Happy Halloween! The Jack-O-Lanterns of 2011

Happy Halloween!  Lars and Anders did some trick-or-treating to collect food for Loaves & Fishes today after church with their youth group, and then they rolled up their sleeves for some serious pumpkin carving with their daddy.  We did some internet research yesterday and found some great jack-o-lantern ideas, which I posted on that Pinterest thing here.  Because we were pressed for time, we shamelessly copied two of the pumpkins straight off the internet.  Only Lars's pumpkin is a completely original concept. 

Lars Carving his Pumpkin

We carve with drywall saws at our house.  Oh, and I use that "we" very loosely -- I haven't personally carved a pumpkin in years.  I like to draw the face on a pumpkin, and then hand it over to my handyman husband for the gut-scooping glory of the actual carving.  It's a joint effort -- like parenting.  Yeah.  Also, someone needs to have clean hands so she can photograph the activity for posterity!  You will be happy to know that, at the end of the carving party, everyone in my family still has all of their fingers firmly attached to their hands where they belong.

Anders Carving his Death Star Pumpkin

Once Anders saw the picture of a Star Wars Death Star pumpkin, his mind was made up.  It took him longer than anyone else, but he stuck with it until he had a Death Star pumpkin of his very own.

I found a picture of a cannibal pumpkin "eating" another, smaller pumpkin.  It was more interesting than an ordinary triangle-eyed, zigzag-mouthed Jack-O-Lantern, challenging, but achievable.  I drew the face free-hand with a Sharpie marker and then handed the pumpkin off to Bernie for execution.

See how much he enjoys carving pumpkins?  Who am I to deprive him of this joy?!

We had carefully selected a little baby orange pumpkin to be the "victim," and here he is, all carved and served up to the jaws of the big, mean pumpkin:

Unfortunately, this little baby pumpkin fell out of the other pumpkin's mouth and smashed on the driveway.  I had to go to three different grocery stores before I found a little green squash of the right size to sacrifice to our cannibal pumpkin.  Here's what we ended up with the second time around:

Here are the boys' finished pumpkins:

Anders' Death Star Pumpkin

Lars's Jack-O-Lantern

...And here they all are, hanging out together on the front steps, waiting for the trick-or-treaters to come tomorrow night!  I'll try to remember to take another picture right after we light them tomorrow.

I think I will also rearrange the pumpkins when Bernie isn't looking.  I'd rather group all of the pumpkins together on the right side of the steps.  There aren't that many of them and they look weak spread out like that.  Also, since we use candles, it's safer to keep all of the flaming pumpkins on one side so I can herd the little princesses and caped crusaders up and down the opposite side, away from the pumpkins. 

Happy Halloween, everyone!

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?!

Piano Odyssey Part Two: Lucas is Home At Last

It's here!!  Our long-awaited, carefully selected pre-owned piano was loaded onto a truck in Baltimore early Sunday morning to begin its trek to Charlotte.  The piano movers had several deliveries to make en route to our house, so it wasn't until around noon on Monday that they appeared on our doorstep.  We had spent a good bit of the weekend rearranging things in anticipation of the piano's arrival.  The chess table and chairs are now in the keeping room next to the kitchen fireplace, and the entertainment center and unused television it contained were lugged all the way up two flights of stairs to the third floor playroom.  I should point out that the television is not plugged into anything up there, no satellite or cable box, and no one is going to watch it up there, either.  It is amazing the amount of physical exertion and back pain my husband is willing to take on just to prevent me from throwing anything away. 

Anyway, Lars and Anders were so excited about the new piano when they got home from school that they raced through their homework as though their very lives depended on finishing first.  The one who finished first got to practice on the new piano first, and the one who finished just a few seconds later burst into tears.  But both boys got plenty of time to play, and both declared the piano to be a big improvement over the wretched, stinking keyboard.  In fact, they think the bass register on our piano sounds so good, they named the piano Lucas.  Yes, that would be as in Lucas Films, as in Star Wars...  (In case I haven't mentioned this already, EVERYTHING in our house at some level is about Star Wars!)

