Mudding and sanding are completely done. Today I am going to sweep and mop the garage. Then the kitchen. And then we can vacuum the rest of the house. 🙂 Tonight the garage will get the first coat of primer. I think two coats are a good idea given some of the areas of funk (the wall next to the house is stained and the beams are all pretty foul). The second coat will probably happen on Thursday. The inspector came this morning so I’m about done with this stage of the project. Yay! Decorative painting is going to wait a few months until there is more money in the kitty.
So I will probably start moving stuff out to the garage on Friday and Saturday. I only need help for the biggest pieces and then I can handle the rest of the work by myself over the next week. YAY!
Cookie baking is done. Cinnamon rolls are happening on Saturday.
Christmas cards are completely done and in the mail.
Yesterday I made a whole bunch of Aloo Gobi Mattar and it is really really good. Today I am making corned beef and cabbage (and potatoes, of course). Tomorrow is some cut of beef that Noah took out of the freezer; I should probably figure out how I am cooking that. I should also make veggie soup today or tomorrow and that will use up the vast majority of the veggies in the house. With the generous help of Sarah’s freezer foods I think we will be set for meals (except for Christmas dinner) for basically the rest of the month. That’s kind of awesome. 🙂
Wow. I have cleaning, cooking and wrapping presents left on the agenda for this week and setting up the garage for next week. I think this may be my lowest stress Christmas in years. 🙂 Everything is coming together easily and in advance. Yay!
The beef is a rump roast. Good for stewing, baking for awhile with basting, or other longer cooking that tenderizes it more. It could also be sliced thin and cooked in some quicker, simpler way — broiled or grilled, say. Marinating is also a good possibility. I’ll point out that we have some cheaper alcohol we’re not sure how to get rid of — often stuff that’s so-so for drinking still makes a fabulous meat marinade.
Maybe we should get that started tonight then. 🙂 Dinner tonight is zero effort come the evening so we’ll have time.
State of our Christmas:
We have our tree up and decorated. We’ve set up the nativity scene from Nick’s mom (she made it, and it is beautiful). We’re just about to finish our Christmas cards (we wrote a LOT this year, partly because everyone is so far away, and we wanted to send good wishes for the holidays).
We have no presents under the tree for a couple of reasons – number one being that we don’t have a lot of money this year, and number two being that my family will be shipping our presents out, and they haven’t arrived yet.
I get to start making Christmas cookies on Thursday night, for the lab’s holiday party. And I get to go to a departmental holiday party tomorrow – yay for free food!
We have a compressor and a paint gun that hooks to it, if you want to do something other than rollers/brushes.