The house sat around for a while not doing much while we moved things from the garage to the shed and spent time on the deck.

Then with the announcement we were going to have company for the holidays, we decided to get back to work.

MK has put trim around the sliding doors, dining room, and basement guest room to finally get the rest of the house matching. It was a tough project (of course) when we realized the old trim was basically covering a hole from the floor to walls and cold air was getting in. We should own stock in spray foam.

This doesn’t show it anymore, but under the trim and the nice paint is some GAUDY silver wallpaper with cobalt blue and maroon leaves all over it. Priceless to imagine what this place used to look like.

These pictures don’t look super gorgeous, but the new furnace we installed barely runs and the bills are way down, so we’re doing something right.

MK also hung some crazy styrofoam stuff in my laundry room, that we will eventually frame over, again not pretty, but no more cold air!

We’ve finally totally emptied the room we were using for storage, now to convert it into his office.

We also decorated for Christmas. If you are remotely OCD and hate clutter like me, Christmas can be stressful! I ended up removing tons of stuff we normally have just to make room for the decorations.

We just started to decorate the tree!

Work for free should be on there too!

I have to wait two more weeks to learn my fate.

I put a video entry in to a contest for a season pass at all the Utah resorts. It was hard to do, and harder to watch. As I mentioned Friday, it was nuts to see myself ‘acting’. I tried to be cute, funny, charming, and all I came out with was nerdy. It was nerve-racking!

It’s also hard to wonder what the people in charge think. Or think about what I could have done better, or differently. But we had a great time, knnocked it out, and I have to say MH made me look good! At least that whole deal was good.

Sometimes this house stuff is so uninteresting I feel bad making you read about it. But, Momm likes it and it’s pretty much all I do. MK won’t let me go for a hike or bike ride until I’ve completed the renovations of the entire house. Slave driver.

So, the latest idea is to put a hole in the wall between the kitchen and the living room. Not JUST so I can watch Law and Order while I cook, but to open it up and let more light in. And so I can watch Law and Order while I cook.

We’re planning on taking down all the wood on the living room wall (when MK’s dad comes, which is soon approaching!). Here’s what that looks like to remind you.

The other side of that wall is the pantry. Here’s what that looked like to remind you.

MK ripped all the wood out, and much to our chagrin, as I mentioned in this post, ever so briefly, found wallpaper. And had to remove it. And that was gross. But I did it, patched all the holes, and painted the space.

We have no idea  if it’s possible to make it a whole walk through doorway, or just a picture window type deal. We’ll find out. In the meantime, we went ahead and took down all the shelves. Because if it is eventually a walkway or window, you don’t want to look at our food. We found the perfect ikea piece, which is technically called a ‘desk’ although I can’t see you using it for that. It’s our new roll top hidden pantry.

This doesn’t qualify in my book as a doctor worthy problem – so I’ll let you, internet friends, tell me what to do.

I am a pretty happy sleeper. It takes me a while, but I doze off comfortably and don’t wake up at night and have sweet dreams, mostly. But lately, there are some crazy things going through my head. Knock down drag out fuzzy memories hit me when I wake up of some of the strangest things you could imagine, real and otherwise.

What makes you have insane dreams? I like my bed, I haven’t changed my schedule, I can’t think of one thing that has changed to make my brain go all crazy – besides being older. I’m not enjoying remembering things I think happened with people I know then realizing that was A DREAM. Also no fun is the creepy weird out of this world but somewhat grounded in reality nonsense that is waking me up. Sometimes I forget but still know it was troubling.

I’m thinking of warm milk before bed. Or a book for a bit. Or a white noise machine. Advice?