Lucas the Piano is beautiful.  He's not a grand, but he really fits the space well and although he's 26 years old, he looks brand-new.  Kind of like the digitally remastered Star Wars movies, come to think of it...  Lucas sounds rich, deep, and soulful, everything that we had hoped for in our piano.  Best of all, no rooster button!

Middle C is sticking a little bit, but when I called Rick Jones Piano Center to report it, they said that's a common occurrence right after a piano has been moved and it should resolve on its own within a few days -- if not, they will pay for any necessary repairs to be performed by the piano technician of my choice.  They are also paying for the first in-home tuning.  I couldn't be more pleased with the whole experience, and I feel like we got the very best instrument for our family within our budget. 

If I get any free time, I might just have to start taking piano lessons myself!

Spring Gardening Update

...So, I finally called Wayside Gardens to complain about my "Yellow Bird" Magnolia having pink flowers.  You will recall that I planted the little twigling two years ago and have patiently tended it and waited for it to bloom, and this is the first year that any flowers appeared at all.  Wayside Gardens initially informed me that their plant guarantee required me to notify them within one year "if a plant fails to perform as expected."  How was I supposed to know to complain about the flowers being the wrong color before any flowers had been produced?  Eventually I obtained the concession of a $25 gift certificate, but the whole exchange was so unpleasant that I doubt I'll ever purchase from them again anyway.  They insisted that I didn't buy my lilac from them, but some internet research turned up some interesting possibilities for that plant's failure to bloom.  My darling husband confesses to having fed Holly Tone to my lilac, and several sources indicate that lilacs prefer slightly alkaline (not acidic) soil and that feeding them with a high nitrogen fertilizer will encourage foliage but inhibit blooms -- so no more Holly Tone, and better hopes for lilac blooms next year.

At least my clematis is looking good.  I planted it last year on a whim, from seeds, I think, and it was kind of like Jack and the Beanstalk watching this vine grow up and entwine itself on the trellis.  I'm pretty sure the seed packet said my clematis would have "dark red" blooms, and these look dark purple to me, but seeds are cheap and I'm just happy they are growing at all.

Other happy flowers in the spring garden are the irises that my husband rescued from a building site last year under cover of darkness.  It was one of those tiny old homes sitting on a big piece of land with gardens all around it, and a developer bought the house, razed it to the ground, and bulldozed the entire lot for future townhomes.  This happened right before the housing bubble burst, so once they had flattened everything the property just sat there for months -- and a couple of optimistic irises, in defiance of  bulldozers and townhomes and the economy and everything, had the courage to poke their shoots of green up out of the dirt last spring, trying to be a little bit of beautiful at an ugly abandoned construction site.  Now they live in my flower bed, where they are blooming alongside my son's favorite African Marigolds.

Those will be red lilies coming up behind the irises eventually, along with a motley assortment of camellias and other perennials that begged to come home with me even though I didn't really have a good place to put them.  I honestly don't know what all I've planted here.  This is the Flower Dump.

Now, before you start thinking too highly of my third-grade son's gardening instincts, I have to confess that he only likes the marigolds because they are orange.  He likes EVERYTHING to be orange; orange clothes, orange ink pens and highlighters, orange bookbags...  And he has a love-hate relationship with plants in general, as evidenced by what he did to this poor Autumn Joy Sedum plant a few days ago.  Apparently the plant went over to the Dark Side or something, because my son hacked it nearly to death with a light saber.  It's a good thing this plant is resilient!  My husband was so mad when he saw the plant, and my son looked so sincerely surprised that this was a problem...  Fun times!

Meanwhile, I'm finally getting the custom flower boxes that I've been begging for.  My husband is making them for my birthday present out of some kind of stuff that doesn't rot that we painted to match the window trim, with drainage holes at the bottom covered with some kind of fiberglass mesh screening so the soil doesn't fall out, and he has elaborate schemes for running little tubes up the house along the mortar lines so the flower boxes can get irrigation from the sprinkler system.  I don't like seeing the L-brackets underneath the boxes, and the decorative brackets I ordered are backordered for a couple of weeks, but they look pretty good so far:

Now I just need to decide what to plant in them.  I envision something red and trailing that will bloom all the way through the summer without anyone needed to climb a ladder or open a window to deadhead the spent blooms.  I went to two nurseries today and didn't see anything I liked, but I'm determined to get flowers planted up there tomorrow.

