Quadsville

I don't know what I was thinking when I offered to cook on Thanksgiving weekend, but I'll be hosting my first turkey-based feast this year.

It all began when I told my parents we would be going to my husband's side of the family on Thanksgiving Day. Then the part of me that felt bad but didn't want to drive seven hours round-trip invited my parents out the Sunday after Thanksgiving for a second dinner. From there, my sister was added on, along with my grandparents, who have been wanting to see our home. And when that whole crowd gets together, my great-aunt usually tags along as well.

So here I find myself trying to figure out how to cook a Thanksgiving dinner for eight people. Oh, and there's a good chance there will be six dogs present as well. Yes, I know. Dogs, turkey and gravy do not mix.

My situation isn't completely dire. I did help my mom clean the turkey when I was home for Thanksgiving last year. I also have successfully made pumpkin pie and a crust from scratch. And I helped make stuffing (the kind that doesn't come from a box) last year, too.

But helping once, and actually having to properly thaw, clean and get a turkey in the oven at the crack of dawn - and then cook it properly - are two different animals.

Before anyone says cooking a turkey really isn't that bad, let me tell you the story about when one of my relatives hosted Thanksgiving for the first time.

We spent most of the day starving because the food wasn't ready until hours after the planned dinner time, my cousin nearly set his hair on fire and more than one family member got sick because the turkey was cooked upside down and not thoroughly enough.

So, really, I probably can't do much worse than that.

I know my mom, who has hosted pretty much every Thanksgiving and Christmas before and since the aforementioned incident, tries to get as many dishes prepared ahead of time as possible. I'm also thinking of cheating a little bit and just cooking a turkey breast in the rotisserie since that would be nearly impossible to screw up.

But what do you all do to ensure that your Thanksgiving dinner goes smoothly and you don't send your guests home with food poisoning?

I think the only members of my household that enjoy the task of raking leaves are the dogs.

Yes, I know, the dogs don't actually rake leaves. But they do get to hang outside with my husband and I while we work.

Our three dogs and one foster dog had a good time chasing each other around the yard and just lounging in the mild temperatures while my husband and I spent three hours filling another dozen bags earlier this week.

My husband also cleaned out our gutters and we swept up the concrete patio, which was covered in tiny leaves from three large trees in our backyard. I was glad to get those cleaned up because the dogs kept tracking them in the house.

I was quite sore the next day, but pleased with how nice our yard looked. But then when I got up this morning, the front yard was covered again since the large tree out there still has quite a few leaves to drop.

Oh, well, that's just one more task to add to the to-do list this weekend when my parents come out to help us start our kitchen remodeling. I also will be cleaning the kitchen, especially for you all, so I can take "before" photos for a gallery. I'm hoping to have some pretty dramatic "after" photos when it's all done.

I love the L-shaped layout of our living room and dining room. The open floor plan really makes both rooms seem much larger.

But the floor plan also makes decorating the long wall that spans both the living room and dining room difficult. It's so long and open that my husband and I really had no idea what to do with it.

In one corner of the living room half, we have a large oak bookshelf that my dad made, with the TV next to it and a small storage chest, also one of my dad's creations, next to the TV. But then the dining room starts and the bare wall begins.

We don't have a china cabinet because there is a built-in cabinet that opens to the kitchen and dining room that we put our wedding china in. There is no artwork on the walls because we feel like the large wall demands a large piece of art that's just not in the budget right now.

But I finally found something to break up the massive empty wall space in the dining room. I bought an 1895 Singer treadle sewing machine, still in its original cabinet, and set it next to the bare wall.

This is my second antique sewing machine. My dad found one, also with its original cabinet from the 1930s. That cabinet needs to be refinished, though. I think we'll practice on it before tackling the kitchen cabinets. That cabinet and sewing machine likely will sit in storage in the basement until we build my sewing room because I don't think I can convince my husband to let me put two antique sewing machines on display upstairs.

At the beginning of the year, I joined a block of the month club that sends Civil War reproduction fabric with a quilt block pattern each month. Then, at the end of the year, you have enough blocks to make an entire quilt. The idea is great in theory, but I've been so busy that I haven't put in a single stitch. But now I have some motivation to get started because I think the earth tones in the reproduction fabric would look perfect draped over the end of the table.

Now we just need to find some kind of art to go on the walls. I wonder how many months it will take for us to get around to that task.

I never would have thought that getting a bowl of cereal Tuesday morning would affect my whole week. But when I opened the pantry door, I was greeted by puddles of rainwater that had leaked through our six-month-old roof.

This is actually the second time the roof has leaked in the valley above the pantry since a new one was put on by the sellers prior to closing. The first time occurred about a month after it was installed, and as I tried to track down the crew that installed it, I discovered the sellers had hired a licensed general contractor who then employed an unlicensed subcontractor to put on the roof.

Ethics aside, taking advantage of this loophole is completely legal and more common than you'd think.

The first time it leaked, it took about a week for some guy's brother to take a look, declare that the roof was fine and that the problem came from the clogged gutters.

