Weekend Recap: Getting Our Thanksgiving Groove On

Does Martha look smug to you in this picture?  If so, it's probably because SHE was organized enough to order her fresh heritage turkey for Thanksgiving on November 1st instead of waiting until a week before the holiday.  Also probably because one of her underlings cooked this turkey, and she just gets to glide in after being professionally styled and made up, slip on an apron, and pose with the beautifully cooked golden bird. 

I'm not yet recovered from Halloween (and no, I do NOT remember where I hid your candy, boys, so stop asking!), but the show must go on and Thanksgiving Dinner will open to an expectant, hungry crowd in just a few days.  When I called to order my fresh turkey a few days ago, Whole Foods informed me that they had already pre-sold their entire fresh turkey inventory for both their heritage and their organic birds.  Then I called Earth Fare and managed to snag their very last available fresh organic turkey.  Whew! 

The Victor With His Vegetable Prize

Yesterday morning Bernie and Lars went on the 15th Annual Buttercup Squash Scavenger Hunt.  They go from one grocery store to the next in their search for this delicious but elusive squash, overcoming obstacles like crowded parking lots and trolls disguised as produce specialists who insist that butterCUP squash is the same thing as butterNUT squash (no, it isn't).  Midway through their squash odyssey, Bernie called and requested that I send photographic proof of this squash variety's existence to his iPhone so he could battle the scorn and ignorance of the grocery clerks with the weapons of Truth and Technology.  Ultimately, as usual, he arrived home triumphantly with twice as much buttercup squash as we need for his Buttercup Squash and Leek Soup.  Every year, I ask him whether he really wants to go to all the trouble of tracking down the squash and hacking them up to make his peppery soup with them again, and every year he replies that he looks forward to the Squash Hunt and it would not be Thanksgiving without it.  He cooked and pureed his soup Saturday afternoon, while I made the Cranberry Citrus Compote. 

Cooked Whole Cranberry-Citrus Compote, cooling on the stove top

It feels good to have some of the menu items crossed off the list already.  Tomorrow or the next day, I'll need to bake spiced pecans for the stuffing and make the roux for the gravy.  I also have to throw one of those green bean casseroles together for the annual school feast, which happens on Tuesday. 

A lot of cleaning happened this weekend as well, with even Lars pitching in to dust and polish furniture in the dining room, living room, and in my office.  We always put up our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving, and I told my family that every room has to get a thorough cleaning before any decorations can come out.  Now that everything is spic and span and gleaming again, and my house is smelling like holiday food, I'm starting to feel more enthusiastic about the approaching holiday season.

Meanwhile, Bernie has been working hard on the built-ins that I designed for Lars's bedroom to accommodate his staggering collection of LEGO sets (which he refuses to disassemble, and which had previously occupied nearly every square inch of his bedroom FLOOR).  We repainted the walls in Sherwin Williams 6523 Denim, which really makes the white trim paint pop and looks much more "big kid" than the sky blue wall color that he had previously. 

Lars's Built-In LEGO Display Shelving Nearing Completion

Lars started putting LEGO sets away on the new adjustable shelving (deeper than book shelves, so they can accommodate even the largest assembled sets), but he stalled out and left piles all over the place.  I think a Mommy Intervention will happen while he's at school tomorrow -- organization is not his strong suit, and right now Bernie can't even get past the toy piles to measure for the doors that go on the bottom cabinets and the drawer fronts that go on the two drawers beneath the window seat.  At some point I'm going to make a cornice to go above the window and a boxed cushion and throw pillows for the window seat itself.  The main objective is to create order out of chaos before Christmas morning and Lars's birthday the very next day.

Although I helped Anders work on his quilt this afternoon, I have not had a chance to work on any of my own sewing projects in several days, which is making me irritable.  My applique blocks for Jingle are all finished and what with all the cleaning, holiday planning, homework assistance/supervision, and back-to-back 504 Plan meetings at the kids' school last week, I haven't gotten up to the sewing room at all.  It's really a bummer not having a hand sewing project to carry around with me.  I've promised myself to knock out the last four pieced blocks for my Jingle quilt first, and then I can start in on the large center medallion applique piece.

Where did this weekend go?

