Evan and I had a craft night this weekend. I was inspired by the December issue of Real Simple, which had multiple holiday decorating ideas that you could either make or buy. They had a red wreath that you could buy here, which I thought was so cool, but definitely not worth $100! So we made our own out of leaves from our yard.
Here’s the inspiration:
Here are the ingredients:
The final product (granted it might look even better if our door wasn’t teal!):
Knoxville had snow flurries this morning. I had to double check the calendar this morning when I got into work. And indeed it was and is, still November! When it first started hitting my car, I thought it was just debris. I park in one of the “rougher” (Knoxville definition) areas of town, just outside downtown, and it did not cross my mind as unusual for debris to be hanging out in the air. But as I walked into downtown, more was falling, and it was indeed snow. Fortunately, I was dressed in one of my two wool button front winter coats.
Winter has come. And I hope it will not leave, return to summer, come again, return to summer, as it often did in NC. This was not the first day, or second, that I had to wear a wool winter coat. I’ve been wearing one for a couple of weeks actually. Which compared to the number of times I wore them while living in NC (one wear each, per winter) indicates that Knoxville is significantly colder than the Triangle. I am thrilled that either Knoxville is just colder, or this winter is just colder… whatever, I love it. I’m dreaming of a white Christmas! Then again, I guess I’ll be in NC for that, where it could be 80. 
After a really frustrating weekend trying to get the kitchen cabinets painted, we have finally met with some success. We attempted to spray the doors starting on Saturday morning, and after several hours assembling and trying to figure out how to use the sprayer, we discovered the paint was too thick to go through the machine. So with another trip to the hardware store, Evan got a huge bottle of paint thinner stuff (our second bottle). After some mixing and reassembling the sprayer, it started working and spraying paint, but progress was slow. After multiple coats, we brought a door up to the already painted cabinets and voila… it didn’t match! Ugh. So we sprayed another coat, and then finally took to them with the roller. This was looking good, but took ALL Sunday to dry as the paint thinner stuff increases the drying time. Well anyways, we finally got a couple doors hung on tonight and they’re showing lots of potential.
Need a refresher on the old kitchen look? Click here.
We also painted the guest bedroom recently:
And we put a sliding glass door in the dining room (it’s still messy…):
And this is the dining room before:
