Fa la la la laaaa la la la laaaaa

We had a wonderful holiday festivity-ish weekend! Friday, Jeff and I took the girls to Blessed Trinity to attend their St. Nicholas Day party. It was SO much fun. Rosemary is so into games right now...and that, combined with treats - could life get any better? Gloria hung in there quite well and we made our escape as soon as she started falling apart. Saturday we went with my family on a limousine tour of some of the Twin Cities finest light displays. It was a great time and the kids seemed to love it. Saturday we attended our nieces' dance studio's rendition of The Nutcracker. BRAVO! Miss Eleanor was quite the star and we were so proud of her. Amidst all of this, we managed to get a tree, have a family Christmas movie night, make our first batch of Chex Mix and salted nut rolls and had lots of neighborhood visitors stop by and keep us company. What a great weekend!

Here are the dry ingredients for our first batch of homemade Chex Mix

Jeff & Rosemary on the hunt for the perfect tree

We found it! Gloria was too busy having a meltdown in the car to join us for a picture;-)


We also managed to make some progress on little projects around the house. We got the ceiling painted in the bathroom (which proved to be a bigger job than it seemed as much of the old paint needed to be scraped where air pockets had collected behind it).

Thank goodness that SOON the baby blue walls will be gone. The wallpaper is scheduled to be installed on the 15th.

We also got the hallway paint touched up (which, because we used a satin finish paint means we basically had to repaint the entire hallway...eyeye). I also got the remaining windows scraped and cleaned. We are held up in the basement as Jeff decided he wants to epoxy the floor in the storage room. We did this at our last house and it really makes the basic concrete floor feel more finished. So...we have the kit waiting here...now we just need to do it. It's a minimum 2 day project as the concrete has to be cleaned thoroughly and prepped for the epoxy. Tonight we will do phase one, the cleaning. Phewey. But, for $65 - it's a relatively simple process with big results.

Tomorrow we have our final meeting with the architect before we start bidding out the project. Woo HOO! When we first moved to this house a few weeks ago, we were debating on whether or not we would do the remodel of the main floor and exterior right away. We were just so happy to be here that we figured we'd wait and just enjoy the house and being settled for a while before uprooting everything again. Well, three weeks later we are MORE than ready to start this remodel. We are constantly tripping over everything and everyone. While there is plenty of space in the house (around 2500 square feet), the way the kitchen, side entry and family room are laid out is driving us crazy! The side door is the most functional door of the house - but trying to get out it is nearly impossible (and life threatening I might add) with a 2 year old and a 30 pound car seat. One of us is bound to take a spill down this stairway one of these days if we aren't careful!



In the remodel, this door will be closed up and a new back door will be created that will enter into a generous sized mudroom (the current kitchen). The space is here - it's just properly allocating it that's the challenge.

So, our hope is that we will be starting this remodel in the next 2 months. It will take 3-5 weeks to get bids back from contractors - and then it's just a matter of choosing the one we want spending the next 4-6 months in our home with us. We've had such crazy summers the past few years...we've either been pregnant, having a baby or just having had a baby, remodeling or selling our house. My hope is that this summer, the projects around here will be wrapping up and we can just relax and enjoy the summer with a 1 year old and 3 year old:-)

This week's featured space will be the Family Room. Stay tuned for details on its transformation. In the meantime, I'm off to start packaging up the Chex Mix and getting it wrapped as gifts for friends and family:-)

Here's a shot of Rosemary and Gloria in their matching outfits and piggy tails. Can you believe my 6 month old has enough hair for piggy tails? And lastly, a shot of Miss Gloria splish splashing around.