My Piano Odyssey

Briefly, I had a piano in my home.  It was a 4'6" Kimball baby grand that had belonged to my mother.  When my parents moved to Charlotte and downsized to a smaller home, my mother realized with dismay on move-in day that it was physically impossible to fit her formal living room furniture and piano into the small room she had designated for them in her new home, so the piano came to my house and was placed in a small sunroom just off of my family room.

My oldest son was about 4 at that time, and early attempts at piano lessons for him were disastrous for a number of reasons: immaturity, as-yet-undiagnosed and untreated ADHD, and a poor fit with the piano teacher.  So the piano stood in my sunroom mostly unused for a few years.  I went in there and visited it from time to time, playing my repertoire (I can play "Heart and Soul" and the first half of the theme from "Ice Castles," and I can pick out melodies with my right hand.  Woo hoo!  I used to be able to play parts of "Against All Odds," but alas, no more...).  In 2007 we moved less than a mile away from our previous home in order to get more living space, but the new home didn't really have a good place to put a baby grand piano that wasn't getting played, so the piano went back to my mother's house (she sensibly decided to get rid of her living room sofa to make room for it).  Here's my mom's piano, back in her own living room sans sofa:

My mother sewed those draperies and painted the stenciled design on the walls herself, by the way -- didn't she do a great job? 

Okay, so flash forward a couple of years.  Both of my sons started taking piano lessons last fall with a fabulous, amazing teacher who has unbelievable patience, is an incredibly talented musician, and loves my sons to pieces.  Thank you, God, for sending her!  But now I have two little boys who have to be reminded 15 times to brush their teeth and put on clean underwear every day, but who race over to the dinky little plastic keyboard every stinking morning as soon as they finish their breakfast and fight over whose turn it is to practice.  This is not just a fad; it has been a daily occurrence for eight months.  It's partly because they both really like music and have some natural ability, partly because music education is really important to me and my husband and we are supporting and encouraging them, but mostly it's because Saint Glenda of Piano Lessons has been writing them custom arrangements of music from Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Indiana Jones.  Here's my little one, playing Star Wars on the nasty plastic keyboard, in full Yoda costume:

The nasty plastic keyboard in this photo is actually the predecessor to the even nastier plastic keyboard currently in my home.  This one cost $40 brand-new on eBay, and I'm lucky that it lasted as long as it did.  When it began randomly switching instrument voices while they were playing (Yoda was in tears), my resourceful husband got a great deal on a nicer Yamaha keyboard at a pawn shop, but unfortunately it reeks like an ash tray and I can't stand to get within three feet of it...  But I digress.

So beginning around Thanksgiving of last year, I began researching and shopping for pianos.  Right off the bat, I decided I liked Steinway art case grand pianos, but after several weeks in a row of not winning Powerball I abandoned that scheme as impractical.  Which is a shame, because this would have looked AMAZING in my living room:

This is a one-of-a-kind Steinway reproduction of the 1889 Alma-Tadema art case piano that sold at auction for a record $1.2 million at Christie's in 1997.  The reproduction, currently available for sale from Steinway, is a steal at only $675,000.  In case your pockets are deeper than mine, you can find more information about this gorgeous piano here.  Who knew pianos could even BE that expensive?!  Even a smaller, garden variety Steinway grand piano is way out of my budget, priced around $50-70K for a new one or $30-50K for a used one in good condition.

