Mat & Amie Levine

We finally finished the ceiling work in our spare bedroom aka Maddy’s room.  She was pretty happy to have her futon back.  I love how she hangs out in there with her head on the pillow!  Isn’t she looking good?

Since it was the first dinner club of the new year, we decided on a theme that we’d each bring something “new”, something we’ve never made before.  Mat and I made vegetarian potstickers from the cookbook that Juliette gave us as a wedding present.  They were delicious and we’ll be making those again.  Others made turkey noodle soup from scratch, an italian seafood soup, a blender pie and a mayan temple cake.   It was all delicious and amazing!  We are lucky to have such creative friends who are willing to experiment with food!

We had Gram over for a salmon chowder and freshly baked bread dinner the other night.  She was the first guest to sit at our new dinner table.  Thus the historic photo.  The salt and pepper shakers are really taking over the photo, but it was nice of Gram and Mat to let me take a photo.

We finally had some sunny weather last week for several days.  Yay!  So we went for a walk along a closed section of the Parkway so that we could enjoy the winter views.  With all the leaves down we could even see Mt. Pisgah in the distance (I don’t have a picture of it though.)

A section of ice over the road.  A good reason the Parkway is closed to vehicles…everyone would just slide off into the guardrail or beyond.

A tulip poplar leaf outline was forever memorialized!  Must have been fall when they sprayed the lines.

So, my allergies have been going ballistic. Or I am just fed up with them and always having to take allergy medicine and going through a box of tissues a week.  One of the ways I’m trying to take down the level of allergens in our house is I have know kicked Maddy off the bed. It’s been about a week. She doesn’t really know what’s going on because she’s always been allowed on the bed.

This is to help us all remember that she’s not allowed on the bed.  Every so often, we find her crammed into a little spot and we have to tell her to get “Off” the bed.  And she just gives us a confused look (or what I interpret as a confused look) not understanding what she did wrong.  Hopefully, it will all make sense soon.

It doesn’t help that the room that has the futon she sleeps on at night is in repair mode.  We are taking the acoustic tile down in the back bedroom.  We did this is in our kitchen and living room last January and looking to complete the project now.

One morning I woke up and decided that we should paint our kitchen cabinets all the same color.  We’ve been talking about it for awhile, but I haven’t really wanted to have white cabinets because they show dirt.  I changed my mind.  This after we’d been discussing how we need to finish our ceiling project.  We did the living room and kitchen last year about this time and we need to do the bedrooms.  But in my mind, in that moment, I decided that we should do the kitchen cabinets first.  One reason being I thought it would be a quick project.  Little did I know that it would require 4 coats of primer and 2 coats of the actual paint!

The fun begins…I’ve been priming for a day and it’s still not over.  There is lots of dry time between coats that I didn’t think of when I thought that this project would just take a day or two!

Finally, the project comes to an end 5 days later!  Not the greatest photo, but it shows the end product.  I am excited to have knobs on the doors and drawers.  Hopefully, that will help so we won’t have lots of dirt/grease smudges where we open the doors and drawers.  We are still recuperating from the project, but soon we will begin our ceiling project.

For Christmas this year, we did a full 24 hours of meals, games and Levine family time.  On Christmas eve, I made Shepherd’s Pie. On Christmas morning everyone came up to our house and Mat made bagels for brunch, which we all enjoyed.  (In the above picture from l to r, Mat, Gram, Naomi, Amie, Ron, Mark and Sara.)

Here’s a picture of our Christmas tree, note the trendy shape of it!

For Christmas dinner, Mark prepared duck for us.  It was delicious, even for those who weren’t quite sure what to expect from it.  (Greasy, is what some of us thought, but it wasn’t at all!)  I don’t have a picture of the lovely meal to share with you, but take my word for it that is was a beautiful display.

All in all, it was a lovely way to spend Christmas.

We were driving the last stretch home to Asheville when it started sleeting in Knoxville.  We had heard from Mat’s family that there was a winter storm advisory going on that day, but we weren’t worried as we’d done lots of winter driving out West.  As we got about 10 or so miles from the turn-off for Johnson City traffic slowed to a crawl and then stopped.  We forgot about the “other driver aspect”.  So we spent 4 hours going 7 miles to get off at an exit.  We passed by many cars that had slid off the road and weaved through jack-knifed trailers to make it at least to a gas station to get an update on the road conditions and found that they had closed I-26.  (We were only 1 and half hours or less from Asheville.)

So we went to some hotels and found out the ones that allowed for pets were full.  We went to the only restaurant at that exit, had some dinner and then slept in the parking lot with a nice street light in our window.  Luckily, we had our down sleeping bags to cozy up in while sitting up in our seats.  We were packed so full that we couldn’t recline.  Maddy was a trooper though and just slept.  We woke up in the morning and headed to Mat’s parents house because most of Asheville was without power.  We spent the night there enjoying the heat from the fireplace and then went to check on our house the next day.  And lo and behold, the power had just come back on.  Yay!  So we were able to unpack and be home finally.

Going for a walk in the snow out at Mat’s parents house.  They were without power for over a week!

Home sweet home.  Now we have to wait for it to warm up and melt all the snow off in the mountains to go ride.