Christmas 2008

This was what we anticipate to be our one & only Christmas celebrated in the basement. We invited Richard's single sisters over for a brunch of breakfast haystacks, fruit and doughnuts. Since it was just family, we got to stay in our jammies all day. :) We played games, worked on various projects and watched An American Christmas Carol DVD. The highlight of the day was creating a gingerbread house with aunt Ruth.

This year we broke our tradition of exchanging gifts. We are spending so much to re-do the childrens' rooms in the coming months that we decided to skip the gifts. I was struggling with how to break this to the children when a remark from Arianna inspired me with the solution. As an alternative to gifts, we committed to taking the children to a skating rink some time when the remodeling dust has settled. They are quite happy with the trade-off.

I have been doing quite a bit of painting this week. The laundry room is finished, as are all the ceilings. The office is finished on the bottom half of the walls -the burgundy took 3 coats; still needs the top half of the walls done, when I get more roller covers. The Master Bedroom is partially done. The Brushed Pearl isn't going on as easy as it sounds so I'm playing with that technique. The window seat & bookshelves were delivered today but they agreed to wait on installation until I'm finished painting. I hope to post pictures of these rooms within the next 2 weeks, so stop back.
The underlayment is down in the office and the flooring is here, ready to be installed in the morning. I am so looking forward to moving into the office next week!