November 2009

A Whole Lot of Work Left to Do

by Kay~Kacey on 11/23/2009

I’m having Thanksgiving at my house. We always have Thanksgiving here. It’s SuperGuy’s fault. He got my family addicted to his fried turkeys. The downside? I no longer rotate Thanksgiving between my sister, my mom, and our house.

This year I decided to make it even more stressful…My mom gave me my grandmother’s china. :love:

Why is that stressful, you may ask? Because it’s all boxed up and needs to be washed. Notice the headline on the newspaper. When is the last time you saw a Watergate headline??

Oh, when I said it needed to be washed? I meant hand washed. It is handpainted Noritake china. From what I can research, it was made somewhere between 1914 and 1940. (does my blog show the extra space between the one and the nine on your browser?? I can’t figure out why it’s doing that…) Anyway, I’m going to the library to do some more checking into it. My grandmother had twelve place settings. And when I say place settings I mean:

Dinner Plates, salad plates, dessert plates, small bowls, coffee cups, saucers, more bowls, covered serving bowl, serving bowl, creamer, sugar, platter…oh, heck, I’m sure I’m forgetting some of it. That’s a whole lot of hand washing going on…

The pattern is really pretty, and very antique-y and I love and adore it. (If you just happen to know this Noritake pattern, you could speak up now. The mark on the back is green, with the M (not the newer N that Noritake used in later years. It says handpainted and Japan under the wreath.)

Anyway, the best thing about this? My mother is taking MY china. You remember my china. The china I mentioned that I don’t like anymore?

Anyway, it will look fantastic in her dining room. It’s Noritake too.

But I have to box up all of my china. Wash the new china…and pull off Thanksgiving for everyone…

This is what my dining room looks like right now with my grandmother’s china unboxed, my china waiting to be boxed up…oh, and all the stuff that was in my garden window dumped onto my dining room table. Save me… :help:

Usually by the weekend before Thanksgiving I have the house cleaned. Pies made. Dining room all clean and set up and ready to go. Tell me I’m going to pull it off this year. That we’ll actually be able to have Thanksgiving in this room.

Did I mention I have a painter here this week too? Traipsing around doing doors and stairways??

Tell me it will all turn out. You can even lie to me if you want! Why do I do things like this…

It will be really, really cool to have Thanksgiving off of my grandmother’s china though. If I have it all hand washed by then…

Sleep Number Bed Final Review

by Kay~Kacey on 11/21/2009

It smells. Yes, my sleep number bed smells. Still.

Seriously, are they kidding me? It’s been a year. It still has a horrible plasticizers smell to it. Which means I periodically have to strip it apart. Why, yes, that is a window open in the middle of the winter, why do you ask?? :wallbash:

Then I drag all the bedding and pillows and quilts into the extra bedroom so THEY don’t pick up more of the smell while I’m airing out the bed.

THEN, I drag the egg cratey (is too a word) thingie out onto the balcony to air out. Seriously. Way to much work to do this all the time. I’m. So. Over. This. Bed.

Yes, it’s comfortable to sleep on…but I get the worst headaches from the odor. The sleep number bed smells. A year later. It smells like those old canvasy/plastic air mattress. Since the smell is still here a year later…after multiple times of doing this same chore of airing it out…I think the smell outweighs the comfort of the sleep. These things are too expensive to have such a major drawback. Oh, and I get Googled for “sleep number bed smell”, so I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. Sigh. I hate it when we make a big purchase and it doesn’t turn out. Okay, that’s my final answer. :shakehead: