the weekend. some before & afters.

Friday afternoon I came home to a clean house.  {hooray!}


Since all was clean, we began hanging stuff on the walls to add the finishing touches.  And without further ado, I don't think I can get away with not posting some before & afters at this point.  So, here goes.  Please do keep in mind photos do not do justice {for the hideousness that the house was or the beautiful thing it has become}.  Also, it's next to impossible to get a good angle {with any camera} of the entirety of one room.  


Let's start with the floors:


this hideous, disgusting, gross {you name it} carpet was in the entire house.  sick.  the entire downstairs, staircase and upstairs hallway is now this hardwood floor.  the bedrooms have a beautiful, plush carpet {that I'm in love with}



Dining Room {obviously the mauve marble flooring was replaced with hardwood, we added baseboard and a new fixture.  add some nice curtains and table and voila! - new dining room}:



Kitchen {so we painted everything white, and knocked out the cabinets over the bar - good call!  also, there was this hideous brown box that hung down with the lights, which we knocked out and added recessed lighting.}:






2 Bathrooms {the boy's is ridiculously cute but I can't get a great photo, so I left it out for now.  the first is the downstairs guest bathroom and the second is our master vanity.  you can't see, but we replaced that sickening flooring with hardwood.  also, ignore me & my belly in the photo below!}:

















Living Room: {loving my photo collage and fireplace.  I need a wide shot of the fireplace.  Painting it white is one of the best decisions I made, I think!}




So, you get the idea.  I wish I had really great photos, but I don't.  The lens on my nice camera is way to wide to get a good shot of any room.  However, I think the video will show more.  Basically, we ripped up all the carpet and replaced it with hardwood and nice carpet, painted every nook and cranny {the fireplace, the doors, ceilings, walls, etc.}, put in baseboard, hardware on all the cabinets, tore down all the mirrors in the bathrooms and replaced them with framed mirrors, replaced all the toilets and fixtures in all three bathrooms re-plumbed the entire house, etc. etc. etc.  What did we not do, is more the question?  Right now, I'm just having fun decorating and adding all the finishing touches.  I'll post photos of the bedrooms later.

Saturday afternoon we finally got in the spare room in the garage.  We emptied it, cleaned it and finally unpacked all the boys toys and set up their Wii.  They were thrilled and spent most of the day in there.  We installed a camera so we can see and hear all that's going on in there.  The first time we used it was great {we freaked them out} because they didn't know we could see what they were doing.  {awesome}

Sunday we headed up to Disneyland.  Disneyland is always magical, but there's nothing like Disneyland at Christmas.  I hate that we missed church, but our passes are blocked all the Saturday's in December and the last two weeks of December {when we are on break}, so this was our last chance to go.  I think we all needed a little break from all our work anyway.  The boys, of course, had a fabulous time.  The highlight of the entire day was probably seeing Santa {the real one...wink, wink} in the Christmas Parade.  Silas was screaming, 

"Santa, Santa!!  Over here!  Hi, Santa!!"

It was THE cutest.  It couldn't have been a better day or come at a better time.  It was the great end to our weekend and now we have a week full of Christmas festivities ahead.  I'm so thankful to be slowing down a bit {as far as the house goes} and be able to enjoy the holidays.



So once we got home and I got the kids bathed and to bed, I heard the doorbell ring.  Dusty's dad came by and had apparently cleaned out their attic this weekend.  What that meant was we got boxes and crates full of stuff that we've stored over there since moving from Chicago and things we've brought over here and there due to a lack of storage in our condo.  I found all my Moody yearbooks and old schoolwork, a purse that was completely full of stuff {that was interesting}, all my Mike Modano memorabilia {yeah, college days for sure!}, journals dating back to middle school, all of Silas' special baby stuff I had put away, etc. etc.  It was amazing - like digging through buried treasure.  I laughed a lot, teared up a little and walked a few miles down memory lane.  {so bizarre}  Totally not what I had planned on doing that night, but fun nonetheless.

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