9 January 2011

Happy Birthday to Brandan! We can't say enough about how much we love this man, although since he edits this blog, he'd probably delete any extravagant compliments. We celebrated his birthday with a not-so-yucky gluten-free vegan carrot cake that we all could eat. Becky is still staving off Alzheimer's by making up a problem to disguise his age. His birthday math problem is pretty long this year, so we'll put it at the end of the post for any dedicated math fans. Don't bother counting the candles the kids put on his cake-- he's not 9 years old.

Another reason to celebrate-- we finished the 1000 piece puzzle. The puzzle was a photo of a junk drawer. Now we're all itchy to clean out our own drawers and cupboards.

It's time for a break from parties and time to get back to work. Brandan took the Christmas lights down from outside. Instead of spreading lights around the yard, he put 600 red LED lights on one maple tree. The results were beautiful, with all the main branches of the tree clearly outlined in red, however, it took meticulous effort both wrapping and unwrapping the lights around the branches. 

Between the 6 of us, we have 14 pairs of boots which are too tall for our shoe shelves. They have been kept in the mudroom, sometimes in neat rows, but mostly in an untidy pile. Brandan used a birthday gift certificate and created storage for our 14 pairs of boots in the small space to the side of the back door. Abe helped drill holes for the shelf supports.

 

Here are the finished shelves. It's very nice to have the boots up off the floor.