It's becoming a tradition...

Every other year we travel to one of my favorite places on this planet - Nashville, TN, and it's surrounding areas. I spent 4 years of my life there going to nursing school, made some of my best friends and experienced the awesome privilege of being "adopted" into this incredible family called the Simmons.

This year was an off year, one where Nick and I stay at home and invariably I end up working or being on-call and where we have started our own tradition of completing a home project. We realized that the last 2 times we've stayed home it's involved completing a home project. Two years ago it was the living/family rooms, which nearly ended in disaster if we wouldn't have had some awesome friends to help us put everything back together and cook dinner (so miss the Sormins and their being our project slaves!! =)). This year we ordered cabinets from Paul Franklin at Just Inside the Door Custom Woodcrafts and after much discussion and talking decided that rather than install beautiful cabinets and THEN do the pantry remodel, we'd do the remodel THEN install the cabinets. We've been working on it for about a week, technically 4 days solidly and it is all finished in time for new cabinets. It seems that with each project we take on some piece that we've never done before - this time it involved making and hanging our own exterior door. All I have to say to this is, "attempt once and next time buy a pre-made". The project is done though and if I do say so myself, it looks FAB-u-LOUS!! The cabinets will be here the second week in December and I cannot wait to remove my pantry from our dining room and kitchen and put stuff where it belongs - in beautiful, white cabinets with loads of storage space!! And it's done!! We pounded in the last nail, spackled the last hole and cut the last piece of board at 12:30 p.m. on Saturday night; today we finished the caulking, painting the spackle spots and the repair spots on the door. Pictures with the cabinets in will come soon!

We of course celebrated Thanksgiving by eating way too much food and tried a bunch of new gourmet recipes this year. Dinner consisted of: chantrelle and apricot stuffing, pear shallot gravy, mashed potatoes with Gruyere and caramelized leeks, squash casserole (thanks Mom Sandy for this delish recipe!), port and cinnamon cranberry sauce with homemade whipping cream, romanesco, sourdough rolls, pumpkin cheesecake and Cline Viognier wine. Absolute deliciousness!!