Merry Christmas...a bit late

We hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends. We are back from visiting family out of town and it is good to be home. We had a great time visiting with everyone and had really good weather too. Maggie did come down with a stomach bug at the end but it did not put a damper on our week. We received many beautiful gifts and are truly appreciate them all. Tim's sister, Ellen, gave us our FAVORITE gift this year. She painted the view from our backyard in England. It is just lovely and captures the scene perfectly. The view was what we all liked the most of the house, especially Tim. The photo does not give it justice but you can get the gereral idea.

Progress and Flowers

Today had been another fun filled day of haning drywall...NOT, but one has to pretend like it is fun. Tim has only a few more sheets to hang and will finish the rest after Christmas. There still is a ton of work to do when it comes to mudding and sanding but it will all be worth it.Around lunchtime we received a floral delivery...very unexpected too! It was from our friends back in England ~ it was appropriate they came in a Spode vase.

The Rock is Going UP....

You can really see the progress in the basement now! We have started to put the sheet rock up what a difference it makes. We started with the ceiling and since the photo was taken the wall on the right side of the room has been completed too. One other huge difference is that Tim took the poles out of the middle of the room and just replaced them with one larger one. It really opens up the space.

Dear Santa...

I received the following email from Maggie's teacher this afternoon. This is so cute... I am reading over Santa letters and here is what part of her's says...

"This year I have been thinking, maybe I don't need more toys I already have what I need. .... I will get lots of toys from family and friends and relatives. So give more toys to the needy than me, in fact don't give me any toys at all." ~ How sweet! Just thought I'd share. ~Katy

Now the big questions is....I wonder if Santa will actually listen to her?

Let There Be Light....

The basement remodel is coming along slowly but surely. We only work on it over the weekend so we are limited as to how much we can really get done. This weekend Tim spent the time with the electrical wiring of the overhead lights! He was able to get that done and then instal the mounts for the can lights. It is great to actually seem some progress. Next weekend we will be ready to start hanging the drywall on the ceiling...FUN FUN :-}

I found this custom storage unit while looking around on the internet and I want Tim to make one just like it. Our steps into the basement have the same set up and it would be perfect in our house. I just want the angled portion not the whole bar area too ~ it would be nice but it won't happen.

This is the entertainment wall piece, from Pottery B@rn, that I would also like him to make ~ with some modifications. He isn't too thrilled about the possibility of making these things but it would be cheaper so I am sure he will come around to the idea.

Violin Performance & Basement Remodel

This past week Maggie had her winter violin concert. She has been participating in a program at school via the local philharmonic orchestra. This is her first year so their songs are quite simple but she LOVES it. She was quite nervous before the concert and you can see the releif on her face when she is finished with her first song. There were close to 150 kids so it was a bit chaotic but very cute! { I have video to upload but blogger isn't cooperating at the moment....I will try to add it again later}

Tim has spent the last few weeks planning the remodel of the family room AKA kids area. somewhat finished ~ there is a dropped ceiling and two of the walls have paneling and the others are the painted cinder block.The basement is divided into two sections and we are redoing only one part. The other half is the work area/furnace/scrap/storage everything else room. On Saturday, Tim and I began the process...yep I used power tools. I must say they miter saw is a cool thing to work with. We have about 80% of the walls framed and it is neat to see progress. We were not originally going to drywall the ceiling but do another dropped ceiling but have changed to going ahead and drywalling it {YEAH...that is what I wanted} The goal is to have the room drywalled and all lighting done by the end of the year ~ then the painting and flooring done in early January.