Me: “Who is Justin Bieber dating?”
Will: “Selena”
Me: “Oh yeah:
Will: “Selena Gomez. They broke up, but are back together now.”
Me: “How did you know that?”
Will: “I get news.”
Sankta Lucia Concert
Celebrating Sankta Lucia is a Swedish tradition that Susanna has brought with her. According to by Agneta Lilja, Södertörn University College (posted on sweden.se):
The Lucia tradition can be traced back both to St Lucia of Syracuse, a martyr who died in 304, and to the Swedish legend of Lucia as Adam’s first wife. It is said that she consorted with the Devil and that her children were invisible infernals. Thus the name may be associated with both lux (light) and Lucifer (Satan), and its origins are difficult to determine. The present custom appears to be a blend of traditions….
The concert is a celebration of light, with Lucia wearing a crown of candles and each member of cast carrying a candle. According to sweden.se:
The real candles once used are now battery-powered, but there is still a special atmosphere when the lights are dimmed and the sound of the children singing grows as they enter from an adjacent room.
Tradition has it that Lucia is to wear “light in her hair,” which in practice means a crown of electric candles in a wreath on her head. Each of her handmaidens carries a candle, too. Parents gather in the dark with their new digital cameras at the ready.
The star boys, who like the handmaidens are dressed in white gowns, carry stars on sticks and have tall paper cones on their heads. The brownies bring up the rear, carrying small lanterns.
The Yesterday we shared in that tradition by attending a Lucia concert in Hartford. The boys found the concert a little boring, but it is good to experience new things (and learn to sit though things that aren’t as exciting as watching a movie). This is the second year we have celebrated the holiday here. Last year we attended the concert at the Swedish Church in New York City.
The concert last night was very nice. Of course, the big concert in NYC the year before was amazing – there was no comparison between the two. Of course the concert at the Swedish Church is significantly more expensive and a much longer trip.
SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge
Recently Newark Mayor Cory Booker made national news by accepting a challenge to live for a week off of “food stamps.” According to the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC.org) the average food assistance (Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP) in this country is $4 per person per day. This led to an interesting discussion with Susanna on our drive home from New York on Saturday.
Could we, as a family, survive off of $4/day per person? It would be a challenge. We have Will and Ben living with us (on average) 3.5 days a week. That would bring our weekly grocery budget to $84. That is significantly less than we spend per week on food, and we don’t often purchase meat.
What good do these SNAP Challenges do? They certainly don’t make it easier for those on food assistance to get by. It does seem that it is easy to forget how well off we are compared to some. I know we have had many discussions around the dinner table about being thankful for what we have. Yet it is easy to only focus on those who have more than us. I often hear the boys talk about how lucky some of their friends are to have more toys or more electronics than they do.
Maybe a week long food challenge like this would help us all appreciate what we have. It won’t change how easy or hard it is to survive when you have to rely on assistance to get your basic needs (food and shelter). Maybe it will give us more empathy for the less fortunate. Maybe if enough of us found more empathy, we would find a way to do more to help the less fortunate.
New Kitchen Cabinets
Around Thanksgiving, Susanna and I (with assistance from my dad) ordered new kitchen cabinets from Home Depot . I got a call this week that the cabinets were ready to be picked up.
My ultimate goal is to make cabinets when we redo the kitchen, but for now, it was easier to get new stock cabinets to make the one side of the kitchen as usable as possible. It will probably be a couple of years before we are able to redo the kitchen.
The first thing I noticed at the store was that there were only 7 cabinets in the stack, not the 8 that the drawing showed. After a careful look, it appeared that we (and the store) didn’t order one of the upper cabinets needed (both of our faults – I thought we had double checked the list – but one wasn’t on the order). Hopefully the missing cabinet won’t take too long to arrive at the store.
Susanna and I pulled down the old upper cabinet. Unfortunately, we pulled it down before I went to the store – I would probably have waited until all the uppers were in before taking down the old one. I also learned to not leave upper cabinets hanging with two screws half way in while I run to the workshop for more tools. I also learned that when the upper cabinet falls (it was at least empty) that it won’t be in a condition to reuse in the laundry room. The crash also scares Susanna half to death.
The wall behind the old cabinet was in pretty bad shape. I installed plaster washers wherever the plaster had come loose from the lath. I then did a first coat on patching the wall using drywall compound.
I was able to install two of the upper cabinets today as well. The middle upper cabinet is the one missing. Normally I would hang the cabinets from the corner out, but in this case, I need the cabinets as far to the right as possible to line up the lower cabinets. I will add a spacer to make up the gap between the final cabinet and the wall.
Depending on when the other upper cabinet arrives, I may go ahead and install the lower cabinets and new counter top next weekend. We will reuse the sink and none of the plumbing should have to move.
