Guentzel.Org

What a great weekend. I don’t even know where to begin.

Susan and I had our group of “Usual Suspects” (and children) over for a lunch party today. That sounds simple enough, right? Well, there’s so much more.

We had to get the house in shape. Sure, we’ve lived here since February, but even though it feels like home, we didn’t have it looking like a home. The upstairs room was basically a store room for kids toys and stereo equipment. The living room had some furniture in it, but it wasn’t exactly arranged. The dining room was a store room for excess move boxes we didn’t want to deal with. You get the idea.

We made a few improvements.

• We “organized” the upstairs rooms so we could watch movies and the kids could play with toys.
• We did some decoration and cleaning of the dining room. Even though the picnic table is our “dining table,” it actually looks pretty good. We’re going for a New Orleans theme…I think.
• We ordered some art and some furniture. We got a nifty half moon table for our entry hall and some art to go above it. We’re still waiting on the art.
• We got new rugs for the kids bathroom and the hall powder room.
• I installed five ceiling fans. Not easy. The ceiling fan company actually had the audacity to say these fans were “Easy Install”. Sheesh!

Oh yes, and we cleaned the house.

The party was a lot of fun. The kids ran through the house and found great places to play (which we love) and the adults got to sit and chat. We tested the acoustics of the living room when the brass came out. Our house wasn’t officially christened until a brass quartet played inside (we can now check that one of the list - WHEW).

Susan cooked up a storm. We had fruit salad, shoepeg corn salad, and a delicious strawberry cake dessert. We scanned in her admittedly “chicken scratch” notes so others may have the recipe. The shoepeg corn salad is here. The strawberry cake dessert is here.

I got a new grill!!

I grilled up burgers, steak and “hockey puck” filets. I apologized in advance because I have never grilled much with a gas grill, so I had no idea how the steaks would turn out. I did OK on some, but I had to “fire up the grill” to give a couple of steaks a little more heat.

I’ll get better guys, I swear!

Susan and I are exhausted from the effort. I actually took a nap at about 8:30 tonight to get enough rest to get up and write something. I’m wondering if I’ll get back to sleep soon.

Hopefully this is the first of many parties we’ll have at the new place. We’re now looking forward to getting more people out.