It's been a loooong week. I've just felt so crappy lately...so it makes every day feel very long.
We've been getting ready for Thanksgiving. I've already ordered all the food except for the strawberries, rolls, etc. that need to be ordered closer to the day. My mom is making the ham and mashed potatoes, and my sister is making deviled eggs and some deserts. I'm making all my usual stuff plus crockpot mac n cheese, banana bread, pumpkin bread, and ginger molasses cookies. We'll also have some chips and French onion dip to munch on while dinner is cooking. Johnny also wants some veggies and ranch dip, but we'll see.
When we were talking about everything we need to do, Johnny mentioned that we don't have a Thanksgiving tablecloth or centerpiece. We do actually have some centerpieces that we're going to use...they're fall flower arrangements in small terracotta pots that I made more than 20 years ago. They've been up in the closet in the office. But I did go ahead and get a new tablecloth for Thanksgiving. Since we're planning to put the leaves in the table, we needed an oval tablecloth instead of our round one anyway. It also reminded me that I've been wanting to get some new seat cushions for the dining room chairs, so I got a set of seat cushions with washable covers. These are for everyday, not just Thanksgiving...so we ordered a dark grey set that match the couch pretty well.
Oh! And we finally found a new tv stand that we like! We had a lot of things on our list as far as what we were looking for. We knew that we wanted a black one to match our new coffee table. Most of the black ones were high gloss...and we didn't want that. Johnny also didn't want it to look too "farmhouse" style. Our coffee table has the "X" decor on the edges, so he decided that he didn't mind if the doors of the tv stand have it as well...he just definitely wanted it to have doors. We have so much dog hair and stuff...it's better than having to clean everything on the tv stand so frequently. There's also only one real logical spot to put the tv, which is in front of the half-wall by the stairs. So we didn't want one that was super tall (I could just imagine the tv getting bumped and falling down the stairs), but we also wanted it to fill the 72" inch wide space as much as possible. Johnny really wanted one with a fireplace heater with different heat, brightness, and color settings and preferred there to be color-changing LED lights. I FINALLY found one that's nearly perfect. I'm not a huge fan of the woodgrain texture look (our new coffee table is smooth), but I like it better than the high gloss. Other than that it seems pretty perfect. It's 70" long and a little less than 27" tall (a lot of the other ones were almost 3 feet tall or more), has fireplace heater (and the look is with logs, =not the "crystals" that a lot of the other ones had), doors with adjustable shelves that have doors, LED lights...hopefully it will work out great. We were really hoping it would arrive before Thanksgiving (estimated delivery window was Tuesday-Saturday when we ordered it), but tracking so far has it arriving on Friday. :P
I/we did some other Black Friday shopping already. Our old cat tree was ruined when the cat room flooded, and the cats need something to scratch on (somewhere that is NOT the new couch). We don't have a very logical place to put it in the living room...so we decided to find one that we could put on the landing of the stairs. It's a pretty big landing, so we had a bit of room to work with. Plus now that the girls have moved out, I'm pretty much the only one going downstairs and that's mainly just to do the laundry and tend to the cats.
I found a corner cat tree that has a 17" base and it fits perfectly. We picked the 66" version in dark grey color which matches pretty well with the couch. And with the Black Friday sale, it was 30% off. It was easy to put together...I got it all done in about half an hour. Then after Johnny got off work on Friday, he helped me put it on the stairs and attached it to the wall so it doesn't tip. Milo was a bit cautious at first, but Leo absolutely loved it right away. He was rolling around and having fun before we even put it on the landing. Angel really seems to enjoy it, too. She's a big reason why we decided to put the cat tree on the stairs. She doesn't like to come upstairs with the dogs, so we were thinking that she might feel like she's part of what's going on being able to sit up higher and see what everyone is doing.
I also got a 40x12 cork scratching mat to put on the half wall which was 42% off for Black Friday. The cats have been having a harder time jumping up there (they'll be 10 years old next year, so I suppose it's not out of the ordinary), so I thought it might give them a bit of traction...plus provide another outlet for scratching. I cut a portion of it to fit on the wood trim and then I hung the rest on the wall. It has some really strong adhesive and seems to be working well so far.
So...the cats' Christmas is all taken care of. ;)
Then I also got a new video camera for the cat room and one for the living room. I got a regular indoor cam for the cat room for 50% off and a pan/tilt indoor cam for upstairs that was 33% off. I'd gotten a cheap camera for the cat room when I set up the litter robot to see if/when the cats used it...but despite having an sd card, you can't really save recordings to it or see anything in between motion alerts (and the motion alerts aren't very good at all) without a subscription plan. We already have a Ring subscription for our outdoor cameras which is for unlimited devices...so it makes a lot more sense to have Ring indoor camera instead. And Johnny really likes that they have privacy covers.
I really like being able to check on things with the cats (like if the litterbox is full or if they've run out of food in their gravity feeder) without having to actually go downstairs. And when we went to my sister's house a few months ago, I moved the cat room camera upstairs to watch the dogs while we were gone and it was really nice to be able to check in on them...so we decided to get a camera for upstairs, too. I thought the pan/tilt camera would be better so we can see all areas upstairs. I added the cameras to our Ring app and Johnny helped me put up the pan/tilt camera up in the dining room after he got off work. I have to move some things around in the cat room before I set the camera up in there so we have an unobstructed view of everything.
The only other thing I'd really like to get for the house is a new ceiling fan for the living room...but we may wait on that until after the new year.
Well...I'm going to get some more things done before I go to bed. :)
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