Our gutters could stand to be cleaned again. Whose couldn't this time of year? But a six-month-old roof shouldn't leak, so I called the subcontractor. When he didn't return my calls, I phoned the contractor. I found it quite helpful to explain to him that I knew the subcontractor he had hired didn't have a roofing license so I wanted him to come out and fix our leak inasmuch as the work was done under his license.

Within two hours, the contractor arrived at our house and determined that one or two misplaced nails were causing the problem. Due to more pressing needs created by the recent windstorm, our roof isn't fixed as I write this, but I have been assured that by the time this newspaper reaches your doorstep, we will have new, properly installed shingles in the leaky valley.

So the lesson learned here is that when one is hiring a general contractor, make sure any subcontractor he hires is licensed to do the work he's been hired for. Otherwise, some guy who has been roofing for 16 years but doesn't know how to properly nail down shingles in a valley might be doing the work.

Regular readers will remember that we spent more than a month scraping, sanding and painting the peeling windows this summer to satisfy the requirements of our Federal Housing Administration loan.

Well, we're not totally done.

Our windows are so old that they have separate screens and storms that are alternated according to the weather. So while we got the screens done in time for the inspection, the storms have sat untouched in our basement for months.

But no matter how sick we still are of painting windows, we've got to get the storms done so we can put them up now that the weather is turning colder. The one good thing about this task is - with the exception of one window that is so rotted we have to get a new one made - most of the storms are in pretty good shape. I think we should be able to get away with just giving them a light sanding, then priming and painting them in one weekend.

Taking advantage of free leaf collection

Another of our fall chores is keeping up with the leaves and cutting down the hostas and day lilies. We're taking full advantage of Rock Island's free leaf pickup service. So far, we've filled more than 20 paper lawn waste bags and haven't paid a cent for either the bags or removal.

We've picked up our free bags, which Rock Island residents can get 10 of per day, from the library, but you also can get them at City Hall, the Public Works Department, Sunset Marina, the Community Caring Conference, the South Rock Island Township office and the Martin Luther King Center. Once the bags are full, all you have to do is put them at the curb on your regular garbage collection day and the city picks them up for free.

Considering that three of our four trees still have most of their leaves on them, I imagine we'll fill up several dozen more bags before the free leaf pickup ends Dec. 3.

Let the renovations begin inside the house

We also are about to start some work on the inside of the house. My dad, an electrician and all-around handyman, is coming to the Quad-Cities next weekend to help us fix a few things around the house and teach us how to refinish wood so we can get started on the first phase of our kitchen remodeling.

Every time my dad comes out to visit, he asks me to make him a list of the tasks we want accomplished so he knows what tools to bring. Here's my latest to-do list:

- Fix the two exterior lights that won't work, even though they have brand-new light bulbs in them.

- Run electricity in the basement so we can hook up our electric dryer and sell the old gas-powered one the previous owner left in the house.

- Bring the sewing machine cabinet that goes with an antique sewing machine my dad found and teach us how to refinish it so we can use it as a practice project before tackling the kitchen cabinets.

What fall projects are you all working on?

If appliances could have personality traits, mine would be inconsiderate.

The day before we left on vacation this summer, our dryer belt broke in mid-cycle, forcing me to take two heavy loads of wet clothes to the coin-operated laundry so we'd have clean clothes to pack.

Then, this past Sunday night, the washing machine began acting up as I did laundry in between returning from a trip to my parents' house in the Chicago suburbs and getting ready to leave for a wake and funeral in Decatur, Ill., first thing Monday morning.

The machine stopped mid-cycle with a load of towels sitting in dirty water that refused to drain. I moved the agitator around, hoping an unbalanced load was the problem. Nothing.

I moved the towels around, took a few out, took them all out, tried pushing in and pulling out the knob that starts the washer, moved the knob a little, moved the knob a lot, tested the outlet the washer was plugged into and tried another outlet even though the original one was working. Still nothing.

I gave up and bought a week's worth of underwear to get my husband and me through until we could get back in town and have the washing machine fixed.

Then, as if it was just playing a cruel joke, the machine magically began working again upon our return to the Quad-Cities.

I don't think I like gardening.

It's mostly because patience is a virtue I've never really acquired, so I'm more inclined toward projects that provide instant gratification.

You paint the walls and give the room a whole new look. You make curtains and it dresses up a window. But you transplant peonies and end up with several ugly green stalks sticking up from the ground that your dog insists on claiming as his own.

I suppose I should just be happy that it appears the peonies are still alive. I probably would be more interested in gardening if I didn't have a tendency to kill more greenery than I successfully plant and nurture. But dividing and moving the peonies appears to be a successful project so far. That doesn't mean, of course, that I did it right.

When you watch YouTube videos on how to divide peonies, all of the demonstrations show the perennial coming up from the ground in one intact root ball, which is then separated into smaller plants. I wasn't that talented.

Part of the problem was the root ball around my peonies was absolutely massive when compared with the ones I saw online. So while I loosened the dirt circling the plant with a spade as instructed and then tried to lift it by rocking the plant and dirt from side to side, there was just no way it was coming out in one piece.