Mission Accomplished -- Mostly, Anyway

Lars's bedroom after 4+ hours of blood, sweat and tears

This transformation took me and Bernie over four miserable hours yesterday, working together while Lars freaked out alongside us.  My Lars is a little pack rat who wants to save absolutely everything, and he's very emotionally attached to all of his stuff so that it feels like he's personally under assault when we go in there and start going through everything.  However, it had gotten so bad that it was overwhelming to him and bringing order out of that chaos was way beyond his abilities, so it was time for some tough love.  I confiscated and disposed of a hoarde of hundreds of candy wrappers, amazed and grateful that they had not yet brought an infestation of pests to my home, while Lars wailed that they were a "valuable collection worth a lot of money."  We filled trash can after trash can with things like junk mail, empty boxes and toy packaging, scratch paper from last year's homework assignments, business card "souvenirs" from doctor's offices and dry cleaners, and even sticks (but it's a special stick!), and Lars desperately tried to pull things out of the trash cans as fast as we could put them in.  He screamed for us to get out of his room, stop touching his things, that we were ruining everything, we're idiots, he hates us, etc.  I knew I was in for this when we started, which is why I let his bedroom get so bad in the first place. 

I just kept repeating that "the way it was" wasn't working, and we needed to change his room a little if he wanted to keep his toys in there.  We ended up moving his bed about 6" to the left, just enough so I could fit the dark brown shelving unit between the bed and the desk.  The shelving unit was a temporary fix introduced over the summer and had been shoved in a corner where it didn't fit well, and it was formerly piled with junk on every shelf.  The two fabric covered storage boxes on the bottom have padded seat lids and used to be in the toy room, but they fit perfectly on the bottom shelf and they are filled with Transformers.  This shelving unit is the first thing I see from the doorway to Lars's room, so I wanted it to be neat and orderly.  The dogs can also reach the bottom two shelves, so I didn't put anything there that they could get into.

The oversize books on the next shelf were formerly housed in a wall-mounted book rack with the covers facing out that didn't take up a lot of physical space in the room, but that created a lot of visual clutter.  We got that book rack from Pottery Barn Kids when Lars was in preschool and it was great for all of the picture books we were reading at that time, but it was time for that piece to come out of the room.  I finally convinced Lars to put his Hogwarts Castle Lego set on the next shelf up (instead of on his bathroom floor, where he preferred to keep it), which was a major victory.  Loose Lego bricks and K'Nex pieces were separated from other toys and mixed together in a 15-gallon red plastic storage bin with rope handles (Lars enjoys combining Legos with K'Nex when he builds his own structures), and that bin was placed inside Lars's closet, away from curious puppy rabbits.  All of his various trading cards were collected in one of the storage baskets in one of his bed cubbies, every surface was dusted and vacuumed, and the bookshelves were reorganized so that they contain books only and not books plus everything else. 

Jubilation!  Lars loves me again!

The craziest thing about all of this is that, when it was time for bed time stories last night, Lars told me, "It's like I have a whole new room!  It's so much bigger!  I LIKE my new room!!"  I'm not completely finished with Lars's room yet.  I didn't go through the storage cupboards on either side of his bed, and he still has a motley mixture of trash and treasures piled on shelves in his closet that need attention.  I have some additional oil paintings and framed artwork that I need to arrange on the wall above the furniture, and I need to come up with that Lego tarp ASAP so that all my hard work isn't destroyed the first time he sits down to play.  Then there's Anders' bedroom to contend with, which isn't nearly as bad as Lars's was (and won't be as draining emotionally to deal with, because Anders won't be screaming at me the whole time).  But we started with the hardest part first, so all the work that lies ahead will be a cake walk by comparison.

The Lego Store, Concord, NC

Lastly, lest you admire me too heartily, let me tell you where I'm taking my children this afternoon.  We're going to the Lego store at the Concord Mills Mall, so that Lars can spend the Lego gift certificate he got from my parents and they can both spend some allowance money.  They each also have several little gift-with-purchase boxes from my holiday shopping that they get to fill with loose Lego bricks of their choosing, free of charge.  I know; I must be stark, raving mad to bring MORE Legos into my home after what we went through yesterday -- but earning allowance money is only an incentive if they are allowed to spend it sometimes, and this once-a-month shopping excursion to spend allowance money has been on the calendar for weeks.  Someday soon they will be teenagers, and this Lego Era will just be a memory, like Thomas the Train, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and super hero dress-up costumes.  Legos are just thorns on the rose of childhood, and I wouldn't trade this time away for the world.

