Getting ready for the holidays

I am back in my own little home! 

the week went very well.  We worked so hard to get the project house closer to ready. 

I'll start with my poor back has no idea what I'm up to- lol.  My fingers are wondering why do I keep messing with these little screws.  I am however quite proud that I seem to have gotten pretty good with a drill!  Although it took a while to figure out how to put the darn cabinets together, once we did, I was off to the races (so to speak) assembling away.  The corner cabinets were the most challenging.  And as the photo shows, you can see why my back was complaining. But we did it. 

Pretty cool huh? When you think what the kitchen was like before with the dropped ceiling (why did they do that in the 70s and 80s?) and the dark cabinets and closed off room, the kitchen was pretty icky. It's so much brighter now.  But I freely admit, this is my last project--I am getting WAY too old for this kind of work no matter how much the former realtor in me loves it! 

Now my focus is getting ready for the holidays - because we rearranged the living room furniture earlier this year - we finally the space for the tree by the window. My husband has always wanted to see the tree from the street, but we've always had to put it in the corner. Not now.  Of course - it's just barely up - I'm still moving furniture around a little to see how to accommodate everyone comfortably with the tree! As I was hunting for the house lights - I pulled out a few decorations. Since no one ever wears the Santa hats, they're now decorating the two sofa side lampshades LOL. And my hubby is a Jerry Garcia fan so my mother gave him a custom mug a million years ago. Made sense to put the reindeer headgear my kids used one Christmas for the mug! It will be interesting to see what else comes out of the Christmas closet - but I need to put up more lights as that's what fascinates my grandson and that is the reason for all the fuss, the grands! 

As a little aside - if you look closely at the reindeer mug you'll see a photo to the right. That was my and my grandmother a million years ago, and the framed photo behind it... my grandparents engagement photo from 1930. 

We're also going to tackle... the outside of the house!  It's kind of interesting what we didn't do for our kids but try to do for the grands.  Hopefully the kids will be happy with all the decorations. At least as soon as I figure out what they'll be LOL.  And more importantly, prayers no one falls off a ladder! 

 I have a friend whose house is like a winter wonderland - we once counted something like 17 chrismas trees. They're everywhere - in the kitchen, all the bathrooms, sometimes two in a room. I'm hoping to have a few minutes to take the little ones over to see. ​Do you do up the holidays?