Overall, I didn’t get as far today as I had hoped. I was hoping to get all the uppers installed, but of course that couldn’t happen. I didn’t want to dig into installing the lower cabinets today and leave the kitchen a total wreck for the week. Hopefully all this will be done by Christmas. Don’t worry, I’m pretty confident that it shouldn’t be a problem to get done by then.
Pictures from our trip to the city
We made it home last night by 8pm – making it one of our most reasonable ends to a day trip to the city. We ate dinner at IKEA in New Haven and still made it home in time for the boys to read before bedtime. I didn’t get too many pictures on the trip, but here are a couple more.
Day Trip to New York City
Today we took a trip to the city. Will and Ben had been begging to go so they could do Christmas shopping for each other. Today was the only day we could go as a family before Christmas.
It is the first of December and the city was already packed with shoppers. Thankfully, we were done in time to catch the 3:30 train back to New Haven. Overall both boys did well – only a little frustration leaving the toy store only buying gifts for each other, and nothing for themselves.
Small Projects
Today finally felt like a normal Sunday. It has been crazy busy her over the past couple of weeks, between my work travel, hurricane Sandy, and holidays. Today we had nothing planned save a few errands to run before lunch.
I decided to take an easy day. I had no major house projects to work on, so I decided to finish up a few small projects around the shop.
The first project was to replace the spotlight on the corner of the workshop. I had installed a motion sensor light several years ago, and it no longer worked. I decided to use one of the RAB lights I had left over from the garage and put it on a timer. I picked up a dusk to dawn timer switch. The timer adjusts for sunrise/sunset and will turn the lights on at dusk and off at a fixed time, and back on in the early morning until dawn.
The second afternoon project was to work on the door to the second floor of the workshop. I have a kerosene heater for the workshop, but without a doorway to the second floor, all the heat escapes from the first floor workshop. I still have a little more work to do on the door, but it is getting closer. I pulled one of the antique doors that had been in the workshop loft. I’m not sure I like the painted door in the middle of unpainted plywood. Maybe next summer I will paint the plywood walls.
A Thanksgiving Day Hike
The weather this week has been nearly perfect. It has been (maybe) a little cool in the mornings, but the days have been wonderful. We took the opportunity to enjoy the nice weather and did a hike behind the house on Thanksgiving morning. My dad was visiting for the week, so we got to enjoy the woods with him.
We took a little detour from the normal loop that we hike, and took a closer look at some of the abandoned hospital buildings that are adjacent to the trails we hike.
We enjoyed a turkey dinner (thanks to the Sawyer Farm for the turkey – it was wonderful), and Susanna even ate a few bites of the Thanksgiving turkey. Will was quick to point out that the turkey is the only thing on our table that was on the tables at the Pilgrims’ first Thanksgiving dinner in 1621, but we enjoyed our meal nonetheless.
A Kitchen Question
Yesterday I moved the outlet for the stove from the floor under the window to the wall that we had installed to cover the door. Susanna added curtains to the window.
The plan for the kitchen redo (this time) was to limit the cost and scope of the work. We aren’t replacing the cabinets (just repainting them) or moving major appliances (other than the stove). We aren’t replacing the floor. All of which will need to be done when we finally get around to doing a proper remodel of the kitchen in a couple of years. We are trying to make the kitchen more usable in the meantime.
The space between the end of the counter and the wall is 54-inches. The stove will take up 30 of those inches. We have been talking about filling up the remaining 24-inches with cabinets/counters.
The problems:
– We can’t match the existing countertop or cabinets – so it will be obvious that it was added.
– Any counter/cabinet we put to the left of the stove will only be 15-16″ deep (not the normal 24″ deep) because of the window location.
Our thoughts:
– Originally we pushed the stove all the way to the right, which would leave 24″ for a cabinet/counter to the left of the stove. It would be shallow, and the top wouldn’t match the counter to the right of the stove, but that would probably look fine. The problem with that is that the stove is then 8″ from the sink, and that felt too close.
– Our current thought is to do an even split of the space with the stove. I would purchase a 12″ wide cabinet to put to the right of the stove, and build a 12″ wide and 15″ deep cabinet to the left of the stove. We will put upper cabinets in and a microwave over the stove.
Some questions:
– Will centering the stove make the most sense?
– What color should we make the countertops? I was going to make them out of white oak to match the (planned) island top.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.
Kitchen Color Scheme
When we decided to repaint the kitchen, we decided to pick paints from the Sherwin-Williams Victorian Color Palette®. The upper walls were painted with Empire Gold (SW0012). The lower walls were painted with Copper Pot (SW 7709).
I wasn’t too sure on the colors when we looked at them in the can. The bottom looked a little more orange than I had expected. However, in the end, I think the colors are perfect for the room. Now all we need is a better looking floor – but that is for another year.