Mission Impossible: Finding a Functional, Attractive Solution for the Lego Landfill

The Lego Landfill Formerly Known as Lars's Bedroom

It doesn't look as bad in these pictures as it does in real life.  There must be at least ten thousand Lego blocks strewn across the floors, over every horizontal surface, piled in closets, and mixed in with other toys in the storage bins and clothing drawers of Lars's and Anders' bedrooms.   The desks that were intended for homework and drawing are completely unusable, and I have to navigate a Lego minefield just to change the bed sheets or to collect dirty laundry from their hampers. 

I used to have a "no toys in the bedrooms" rule, but as the boys started building more complex Lego sets they wanted to keep completed structures on display in their rooms.  This turned out to be a slippery slope, and before we knew it the chaos of the third floor toy room had spread down the stairs and taken over the boys' bedrooms as well.  If the toy room was too messy to play in, they'd just cart more toys down to their bedrooms and play there instead.  Finally, about six months ago, Bernie and I made good on our long-standing threat to invade the third floor play room and reclaim it as an exercise room.   We weeded out and donated toys the boys had outgrown and no longer played with, but several oversize bins of Legos, Transformers, and other toys were carried down to the boys' bedrooms to be dealt with "later."

The Culprits at Play in Anders' Room, Trying to Look Innocent

Well folks, "later" is happening this weekend!  School is closed for a Teacher Workday today, so we have three days to reorganize these rooms and devise a solution that is acceptable to all parties: functional for the little Brick Master wannabes, attractive, safe, and easy to maintain.  Our dogs can't even go in Lars's room anymore -- there's nowhere for them to lay down, and Otto brazenly pilfers Legos and Pokémon cards from Lars's room right in front of everyone.  Anders' room looks a little better at the moment, but that's because everything was randomly stashed in drawers and bins.  As soon as they start playing in there, they have to dump everything out in order to find the right bricks for the projects they want to build.

Don't get me wrong -- I have nothing against Legos.  The 1000+ piece sets are challenging and time consuming to build, and both boys also enjoy creating their own structures, incorporating concepts they've learned from their Lego design books and from experience building sets.  The problem is that my kids like to have lots of room to work, so a desk or even a special Lego play table is too small for a workspace.  They like to dump the Legos on the floor so they can see all their pieces and sort through them as they are building.  And they like to build complex structures over a period of days or weeks, so there are always several partially completed structures in progress in the middle of the floor, surrounded by hundreds of loose Lego bricks and parts.  I've scoured the Internet for Lego solutions and, although I found some great ideas for younger children or for those with a much smaller number of Legos, I haven't seen anything that can accommodate the way my kids play with Legos.  I also found complex Lego organization systems devised by adult Lego afficionados, where bricks are sorted by both shape and color in a myriad of little drawers, but even if I summoned up the energy to sort through my kids' Legos to that degree there is no way my kids would be able to maintain that kind of system over time.  These boys are still struggling to organize their homework assignments in their school planners, after all.  What we really need is a Hogwarts-style Room of Requirement addition to the house where we can throw all the toys to be hidden from sight until they are needed again:

Room of Requirement set from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, photo courtesy of Architectural Digest

Okay, back to the real world!  Here's my plan:  First we need to adjust furniture placement, especially Lars's room, to maximize open floor space in the center of each room.  Next, it's time to go through the drawers, shelving units, and existing bins again to cull broken and outgrown toys, and group like items together to assess how much of everything they have -- books, Legos, other toys, trading cards, etc.  Then I can devise appropriate storage for each category.  For Legos, I'm going to try to implement a fabric play tarp with handles on the corners that the boys will need to spread out on the floor at the beginning of a building session.  That way, when they are finished for the day, they can move their structure-in-progress up to a shelf, gather up the tarp from the corners, and dump the loose Lego bricks back into a big storage bin in a matter of minutes. 

