the coming year. Why? We think black fridges and ranges look cool, that's why. And our current stuff is O-L-D old.

Up there's Eric knocking out the wall above our cabinets. Hence the dust! We're putting in opaque sliding doors on tracks there, for storage. Our kitchen is pretty small so that will be handy. I enjoyed Mike's ancient shop vac! Look at that thing, it's like 25 years old and it spits dust up out of the vents on top. Looks like an easy Christmas present to me! (Shh, Sue) I might leave the insides of that one cabinet painted red, just for kicks.

Here's what the inside of that wall looks like,
complete with vintage Pepsi can. The cord goes
to our doorbell. Below are an admittedly cruddy
yet effective shim, and the crumbling ceiling inside the wall space. I'm actually excited about the ceiling part--I think we'll cover that up with those pretty aluminum (or are they tin?) patterned ceiling panes (? I know nothing) that you see in lots of restaurants around Omaha. That'll be pretty slick! Too bad you'll only see them as the sliding doors open and shut. Unless I can talk someone into putting them elsewhere too...




On Saturday morning-ish, we went to Lowe's to choose paint. No, we hadn't agreed on colors yet. What's going to look good with stainless AND black AND doesn't remotely resemble the palette the previous owners had? That pretty well eliminated any fall colors--no reds, oranges or pretty orangey-yellows. I liked grey but Eric didn't. He liked some yellow rock color but I didn't. We couldn't agree on a green or blue, didn't want white or cream. He wasn't game for my all-out vibrant-Frida-colors Mexi-theme (I already have free reign over the main bathroom). And we thought brown would clash. The only thing on which we could agree was a sand-textured paint I'd seen in a friend's house, because it would disguise the old-house irregularities in the walls. After squabbling quietly in the aisle and somehow making each other crack up in the meantime, we began to piece together a color scheme that may or may not work. Here is the main color, a dark grey-green (compromise!):



We're pretty pleased! It looks like a professional stucco wall and it's a nice color. I think the first picture looks like suede. Yay! The texture in the second pic is a little easier to see. And here's most of what I can get for the kitchen:

We spent tonight touching up thin spots and correcting mistakes, and trying to squeeze in some studying (me) and gym time (Eric), so we haven't done the doorjambs or windowsills yet. You'll have to wait and see what those colors are. :) I'll probably spend tomorrow night doing that while Eric finishes up the cabinets.


After this...countertops and floor!

A Beginning

Welcome, welcome to our new blog! Since we are always moving at the speed of light, and consequently sometimes neglect to keep in better touch with our scattered families and friends, we thought this blog would be a great way to (be more neglectful...just kidding) keep everyone apprised of the goings-on within and without the Magnuson household. Today's theme: run-on sentences!

The holidays are upon us, so you can expect posts in short order....in the meantime, here's a picture from our summer vacation.