Temporary rooms and furniture...

First off, I need to excuse myself from my lack of posting. The winter doldrums have been setting in, even though the weather has been more like summer the past few days ... the excitement of the lights going up around the city and Thanksgiving already upon us.... it just hasn't felt that festive yet this year. Due to the non-festiveness of it all, I have been lacking in the creativity dept and the blog suffers as a result.

Last weekend we celebrated the 1st birthday of my friend Jen's son, Rowan. It was great to see all the little tykes running around and of course some of my highschool girlfriends that I don't get to see all that often. We also hosted our friends, Kristen and Andrew, at our house for an overnight! Since we have been prepping for the big Turkey day at the Erhardt residence and for my MIL (mother-in-law) to come over, we turned our office into a temporary guest bedroom, just until she leaves. As of right now we have a blow-up mattress in their for our guests. Now, one would think that the bed would have started to deflate by now or that blow-up beds are really not that comfy.... let me tell YOU... this bed is a queen size blow-up with built in pillows and is the height of a regular bed. It is beyond comfy and our guests have never had any complaints. In fact, I think it's a shame to even replace it with a real mattress/boxspring. It even looks convincing:

* This pic is abnormally small and will be replaced later today by a fullsize.

Another temporary situation was the double bed we were using as a makeshift until our queen size mattress/boxspring is delivered this coming weekend. I have to say, since I have become accustomed to sleeping on a queen size mattress the double was sheer torture. Coming from a couple who do not like to be in close proximity to eachother once nodding off... it was seriously the pitts! YAY for new beds and for how our bedroom is shaping up (sorry, another terribly small pic... these will be adjusted):

We will leave you all with one final picture for the day.... our living room has recently had some new additions to it.... 2 side tables (instead of one large coffee table) and a new TV (hiding in the right corner). We had debated whether or not to even get a television set for our UpstateHaven since it is supposed to be a weekend retreat.. however, with the MIL coming into town and upstate weather (which is super unpredictable) we figured it may be a good investment:

One day we hope to have "grown-up" chairs in our living room... we just haven't fallen in love with anything yet!

Quiet days ....

on the UpsateHaven front. We have no new projects to report on and we haven't been upstate in over 3 weeks... it feels like a lifetime! The next time we are at the upstate home there are so many little things that need to be done in order to get the house ready for Thanksgiving and Magnus's Mom's stay..... cleaning/arranging some new furniture (although nothing big) and more cleaning haha. You could say I have cleaning issues.... it is how I take out my frustrations and also it keeps me calm (even though while I am in the process of it I can get quite surly).

As I've reported in previous posts, we are hosting our families annual Thanksgiving dinner and instead of only celebrating with either my Mom's side or Dad's side this year, everyone is invited! I would love to be able to zoom through the next few weeks and just get to Thanksgiving already. The thought of hosting so many people (18 if everyone attends) is nerve racking... but making me more excited than anything to show how the house is turning out, our festive tables and all enjoy some yummy potluck style Thanksgiving dinner... I'm drooling just thinking about turkey/stuffing and green bean casserole (wouldn't be a holiday without it!).

My ultimate TGiving table would look something like this...

* Pic from Decor Ideas via Pinterest

everyone will just have to settle for some good old gords/tea lights and pumpkins.... maybe some antlers from my parents very own garage if we are feeling extra festive!

Any recipes out there that we should bring to the table this year other than the usual Thanskgiving staples? ..... green bean casserole..... fresh cranberry sauce with orange zest..... pumpkin pie... definitely looking for something new this year to accompany Tom Turkey.