Thanksgiving 2011

I always want to remember wonderful Thanksgiving 2011!
All my children and grandchildren came to town. Also LeGrand's mom, his brother Craig and his brother Gary and his wife, Penny and son, David. Plus a couple of "extras".

It was a beautiful day and we had tables set out on the deck. I don't remember much about the food other than I made a WW sweet potato casserole and Natalie made a non WW one and hers was more than delicious.
Thanksgiving Day was Katie's birthday. Hannah would celebrate her 1st birthday the following Tuesday. Saturday we had a little party for her.

Thanksgiving morning, before the extended family came, we went to the quad to walk, ride bikes and play football, except for Hannah who needed a nap and Robyn who was kind enough to stay with her.

The day after Thanksgiving we had Crosby Thomley hired to take professional pictures. Crosby's son, Morrow, works with LeGrand. We met at the President's mansion on the UA campus.
Natalie had an ultrasound to determine the gender of her baby in October. The nurse had written it down on a piece of paper and Nat and Brent had planned on opening it on Christmas. But they decided to open it while all the Hutchison family was gathered for the pictures. She had a pink and blue balloon. She was to pop the pink if she was having a boy and pop the blue if having a girl. She asked me to do the honors of reading the results. MUCH TO MY SURPRISE the ultra sound was not of Natalie but her sister, Rachel! That is how They told me Rachel is expecting a baby. The we found out Natalie is having a girl!

Then we got some wonderful pictures from Crosby!

Decisions Decisions Decisions

As many may remember we had our 25 year old Air Conditioner to go out in late August. This was fine and we were happy to replace it with a new energy efficient York that is so much quieter. But during the installation, an old exit pipe was broken. The unit was in the upstairs hallway. I called the AC company with a dripping the day after Labor Day. They thought they fixed it. Long story but we have had to replace the ceiling in our downstairs hallway. The bathroom ceiling was ripped out as well as the bathroom wall to replace the exit pipe.
While the plumbing was exposed we found out the upstairs shower leaked and had to call a plumber. Luckily that was an easy fix as he caulked the tile.
All the downstairs hardwood floor was torn up and new flooring installed. That took the men (who were wonderful) four and a half days to take up and four and a half days to put in the new. While this was going on I decided to repaint the den dining room and foyer.
The week before all the damage, I had painted the living room. We had ripped up the carpet to put in hardwoods before we knew we would lose all our old hardwood floors. I pulled off the 25 year old wall paper in the half bath and painted those walls the same blue as the living room.

NOW! I need to make some decisions.
Here is what the living room looks like now.

It has two large pieces of furniture and a couch. The roll top desk and bookshelf will stay in these locations. This is first a living room. But I want to have the option of bringing in a bed for Grandma should she decide to come stay a while with us. Thanks to my daughter-in-law, Katie, she suggested leaving a space by the bookcase.

I am looking for a chair and a rug. Also a frame for Garrett's picture he painted and gave to me and LeGrand for our birthdays.


I want to keep my sleeper sofa. I figure the rug needs to be a solid. I found 2 at Haverty's, one green the other cranberry. Don't know the size but about 5'x7'. Don't know if you can see much in this picture but they are a very high shag.

I found a different rugs yesterday at lowe's. Here are there links. I think I like these better than the shags.

http://www.lowes.com/pd_29352-10954-71554_0__?catalogId=10051&productId=3419328&UserSearch=71554&Ntt=71554&N=0&langId=-1&storeId=10151&rpp=24

The other will not come up on lowe's website but it is a solid brick color. Nice.

Next the chairs:
The rug color will help me decide on the chair color. I want either green or red.

Or green...

Here is a shot of the ottoman/green chair and the red chair for a little prospective and some "fun" chairs. The green is a recliner and the red is a swivel rocker. I am not a fan of embroidery furniture but oh how fun this red chair was!

The painting will be the focal point if you sit on the couch looking out the windows. Garrett suggested a light tan wood. Here are four samples. This is really hard for me.

LeGrand says for me to choose what I like but I thought you might want to offer an opinion and see the options. I still want to go to another few stores for chair shopping.