2 weeks and Counting!

The countdown to regaining my sanity has begun!  We are in the home stretch of our massive main floor renovation.  We started in August and have been hacking away at this place to make it more functional, and of coarse beautiful, ever since.  I literally cannot believe that the holidays are sneaking up on me this year.  I usually begin my countdown to holiday festivities sometime in September.  This year I was completely bamboozled when November came.

We are still living only upstairs and really feeling crammed together.  It's just the bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs so we eat toaster oven meals on the floor and use our beds as our couch.  When we first moved completely upstairs, I filled the kids' rooms to overflowing with toys from our downstairs playroom so they wouldn't get bored during the renovation.  I also had to put all the cleaning and cooking things in my room.  So, as you can imagine we're pretty chalk full here!  I can't even begin to be motivated to take out any extra holiday decorations and start to put them up.  Not to scare you, but this is our dish washing center, aka my bathroom sink vanity.  Isn't it just wonderful?!

I try to remind myself that I was the one who pushed so hard to live here during the construction rather than spend some of our reno budget on living in temporary housing.  It makes me very happy to sleep in my own comfy bed every night.  There has been several occasions where we haven't had running water or electricity all day.  The key to making it through, is to embrace craziness and learn to be ok with being unorganized.  It has actually been a blessing in disguise to be here and be available to go downstairs and check the progress and see everything being installed.  Many of you who have done any type of remodel know that sometimes things don't get installed the way you'd like.  I appreciate being able to watch the work being done as it happens, rather than asking the workers to correct mistakes later.

Now as I see the light at the end of a very long tunnel, the pains of living through this are starting to fade.  I'm so excited to be finished by Thanksgiving and have a beautiful new space to use and share with family.  Sometimes I go downstairs and stand in my soon to be finished kitchen and just dream of standing there drinking coffee looking out at our gorgeous view or using my new appliances to bake cookies with my kids.  It will all be so amazing and so very much worth it.

~Trisha