What I Learned in November

I am linking up with Emily over at Chatting at the Sky on what I learned in November.

Or what I think I learned in November.

I’m coming up with this as I type.

1)  I learned that I can live without filtered water shooting right from my refrigerator. We just buy bottled. And put it in the fridge that is in the dining room. And it is FINE.

2)  My husband knows how to milk a free shipping deal. 

Yes, the paper towels arrived around Halloween, but in the month of November we continued to receive these very practical, needed items in very large,

Back when we still had a kitchen.

exciting I-thought-they-might-be-birthday-presents boxes.

So NOT a birthday present.

My girlfriend informed me that our old
piping in our old houses could never
handle the multi-ply that goes into this
“ULTRA Comfort Care” toilet tissus.
Here’s hoping.

3)  I have the greatest friends who make life fun, funny and easier to handle knowing they are in it.

Still laughing knowing that this picture was taken BEFORE Julie found
what she found stuck behind her knee pit. 

4)  There’s no place like home for the holidays isn’t always true. It’s the people that make home, not the location. More on that in #5.

5)  Fripp Island is awesome in a different season. We have always wondered what it would be like to see our beloved Fripp at a different time of the year. This year, we decided to spend Thanksgiving there to find out. It was great! I’ll post more about that later.

But you know what isn’t great? 

6)  Not being able to truly decorate my home makes me sad. I didn’t realize how often I tweaked the little items of my house for the seasons or my mood until I couldn’t anymore. I would think about pulling out a this or a that to put on a shelf or a table only to realize the cabinet no longer exists that the this or the that used to live. The renovation is stifling my creativity NOW but when it is finished? Oh, sister, just get out of the way. 

7)  I actually don’t hate to shop. I hate to shop at certain places. Like malls. And grocery stores. And places where there is nothing interesting to look at or imagine or create. We got to Black Friday shop at an Arts and Crafts show on Fripp Island. 

A little different than Black Friday at Wal-Mart.

There were 30 vendors that offered some of the most creative things I’ve ever seen. We all just scattered and kept hollering to each other to "get over here quick" because we’d just seen the coolest thing ever made. It went on for hours. We did some damage.

Monte spotted this stool made out of a wash tub. 

It’s on wheels!

It’s ours now. We sent it home with Dad so he could fasten a hinge onto the cushion so we could store blankets and pillows inside the tub. We think it will look fabulous in our new family room.

8)  We feel like the Kranks from “Christmas with the Kranks” and that we are somehow skipping Christmas. 

We aren’t hosting my family for the holidays like we usually do. We aren’t hosting our stop of the “Jingle Hop” progressive neighborhood party that we do every year. 

The girls keep making me promise to still put up a tree and as many decorations as we can. Around the stove and dishwasher in our living room, of course. 

But with dry wall going up this week, the mess will be intense. Who wants to dust a tree?? And with siding going up, outside lights will be tough. But I don’t want to look like the Humbug House, so I will put that stifled creativity in gear and see what I can come up with.

What have you learned this past month?