Wish me luck! 

Happy Thanksgiving from Our House to Yours!

This year, Lars and Anders were charged with the task of creating a Thanksgiving centerpiece.  I was expecting a turkey of some sort -- I printed a photo of a wild turkey off the internet and suggested construction paper, pine cones, and other craft supplies as mediums for consideration.  The boys were up in the toy room for hours, and they did build a turkey out of K-Nex (kind of like Tinkertoys), but they also surprised us with this Lego creation.  How cool is that?  If Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, Darth Vader, Yoda and Dr. Octopus can all set aside their differences and come together to break bread and give thanks, there's hope for the Universe yet.  Oh, and they are grilling their turkey, by the way -- Lars says that Darth Vader is manning the barbecue. 

Although I felt like I was playing catch-up for the last week, we did manage to pull off our traditional Ridiculously Complicated Feast this year, thanks to Bernie taking on more of the advance preparation than usual.  There were: Spiced Pecans, Roasted Turkey with Apple Cider Thyme Gravy; Wild Rice, Spiced Pecan & Apple Stuffing; Whipped Yukon Gold Potatoes with Horseradish; and Cranberry Citrus Compote (all from the October 1998 issue of Fine Cooking magazine, and reappearing on our Thanksgiving table every year since), and the Cinnamon Molasses Pumpkin Pie with Pecan Crust from the December 1999 issue of Bon Appetit, also a family ritual.  We skipped the Buttercup Squash Soup this year and tried out two new vegetable recipes instead, a Pomegranate-Balsamic Glazed Carrots (a keeper) and a Green Beans with Crispy Pancetta, Mushrooms & Shallots (not so much), both from the September 2009 issue of Fine Cooking.  Place cards are courtesy of Lars-of-Ours.

We learned some important lessons this year, such as that Harris Teeter closes at 2 PM on Thanksgiving Day, Food Lion closes at 3 PM, but Bi-Lo is open until 7 PM.  We also learned that it is best to provide more spousal supervision when it comes to Thanksgiving grocery shopping, so that no one would have to go racing out to the store for horseradish on Thanksgiving Day in the first place.

Notes to Myself for Next Year:

1. Stop being such a baby about the pie crust.  It's not as big a deal as you think it is, and the homemade pecan pie crust is definitely worth the effort.
2. It would be better if guests didn't arrive until after the bird is in the oven, when I've transformed back to my human self.
3. Don't forget to plan a light lunch for Thanksgiving Day.
4. Did you order Christmas cards yet?!

Lars and Anders On Location at Lowe's Home Improvement Store

We're trying to cut back on screen time for the kids this summer, yet shopping trips continue to be a challenge for them.  By the time we leave a store, every employee and customer in the joint knows my kids' names and is glad to see us leave.  Ahem.  So in the past, I've brought the Nintendo DSi game systems to keep them calm and out of mischief, but like I said, I'm trying to cut back on that, so we tried something different when we went on a family shopping trip to Lowe's Home Improvement store yesterday.  I let Lars bring his little Lego digital camera that he got for Christmas last year.  It looks like it's made of Legos, and you can customize it by adding additional Lego bricks, but it's an actual working digital camera with a flash and everything.  So Anders mugged for the camera while Lars played photographer.  I uploaded Lars's pictures after we got home and thought I'd share a few of the highlights -- I know his Opa will get a kick out of his grandson's budding interest in taking pictures of EVERYTHING!  All of these pictures were taken by Lars using the Lego camera.  Here's Anders doing a Batman impersonation outside the store:

Next we have Anders trying out a John Deere tractor, because it is green:

And of course then Lars asked Anders to take his picture sitting on the Husqvarna tractor, because it is orange:

Next we have Anders shopping for power tools.  That red "Z" on his forehead was self-inflicted with a red ink pen, and is supposed to be a Harry Potter scar.

And now, Anders/Batman being a tough guy in the gardening aisle:

Unfortunately, all of this good clean fun devolved into raucous bathroom humor and inappropriate photos when we got to the toilet displays in the bath fixtures section of the store.  I had to confiscate the camera at that point, so I'm not sure I'll be bringing it with us the next time we head out shopping.