Getting Ready for New Year's Dinner

Curtis, Lori, DT, & Brent came by this morning to help finish the clean up of the dining room and living room to get ready for the New Year's dinner. I had already moved all the boxes; we only needed to pack up the books & move them to the middle bedroom for temporary storage and a bunch of cleaning. Later I bought a new table cloth to cover the old one.

The new tablecloth with an ohia lehua design.

When they arrived, I had Lori open her Christmas presents before we got to work. I saw the light banner on the Hammacher Schlemmer website first, then the ghost drone; I got both because I know she likes both holidays. Curtis suggested taking it to a park to practice.

The ghost drone. It was originally $100, but I got it for only $15! They must have had a lot of them left over.

After we looked at the presents, we started the clean-up. I taught Brent how to use the steam cleaner; he did the carpet in the family room & the dining room. We were done with everything in about an hour & needed to wait for another hour to pick up Bick & Ron; Bick made lunch for us since we were cleaning and packing. While we were waiting we decided to put up the light banner here since the New Year's dinner will be here. It turned out to need a little more than hanging; the window needed cleaning. We attached the control box with duct tape; it stayed up for about 10 minutes. We couldn't find other hardware to put it back up.

Brent cleaning the outside of the window.

Bick brought over Vietnamese-style braised catfish, Thai red rice, and laulau. I was busy feeding Dad, so I only have a photo of the leftovers.

L: laulau, R: red rice with braised catfish.

I gave Bick & Ron a ride back to their place, then I went to Don Quijote to pick up food for the New Year's dinner. I also picked up batteries for the remote control for the light banner and cup hooks to hang the banner. I worked on securely putting up the banner and control box. It looked like it needed a couple more points to hang from so I also added a couple zipties, which I always have with me since I keep them in my suitcase. (Perhaps that is why TSA keeps searching my luggage!) There are 13 messages, like Happy Birthday, Let It Snow, and Happy Halloween. It also has 11 icons like snowflakes, pumpkins, and stars. It can be used year round!

The banner lights up the living room.

The letters scroll across the banner; "Holidays" is too long to be seen completely on the banner.

Happy Birthday to Bria!