November 2022 – a Quiet and Snowy Month

November 2022 was a quiet month for us here at Grandma’s house. Winter settled in with several inches of snow so Lodi got to use our new snow plow and snow blower. I was determined this year to keep the deck cleared of snow by even constantly shoveling if I had to and I’ve basically already lost that battle. With it getting dark at 5pm, the drastic change to sudden winter, and the holidays coming up I’ve been feeling pretty unmotivated to get much of anything done around the house… besides make soup maybe lol. I guess that’s pretty typical of this time of the year.

My brain keeps drifting to the basement stairwell and kitchen and it kind of just makes me go “UGH” feels like a lot of work that I really don’t want to tackle right now lol.

The stairwell is kind of a nightmare that doesn’t just need sheetrock but a lot of repair as well. The kitchen is a HUGE painting project that includes an old hoosier cabinet that really should be stripped before I even consider painting it as well.

So, basically, we’ve narrowed our inside projects down to just plain old difficult and time consuming.

Pretty tough to get motivated to work on them currently…

As per my usual I try to look forward to what we’ll be achieving that I’m excited about to give me the motivation into getting to work.

We’ll be replacing the current hand rail along the stairs with one made of black pipe to match the rest of the basement aesthetic which I think is gonna be a really cool.

I’m going to line the stairs on either side with LED lights that will pop on automatically with a motion activated plugin when we step into the stairwell. This won’t just be super cool in my opinion but VERY practical as it is a dark stairwell and currently you have to step down into the blackness before you can reach the light switch.

Besides that the stairway has been an ugly unfinished space since I moved in… going on eight years. Yeah it would be pretty awesome for it to not be an embarrassment anymore.

As for the kitchen I think the biggest reason I’m kind of dreading it is because I’ve painted a kitchen before lol.

It takes ALOT of paint and TIME to do it correctly at all.

However, replacing the broken kitchen faucet and covering up the unfinished sheetrock with a real back splash is going to be such an incredible before and after I’m actually starting to get excited about it.

Not to mention the upper cabinets and lower cabinets don’t match at all. My Grandparents literally built the upper cabinets back in the ’50s and the lower cabinets are stock from somewhere in the ’90s I think.

Getting some paint on them along with matching hardware is going to do so much for the space!

I remind myself that that will also be the completion of the basement…

Ok, looking at it like that, painting out a few cabinets really feels a lot less daunting for what we’re going to get out of it.

November 2022 as per usual we headed off to my big extended family on Thanksgiving then had our own smaller one with just a few of us. Also, per usual, I was in charge of the meat.

My brother has been raising these giant curly haired pigs for several years now and we’ve been thrilled to buy quite a bit of pork from them so I had a smoked ham for Thanksgiving besides the usual turkey to make.

Seriously guys, if you ever have the opportunity to try the meat from a Mangalitsa pig you won’t believe it. They’re known as the “kobe beef” of the pig world. I was a sceptic but yes, somehow, even bacon can be better.

Fortunately they tend to give us first chance to buy if they have extra pork for sale!

November 2022 I hope you all had a wonderful turkey day!

And I hope to get myself motivated soon to share some projects!