A chilly weekend

It was the perfect weekend to stay in and get stuff done. And that was exactly what we did!

After being gone last week there was a ton of laundry to do, lots of Ikea goodies to assemble and set up somewhere and lots of food to catch up on preparing.

There isn't much need, in this day and age, to "put up food for the winter". But it seems to be a fall ritual that AB and I have fallen into. Every fall we make buckets of spaghetti sauce. The goal is to get about 50 cups prepared and frozen, which gives us about enough for a dinner use every other week. There are a ton of varieties of spaghetti sauce out there, some very inexpensive. So some people probably wonder why we would spend a weekend making spaghetti sauce?

Because it tastes so much better. And I know exactly what I put in it.

Green chili isn't so easy to find. But AB started making green chili every fall long before we even lived together. In fact, I remember his first batch when he lived in Spanish Towers in Boulder with his roommate. It was so freakin' hot.

And I think it gets hotter every year. And every year he swears to control it. And every year I sweat through it. And many unsuspecting green chili tasters have come to despise AB at his annual chili cook off at work.

This weekend was no exception. He swore he was going to make a "medium" and a "hot" version. There was nothing "medium" about the chili that resulted this evening.

I made a big pot of red chili on Saturday night. Mine isn't nearly so involved since this is one staple I make that is based off of cans.

Still on our list for this fall is our second batch of spaghetti sauce, pumpkin breads and chicken pot pies. Nectarine pies have been done, 20 cups of spaghetti sauce complete, a few GALLONS of green chili and a couple dinner servings of red chili.

This weekend has been one of my most productive weekends in a long time. I told AB that I look forward to being moved in and settled so that I don't feel as though I have to work on that every weekend. But he asked me if that would ever happen. Would I ever feel as though my house was decorated and each room complete?

Maybe, but I don't envision it happening terribly soon.

I jumped off course on my monthly tasks to address each room. September was to be the garage. And it has been, and still is. And because the garage isn't terribly fun, I haven't been a rallying force behind AB on this one.

I also had planned to paint Skadi's room. And I really would like to pick out colors in the next week and then maybe tackle that either next weekend or the weekend after that. Skadi is excited for it, she asks for her walls to be painted "pink, pink, pink, pink and blue" (the ceiling is the blue one). The time has just been short though. Still I would like to get to this sooner rather than later as things start amassing in her room.

This morning Leif (since he had lost Wii privileges) spent a good portion of the morning helping me put together our new dining room table. He is getting to that age where he can be a real help. And he even seemes to enjoy it. It took us about an hour and AB's assistance at one point to lift the table tops and flip the table over, but we did it.

The table came from Ikea and addresses me "need" for a table where I can seat more than 4 people. You never know what you are going to get from Ikea. Some stuff is super and some is utter crap. Must to my amazement, the table (despite not being my first choice in stain) is super. AB even likes it and I admitted that ignoring the price, it is probably nearly exactly what I would have aimed to buy had I had 5x this much to spend.

"No tablecloths," AB said. "I like the wood. I want one of those runner things too before you put anything in the middle, I don't want it getting scratched up."

Fully extended it would have to sit diagonal in our dining room. With the leaves it seats "10 people", though I suspect it is more like 12-14. I also bought a bench to go on one side instead of chairs. In fact, I haven't purchased chairs yet because for now I can seat 4 on the bench if need be (ok, four kids or four of my friends with skinny butts), three of anyone else. Then I can walk the four dining room chairs from the other table over. The matching Ikea chairs weren't terribly comfortable and emitted an air of cheapness that the table did not. I hope to buy some chairs that might dress it up a little and blend the style of the table with the rest of the furniture in the front two rooms.

Piles of laundrey done, table put together, a few boxes unpacked, Skadi's room organized and summer clothes put away, food made... it was an eventful weekend!