December | 2009 | Perpetual Renovator

Hello, my name is Andrea. I thought I should refresh your memory as to who I am since I didn’t manage to write one post in November! Oh well. Lots of things have been going on…houses to be worked on, things to get involved in, holidays to be celebrated!

Thanksgiving was here at my house. My mom, dad, brother, sister and nephew came up from New Orleans to help celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday. We ate lots of turkey sandwiches, worked on a very complicated puzzle and played with Skyler.

Yup, he’s a cutie!

Today, we cleaned out the rent house we have been working on. We touched up the paint, installed thresholds and worked on the bathroom plumbing. I think this is where most of our spare time in November was spent….putting the finishing touches on this house. It seems like it took forever to get this one fixed up, but, when I think about it, we only worked there on Saturdays and, every once in a while, on a weekday evening. So, when you work at that rate, you don’t go anywhere fast! I came home today with a huge red pine stain on my arm. I spilled the stain I was working with and accidentally stuck my arm in it..yuck! It looks like a really bad spray tan. This stuff doesn’t come off very easily! I also was using some oil base paint to finish up the baseboards in the master bedroom. I was covered in paint and stain by the time I called it quits. I almost felt like I was going to have to put a capful of paint thinner in my bath water in order to get all this junk off!

Every time Steven, Vivian and I walk over to the “little house” as Vivian calls it, people cross the street and go the other way (away from us). I never thought about it until I took a good look in the mirror before going over there today. We wear old paint clothes with dried caulk and thirty colors of paint and none of our clothes match. Meaning, I have on an orange shirt, a blue skirt, pink leggings and whatever jacket I could find. We must look like the Florence Street hobos when we step out! HA! Check out this pic if you don’t know what I am talking about.

One of those Florence Avenue hobos

Last night was our church Christmas banquet. We laughed a lot and had a great time amongst friends. Before we left for the banquet, we decided to take a family picture for our Christmas card. Here are some of the pictures. Steven took some of Vivian while I was getting dressed. Some are from earlier in the evening when Vivian and I were playing in the snow.