Baby, it's cold!

I've succumbed. (incidently, that's a really hard word to spell...)

Yes, the feels-no-cold descendant of West Virginia hillbillies is wearing SOCKS. In the HOUSE. Those who know me know what a special day this is. The day the earth froze over. Clog-shoe Binaca knee-toe*

And in celebration I'll work on Gerry's holiday gift, a pair of socks knit from Lorna's Laces Roadside Gerry (I'm also doubling it for a hat for him, he'll match Max!) Hannah gets a scarf - she asked for one, she shall have one. I wanted to make her a cowl type thing, but she wants a long scarf. Okay.

When I mentioned "cowl" her face scrunched up in a look that said, "Mom, you are not only insane, but tastelessly so, OMG!"

Oh, heavens, if only I could convince her NOT to make up her mind about something at the beginning, but to wait until the facts are in.

Oh, well, she could be 5 times as annoying and only be 1/2 as bad as I was, so we have a long way to go before I can complain about anything.

Our house, like many homes in the Twin Cities, is rather small. This is, we believe, to save heat. When our furnace is on, the upstairs gets nice and toasty but the downstairs is chilly-willy. Sometimes the upstairs gets TOO warm, so we turn down the thermostat to a low, low 62 (our new upstairs windows are doing yeoman duty - hooray!) and then it's a little frigid downstairs.

So we're looking into the option of adding a gas fireplace insert to our non-working fireplace in our living room. The variables we're weighing are -

PROS:

1. Increased home value (functioning gas fireplace vs. nonworking hole in wall) which will probably offset #1 below...
   
2. Possible lower heating bills as we turn furnace down (see #2 below)
3. Warmer living room area (the place we actually hang out...)
4. Ambience

CONS:

1. Expense to install (this will BE our big home improvement for 2009 & 2010)
   
2. Possible higher gas bills (see #2 above)

So tomorrow we're having the measuring of the fireplace done - mostly to see if it's possible to get a "wood" burning gas insert (it may be too big for our small, 1919 original coal-burning fireplace...) The "coal" burning gas insert will definitely fit, and it makes more sense historically, and it looks really cool. But it's a smidge more expensive. We'll take it one step at a time.

One thing that should warm up the house is my knitting group, which is coming over tonight (hooray!) I haven't had them over, I'm sort of a new member to the group (well, a year, but that feels so new to me) so this will be my first time having them over to my house. I'm making cookies, coffee, tea, grapes and pie, and hoping that's good. I'm both fearful that no one will show, and afraid that we won't have enough chairs.

I've been experimenting with refrigerator cookies, and tried this recipe last night. It is VERY good! So we'll have those and my old standby, the gelt cookie!

* Mnemonic device for remembering Klaatu barada nikto in case I ever need to save the world, a la Patricia Neal ...