To Do List

I am trying not to think of all of the things I have to get done before Christmas, but it's hard! I still have a little bit of shopping to do. Not much, but a little. Kevin and I are going to have a date tomorrow night and finish up. Yay! I still want to bake some Christmas cookies and do some fun crafts with the kids, but that requires a trip to the grocery store for ingredients and a trip to Hobby Lobby for crafting supplies. We're done with school until Jan 5th, so there's time to go out and get everything. It's just with the weather this cold it's hard to find the courage to bundle everyone up and go out. Someday soon I will! I found a lot of great kid crafts in one of my Usborne books.



We have had a lot of fun decorating this year!! I had to make some minor adjustments as far as what I put where. Last year, a snow globe cracked and leaked out into one of our rubbermaid totes containing a good majority of my decorations. By the time winter came and it was time to decorate, I opened the tote to find most everything covered in a horrific black mold. Needless to say, none of it was salvagable so we had to throw it all out. It was sad because we'd had most of those since we had first gotten married. I haven't really bought too much to replace what was lost yet. I figure I can deal with some of the bareness and shop some of the post holiday sales this year!!! But here are some pictures of our holiday decor for now...



















We also have a lot of projects to finish up on around the house here, but won't be taking those on until after the holidays. We have two more rooms of the Novalis flooring to lay (our bedroom and Liv's) and all the quarter round to put on. I'm also sad to say that I have to sand and refinish the stair treads. I made a little boo boo on those! I used a oil based stain and a water based varnish, so whooops. Evidently that whole saying about oil and water not mixing is true. They look horrible, so that will be a fun winter project for me. NOT.

And paint. There are so many things that need paint it makes my head spin thinking about it! The kitchen cabinets look like poop. You'll remember that I painted them when we first moved in four years ago. They need to be redone, so that will be yet another winter project for me! And some of the trim needs touching up and also the wine rack Kevin made over the fridge and also the bookcase Kevin made in the upstairs hallway. Do you think a 5 gallon bucket will cover all that??? I suck at estimating for things like that.....

Then...... if I can figure out a way to ask Kevin about making some cool looking columns for the fireplace.... I would like to tackle that sometime too. The fireplace is always my biggest decorating dilema. It's HUGE and off center and just plain odd. So I thought that it'd look cool to add some columns......

Here's my fireplace now:


And here is an inspiration photo, but ours would be bigger:


So as much as I hate winter and being stuck inside, I definately have a lot to keep myself busy! I often wonder what it will be like once everything is actually finished. We just celebrated the anniversary of our fourth year in this house!!! Crazy how time flies! In closing, I am posting a little slideshow of some pictures of the house with before shots and after shots. It's not the best slideshow and not all of the photos are recent, but you'll get the idea of where we started with this place and how far we've come. Even if the neighborhood isn't quite the greatest, I feel so blessed to be able to raise my family here and call this house my home. What started out as a great big blank canvas really became a way for me to explore my love for paint and decor. Happy 4 year anniversary, house!!!