A Thanksgiving full of thanks!

We spent this Thanksgiving partly at my parents house and partly at the ranch. Since we are spending Christmas in Louisiana I wanted to have turkey and all the fixin’s at my parents house. We drove in Wednesday night and stayed at my parents house until Saturday morning, then we drove to the ranch to continue our Thanksgiving weekend and to celebrate one of my Aunt’s, Aunt JoAnne, 50th birthday.

Mom and I cooked and baked in the kitchen and Dad carved the turkey.

I made Spice Cookies! Delicious!!! {I’m eating a few now actually!}

The boys were chatting it up while watching football.

The doggies played and swam.

Then… we ate!

We got to spend a lot of time with our beautiful niece Sydney! She is growing up so fast! It won’t be too long before she is taller than me. Seriously.

We played with her dollhouse and her Littlest Pet Shop toys.

Saturday morning we drove the the ranch to continue visiting and being thankful for family.

Cousins. {Some of them anyway.}

Of course, you can’t go to the ranch and not shoot guns.

The longhorns wanted to say hi. The picture on the right is of the 3 calves that were born a few months ago. They wouldn’t come any closer to the house and the Momma’s were not about to let me get close to their babies. Nor did I want to try.

Griff took Charley for a ride. {Not really. He was going to the dear stand and needed me to keep her at the house and not follow him.}

The girls played HARD and slept all the way home. After Griff gave them baths they went right to sleep! Tired puppies!

We had a great Thanksgiving and we are so thankful for the love of our families.

New Floors!

I can not tell you how OVER THE MOON in LOVE I am with our new floors!

Since we moved in we have had carpet in every room of this house. Except for the obvious places like the kitchen, the bath rooms, and the dinning room. And since we have moved in the carpets have been dirty with spots and what not. The carpet was new when we moved in but with 2 dogs it was impossible to keep clean. We even had the carpets professional cleaned and they got dirty again in a matter of days. So the carpet… HAD. TO. GO.

We found this GREAT product that looks like hand scrapped wood but is actually porcelain tile. Yes, you read that correctly. Tile that looks like wood. Yeah. I KNOW!!! I was like wha? Yes please, where can I sign up? Our good friend Wyatt owns his own construction company and he and his crew put the floors in and did an A-MAZING job! We are just thrilled.

And since I have a love of before and after pics, I assume you do to. So here they are for your viewing enjoyment.

Standing at the front door looking into the living room.

On the left looking back at the front door. On the right, in front of the T.V.

Guest bathroom, complete with the stained vinyl tile. Ugh. Vinyl be gone!

Hallway leading to the guest bath and bedrooms. Seriously? Doesn’t that look like wood? When Griff’s Mom was in town her friend Frank thought the floors were real wood. Score!

Small hall leading to the master bedroom on the left.

Standing in the dinning room looking into the living room.

To save some dough Griff bought the t-molding and stained it himself. {t-molding is the piece of wood that makes the transition between 2 different areas of flooring} And Griff being the good husband he is, took pictures of what products he used while I was at work. :) I so heart him for that!

Here is the finished t-molding. He did a GREAT job at matching the molding to the color of the tile. It’s an exact match! I have to confess while it was drying in the sun the molding looked black and I was doubting his staining abilities. How dare I doubt him! Like I said he did a great job and I’m saying it here…. I was wrong. Take note. That doesn’t happen often. Moving on.

And as always here are the helpers wondering who tha heck is in their house and why those people are not outside throwing the ball with them.