Thankful for it all

I love this time of year - the food, family and festivities make the freezing rain seem bearable.

Mike and I spent the thanksgiving holiday at Papa's house - 4 lovely days of food, sitting by the fire, antiquing, watching football and working on projects. Between us all we had a myriad of projects going on:

Papa, Mike and Aidan brewed a batch of IPA (some details on the process here)

Papa and I made cinnamon rolls from the Grand Central Baking Book
(thanks Remi & Andrew!).

They were delicious, and time consuming.

Pa and Sharon have been hard at work on getting a railing up around their loft area. With a little help from Mike and Aidan they managed to get the vertical support beam in place...

... and several of the horizontal rails bolted in place. You can see the ladder that Pa recently made to the loft at the right of the photo. Aidan and I spent some time reading his new book up there. It's nice and cozy.

Papa, Susanna & I also bottled and corked 184 bottles of red wine!

In addition:

• We stained some kitchen stools, decided they were ugly, and sanded the stain off.
• Worked on a sewing project (to be revealed after it's gifted).
• Crocheted a baby sweater.
• And made a ton of Thanksgiving food! 

As you may have noticed from all the above involvement of my father, my need to have lots of projects going on at one time is genetic. In the Fall issue of West Sound Home & Garden magazine, Pa and Sharon's house & a sampling of all their projects were the focus of an article, complete with a ton of photos. For any interested family and friends who haven't seen it, below are images of the magazine pages. Click on each one and it will enlarge for reading.