The Young Master Performs

Tyler, six years old, plays in a violin recital.  He does very well for six!  Here is him playing one of his pieces:

Pressing the Reset Button (Harp)

Although my Christmas Day was lovely, playing music on Christmas Eve was not.  It wasn't the way that I played; I felt that I did well.  Rather it was the horrible attitude and behavior of our choir director (of whom I was so pleased with prior to this).  In the weeks leading up to Christmas, that is when things started to go south.  I can no longer work with him.

Although I am sad to leave my friends in choir, and feel rather depressed about the whole situation, this has freed me to begin playing and working on the pieces I want to work on.  You see, prior to this it seemed that every fall I was working on Christmas music  and every winter and spring I was working on Easter music.  Summers are very busy with the garden and with Grandson, so my practice time is limited then.  So I never really got to work on the pieces that I wanted to work on.    

I have been hearing various harp pieces in my head that I have been wanting to work on, but had set aside for so long  (ghosts of harp music past!).  I realized that all of this was a reset, so to speak.  A shift in focus, a change in pieces.  So I gathered together all of those pieces I was hearing (and a couple other ones I discovered in my quest, "Oh, that one.  I want to play that too!").  It is a nice, but challenging, assortment:

And here is my poor baby, who served me so well during the trauma of Christmas Eve:  

She is ready to reset too!

Tea at the Drake

Sandra, Pam, and I at our Holiday Tea at the Drake Hotel in downtown Chicago.  

Our hats got a lot of attention!

Partial Kitchen Remodel - Almost Done

Here are the after photos.  We realized afterwards that we wanted to tweak the cabinets a little bit.

Cabinets up, window woodwork in place on one window

Another view, with the second window still missing its woodwork

Here is the area we want to tweak (Update: see here for tweaking).  The middle cabinet is a bit too high for reaching and there is too much space between the bottom of it and the sink.  We looked to see if the company made a longer one, but they don't.  So Paul figured out a way to make it work a lot better, and give us some light too.  Stay Tuned!

Partial Kitchen Remodel - During

Here are the photos of the kitchen wall during the remodeling process.

Insulation and some wallboard

Wallboard up and electrical boxes

Wallboard completed

Taping of the wallboard

Woodwork for windows and door, stained and polyurethaned, drying in the basement

Partial Kitchen Remodel - Before Gutting

Here is the next batch of pictures relating to our kitchen remodel.  These show the horrid, knotty pines coming down, and some really old wallpaper behind them.

Just Too Cute

My grandson is a delight.  He loves costumes more than anything in this world.  His latest obsession is Link, a character from a video game.  All this Thanksgiving weekend, when he was in Michigan with Mama, he kept saying that he wanted Da to make him a shield for his Link costume.  The minute he came home today, he was on him to make it, pausing for a playdate with one of his beloved "gwelfwends" (his way of saying girlfriends!), but the minute she left nothing would do but for Da to make the shield.  Tyler helped, and it was a fun project with tools.

Da came through; the boy is happy:

He set the shield down reluctantly for violin practice, but insisted on wearing his glove, hat, and slingshot: