There are only two days left before Christmas and we are in full vacation mode in my household! Jose and I worked Monday and Tuesday before taking off the rest of the week (and we’ll be off until January 3). We sent the girls to daycare on Wednesday and Thursday and enjoyed two days of time to ourselves! On Wednesday we ran errands, had yummy lunch, and went to a matinee of Rogue One. I accidentally bought tickets for the 3D version of the movie but we rolled with it and enjoyed the show.
(I’m really not onboard with the 3D movie thing. They make me eyes feel weird.)
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Yesterday we got a little handy and installed a new light fixture in our breakfast room! Here’s one of the real estate photos from before we bought the house to see what the old one looked like:
It was small, dated, and just didn’t provide much illumination — all the light was directed downward and after dark it felt like we were dining under the glare of a spotlight. I did some online browsing and finally decided to pull the trigger on this pendant. (I even had a coupon, so bonus!)
It instantly made the room look sooooo much better! It provides much more even light and fits our style a lot more. The room is also better without the country curtains, even though the “temporary” window shades have now been there for 3+ months. But permanent shades are ordered and should be here the end of January!
The next big step for this room will be painting all of the wood trim white — and the walls a color TBD. I’ll be hiring someone for that sizeable job after we sell our old house.
Long term, I also want to have the whole kitchen/breakfast room floor redone. The tile has really wide and deep grout lines, which is particularly annoying with a 1-year-old who drops/throws food on the floor. Although she’ll grow out of that phase soon enough, the deep grooves also make it hard to slide the chairs in and out easily. Throw in the fact that the tile has weird pink undertones and, well, I’m just not a fan. Still, all new kitchen tile is expensive and inconvenient, so it’s on the “2+ years from now” list…at least for the moment.
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In a fit of inspiration, I made a HUGE list of things to do over our holiday break — long enough that it will be impossible to get everything done. As usual, I am overly optimistic in my goals! But there are a couple other house projects I’m hoping to check off. The biggest is painting the girls’ bedrooms. We haven’t actually committed to that yet, so we’ll see.
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Charlotte is on the move ALL. THE. TIME. right now and it’s pretty fun — and often hilarious — to see her really exploring the house on her own for the first time. The other night after dinner, she went into the pantry and pulled all the snacks out of the bin there. This has been a favorite activity for a week or two now, but on this particular night she then found a bag of hamburger buns and proceeded to drag that around the house in circles for a good 10 minutes.
Toddlers are weird and awesome.