I did a lot of research over the past few months and learned an awful lot about piano guts and how they work, the care and feeding of pianos, and what NOT to buy.  For anyone embarking on a piano quest of their own, I strongly recommend Larry Fine's Piano Book: Buying and Owning a New or Used Piano.  From that book, I learned that school piano sales are like furniture "going out of business" sales, primarily a sales gimmick to get buyers in and hoodwink them into thinking that they are getting fantastic deals when they may actually be paying more than the usual dealer price.  I also learned to avoid spinet pianos (poor sound quality on such short strings) and that "antique" upright pianos aren't worth the cost of restoration unless they are Steinways.  A local piano technician has a great buyer-beware article about the hidden costs and heartaches that come with "free" and low-priced used uprights that you can read here.  (Scroll down past the pianos they have for sale; the article is way down at the bottom).  So we didn't go that route, either.  Instead, I scoured eBay and Craig's List for months, looking for a private seller wanting to find a good home for their well-loved, well-maintained Kawai or Yamaha piano.  Okay, I admit it -- I continued to harbor hopes that I would find some fool selling his grandmother's Steinway who had no idea what it was worth.  No dice!  I thought for sure I would be able to capitalize on the misfortunes of someone in foreclosure who couldn't take their piano with them and needed to cash out, but I just didn't find any opportunities like that.  What I did find was a ton of 50-60 year old spinet pianos for sale, lots of "free" or nearly-free 150-year-old upright pianos that I had also been warned to stay away from, and a whole slew of weird-looking Steinway SQUARE grand pianos from the late 19th century that, sadly, were a failed experiment in piano design and, according to Mr. Fine, are not suitable for anyone who wants to actually play the piano.  I just have to show you one, though:

Looks pretty interesting, doesn't it?  This one is currently for sale on eBay, and there are about five others just like it for sale on Charlotte Craig's List right now, too.  Unfortunately, despite sellers' claims to the contrary, they are NOT rare and valuable, they typically require an enormous investment in repairs and rebuilding using a hodgepodge of antique and modern parts that don't quite fit -- assuming you can even find a technician willing to work on one of these beasts -- and even after all of that, this type of piano still will never be able to perform up to modern standards.  Buyer beware!

Somewhere in the midst of all of this research and piano lust, I had the foresight to obtain a grand piano template from a local piano dealer.  This is just a huge piece of heavy paper with the outline of several sizes of grand pianos drawn on it in different colors.  For those of you who sew, it looks just like a commercial multisize garment pattern.  When I laid the grand piano template out on my living room floor, I was confronted with the unpleasant reality that a grand piano STILL is not going to fit in that room, not unless I get rid of the coffee table and the sofa, like my mother did to fit her piano.  The difference is that no one ever sat in my mother's sofa, but my husband's enormous flat screen TV is in my living room and he likes to sprawl on the sofa to watch larger-than-life movies and basketball games.  I reluctantly determined that replacing his sofa with a grand piano would not have been a healthy choice for my marriage.  Uprights may not be as exciting to look at as grand pianos, but Larry Fine's book says that a full-size, 52" upright piano can sound just as good if not better than a grand piano smaller than 6'.  Somewhere along the way, had I forgotten this quest was supposed to be all about music?

Meanwhile, as I desperately tried to locate the magical piano that existed at the intersection of my hopes, dreams, and budget, my sons tormented me with the obnoxious built-in tunes and sound effects on that demonical keyboard.  The song "Jingle Bells" has been ruined for me forever, and why on earth would anyone need crowing rooster sound effects on a keyboard?  If you're getting sick of reading about this piano hunt already, that's how I was feeling about it myself up until a few days ago when I finally made a decision and ended this whole thing (hopefully once and for all).  I purchased a completely rebuilt and refinished 1984 Kawai US-50 from Rick Jones Pianos in Baltimore, sight unseen.  It has new strings, new pins, new keytops, and a brand new finish, and I got it for a fraction of the cost of a new 52" upright Kawai.  The dealer's web site is great -- their inventory is extensive and they give detailed information of every piano they sell with high-resolution photos inside and out, as well as a video clip of each piano actually being played so you can compare the sound, almost like being there in the showroom in person.  There is no sales tax for out of state customers, their professional delivery is reasonably priced, and get this -- I am getting a 10 year warranty on my used piano, which is better than I would get on a brand new one.  You can see pictures of it here, or at least you will be able to see them until the dealer takes them off his web site.  The piano is supposed to be delivered the week of April 25th-29th, so I'll post some photos once it gets here.  Maybe I'll even get adventurous and teach myself to play the second half of "Ice Castles!"