Getting ready for Christmas

What do you do to prepare for Christmas? When do you begin? I've been reading some of your blogs and so many of you seem to have it together when it come to getting ready for Christmas early. Your trees are up, your houses are beautifully decorated and the Christmas baking is well underway. Some of the mothers whose blogs I follow are conscientiously preparing the hearts of their young families for Christ's advent. I am inspired by their spiritual creativity in this important task.

I have managed to do some Advent readings for my quiet time this year and I actually spent a day baking cookies. You can go to http://mennonitegirlscancook.blogspot.com/ for the recipe for Christmas Cranberry cookies, Jam Jams and Oatmeal Shortbread. However the rest of the Christmas prep just always seems out of reach. I wish my DH and I were a little more organized and better plan ahead-ers.

To set things back even more -this year we started some house renovations in November and what with getting our furnace hooked up (see blog post for Nov 3/08) and business trips and a week at our daughter's in Saskatchewan, plus the every day urgencies, the reno's are still not finished. We decided to put hardwood in both the master bedroom and the dining room. It was so good to get rid of that old shag carpet! Here's a picture of the carpet that is still on the stairs and in the living room. (that's on the long list of future projects!)That green and rust coloured shag was all the rage back in 1976 and has stood up well but it is time for it to GO! We tore the carpet out of the dining room and replaced it with this.

Then we painted 2 walls "Garrison Red and the other 2 in "Moccasin" and put some pot lights in the ceiling. That involved pulling up the carpet in the bedroom above and dismantling the floor! You know how one reno always leads to another? I'll post 'after' pictures of the bedroom when we get the molding and trim up.

We then put up crown molding and baseboards. We also changed the amber glass shades on our antique light fixture to cloudy white ones and spent 2 hours polishing it up. Here is how the dining room looks now.

The painting on the wall is a soft pastel done by my aunt, Barbara Boldt who has a studio in Fort Langley BC. You can see some of her work here: http://www.barbaraboldt.com/ Here is another view of the room.

So far, that's all we've done. There are still some switch plates and switches to be changed and the odd bit of baseboard to put up. It will come. I'm just so grateful that we've got this far. I love the way the room looks now and that hardwood floor is so easy to keep clean.

We're celebrating Christmas with our oldest son, wife and 3 kids and youngest son and wife this coming weekend so the rest of the reno work will have to wait. There is a Christmas tree to put up and decorate, outdoor lights to set up and stairs to decorate. There's also the rest of 2 ABC books to finish for our 2- 4 year old grandboys. (I'm quite sure that won't get done on time.) Oh yes, there is the small matter of completing the gift buying and wrapping. Thankfully we're doing Raclette for Christmas dinner so serving dinner will be easy. (I will try to remember to take pictures so I can share it with you)

All that to do and here I am blogging. Oh my, does this woman have her priorities in order? I'm afraid not! Now it's off to bed and on to a busy, busy day tomorrow.

Ditch Witches

So How did we spend Halloween? Well we hired A Ditch-Witch ...and put her to work.

She had two assistants -

one who showed her where to go ...

and one who filled the ditch behind her. Why oh why are we digging yet another ditch

across our field and through the middle of the lawn?

Well it's all because of this:

This is a Used Oil/Wood burning furnace...

that will heat hot water ...

that will flow through the pex tubing ...

that goes in the ditch ...

that's dug by the witch...

that's pulled by the ATV...

that's driven by Rick ...

that will heat the house and the shop that Harv built.

Of course the pex tubing that was ordered 3 weeks ago only came the day after all the dry weather ended in a downpour. Thankfully the ground was not yet saturated and the job was done before it got too muddy to dig. Mind you there were some pretty wet clothing and muddy boots to be dealt with at the end of the day. Now there will need to be a bit of plumbing at both ends of the ditch and a final check that nothing else needs to be strung between the house and shop and then the ditch can be closed and lawn hopefully reseeded.

The result will be a blissfully warm shop and office and much lower hydro and gas bills this winter. The house heating, hot water heater, hot tub and possibly even the drier will use the heat from this furnace. Haven't I got a clever husband?