Our new kitchen table, and other ramblings

 One of the perks of having hubby working from home these days, building some furniture pieces to (hopefully!) sell, is that he builds stuff for us at the same time. :)  Now, we did not NEED a new kitchen table.  Our old one was perfectly adequate, albeit quite dinged up and with some permanent marker spots from (ahem) dear children who shall remain nameless.  (Permanent markers will not be allowed anywhere near our new table!!)  Anyway, Jim had this oak that he wanted to make some dining tables out of.  He had enough to do two tables, and I thought he was making both to sell.  But he decided he would like us to keep one of them, so we did!

 I love the light natural color and the variations in the grain.  It looks rustic but has a really nice, smooth finish on it.  I also LOVE the breadboard ends.  It is a little narrower than our old table, but he may eventually make some leaves to add width if we need it.  The only time it is a little squished is when we have company, but it is just the right size for our family of five!  This next picture shows the kids at our first supper around the new table, Wednesday night.  Please excuse all the mismatched chairs . . . we have quite an eclectic hodgepodge. :)

Today I gave myself permission to have a lazy day.  I've been fighting a cold (sore throat) almost all week, which means my exercise goals went out the window, but I tried to keep things normal as much as possible, so we still did most of our schoolwork, etc.  But today sounded like a good day to just rest. I've still done a few little chores like making bread and washing dishes, but overall I've been sitting around a lot. :)  Browsing Pinterest and dreaming about a future bedroom makeover . . . thinking about what to spend the rest of my Christmas money on . . . reading . . . basically just lazing around, and it feels nice!  Sometimes we just need a quiet day, you know?

But while I've been having a quiet day, hubby was up early to go look at a job about an hour away.  We're praying he gets it and can start soon!  It's finishing the inside of a garage.  He was back by a little after 9 am, then tackled some more projects (we're looking at finally finishing our office area soon, so he's building a better desk), and is currently dragging frozen logs out of the log pile so he can cut & split them soon because we didn't split enough firewood for this winter.  (We thought we had, but it's been a lot colder than we expected, and we've used more . . . lesson learned for next year!!)
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I wrote all that a while ago.  Later, we all spent a little time outside.  The kids were playing around the stream, sliding down the ice, and Jim took some pictures.  There are some holes here and there in the ice where the water rushing along underneath makes funny gurgling sounds.  The whole stream is really pretty right now, with neat ice formations in layers.

 Sam was so excited to find this tiny "cave" with icicles that he called stalactites and stalagmites!  Josiah and Julia decided it was a cave for fairies. :)

It felt good to get outside and get some fresh air, but it was also nice to come back inside and snuggle up on the couch beside the fire to read for a while. :)  

And now . . . it's about time to work on getting supper ready!  I hope you are all having a wonderful weekend so far!