On one plant, I applied so much force with the spade that the root ball cracked to the point where mounds of dirt and pieces of plant flew into the air, raining down on me as I ducked instinctively at the sound the plant made when it broke apart.

Did I mention that gracefulness is something I'm working on as well?

So I kind of split the peonies as I removed them from the ground rather than after and then arranged the individual roots in clusters at the new locations. But the good news is the plants are so big that it really didn't matter if I destroyed a couple of stems because there were plenty more "eyes" to choose from when it came to replanting the divided peonies in their new location.

The bad news is I now have a very bare spot in the yard that is populated only by ugly weeds and a few saplings growing where they're not supposed to. I called a local gardening store and was told it's not too late to plant roses, which are also on sale. So, if the price is right, I might install a few small rose bushes where the peonies were. But first I get to do something I'm good at: killing all the plants and trees left in the bed the peonies once occupied.

Over the summer, my husband and I signed up to win a free siding and window replacement job from a home improvement company.

We didn't win, but we did get a call from the company with an offer of a free estimate on what the replacement would cost. The short version of a long story is that the price varies greatly depending upon which siding, insulation and windows you choose, but the company said it would cost about $15,000 to replace our siding and windows. And that's just for eight average-size windows and three sides of a one-story house.

I about fell over when I heard that number. Especially since I've heard that replacing siding is a pretty easy project for first-time homeowners and that my dad and brother-in-law both know how to replace windows. I figure that when the time comes to banish the cedar shake siding and replace the windows, we'll do it ourselves and save thousands on labor.

We probably will call in the professionals to replace the large picture window at the front of the house. But that window wasn't even included in this estimate.

Still, the company keeps calling about once a month to see whether we're interested, and I don't have the heart to tell them their prices are way over our heads, so I just keep saying that we're not going to re-side the house for another couple of years, which is completely true.

Today's phone call gave me quite a laugh, though. The company wanted to know if they could come and take "before" photos of our home. Then they'd give us factory pricing on the materials, take "after" photos when they're done and use our home as an example of what they could do.

First of all, that must mean the company thinks our home is pretty darned ugly. And I'd have to agree. The cedar shake siding isn't exactly the most beautiful sight to see, and I'll be very happy to see it go someday.

Second, as I was trying to get off the phone - because we probably still couldn't afford their labor costs even if we did get a discount on the materials - I said I really couldn't have a lengthy conversation about siding while at work. To which I got the response, "Oh, I didn't realize you were at work."

Seriously? It was 12:45 p.m. on a Thursday. Where else do you think a potential customer who could afford a $15,000 home repair bill might be?

All my good intentions regarding splitting the peonies were put on hold last weekend because of the rain. Hopefully the sun will shine long enough today to get them in the ground.

So while I wasn't digging in the dirt, I was dreaming about my kitchen.

Judging by the blue/seafoam green color scheme and the carpeted floor, I think the kitchen was last updated in the '80s. There's no dishwasher, which means it's usually a mess because I hate doing dishes by hand and usually leave them until my husband does them. I know, that's quite a gender reversal, but installing a dishwasher is pretty high on my to-do list.

We also want to replace the dark blue carpet with an easy-to-clean tile floor, and the seafoam green countertops with something more modern. There also is white wallpaper with tiny blue flowers that is taped to the wall in places. I am not a fan of wallpaper, so that's going torn to be down and replaced with a bold paint color.

We've almost got enough saved to start the first phase of the kitchen remodel, the cabinets. But that means we officially have to decide what we're going to do with them.

We know we're either going to paint, reface or resurface the cabinets to save money. I'm leaning toward refacing the cabinets because the current doors and drawer faces are completely flat, and I'd like to add a little dimension to them with wood trim.

At some point in the life of the kitchen, the previous owner took one freestanding cabinet out of the kitchen and put it downstairs in the work room. It's still useable with a little cleanup, and we intend to put it back in the kitchen. In the meantime it's still sitting in the basement minus one drawer which my dad has so he can show us what it would look like to attach trim directly to the existing doors and drawers as opposed to replacing them all during the refacing process.

But our main decision involves figuring out what color we want the cabinets to be. All the artwork for the kitchen is Mediterranean-themed. It's currently sitting in my sewing room because it would look ridiculous on the blue-flowered wallpaper. I would like to go with a rich rust for the paint on the wall, because that's the color that comes to mind when I think of the De Pasquale family pasta sauce recipes.

With such a dark color on the wall, the cabinets ideally should be a light color to brighten up the room. But every piece of wood in the house is stained a dark reddish-brown, so I feel that if we refinish or reface the cabinets, then we're stuck with that color stain.

I would love to paint the cabinets white, but my husband is very much against that idea since I already painted the inside of the cabinets white and our appliances also are that color. I suppose we could keep the current stain, pick a coordinating rust paint and brighten the kitchen with light flooring, countertops and creative lighting. What do you all think? How did you choose the colors for your kitchen?