Mini Reno at my house!

Crazy to blog twice in one day but I know there is at least one person waiting for this one so here goes. Thanks to my Mom coming into some money we did a mini reno on my house; New kitchen & bathroom flooring, new toilet, new stove, and a new vanity. Following are the pictures before, during and after with my commentary(of course).

Kitchen(before). I didn't realize how messy it was until I looked at the pictures but you try doing a reno like this with 6 people, 2 cats and 2 dogs in a house that is under 1000 square feet and I'd like to see what your pictures look like!
Bathroom(before). As you all know from my Jan 2008 house tour this is my only bathroom.
To save money I then had to do the following:
Move all appliances from the kitchen(that's 2 fridges & a stove)
Move pantry cabinet from the kitchen(it's a stand alone)
Remove toilet from bathroom
Get J to remove vanity from bathroom
Remove peel and stick tiles in bathroom

Now in almost any other house there may be a spare room somewhere nearby, maybe even a dining room that could be used as a storage room. Not in my house. I had hoped everything would fit in the girls' room but the larger fridge would not fit and had to go into the mudroom. I moved K's bed on top of M's bed and put the girls out in the living room for the night.

Kitchen(in progress):
Bathroom(in progress) those are towels on the floor. I peeled up the peel and stick tiles and the left over adhesive was very very sticky and the bathroom still had to be used overnight and the next morning.
Girls' room & mudroom stuffed with stuff:
Living room/girls' room for the night. You'll notice a few changes in the living room since my 2008 tour, it has been 2 years. We have a sectional now and yes it totally blocks the front door. The front windows can be used for an emergency exit.
Kitchen floor going in. Yes I asked permission to post this poor man's back end on the interwebs. Nice guy, worked fast.
Bathroom(in progress). No toilet and leveler on the floor drying. My bathroom is almost a sane size with nothing in it but the tub ... /sigh/
Kitchen(final reveal). Nice and tidy after a day of use. Yes that's homemade bread on the stove top, J made it. I love my fancy new oven.
Bathroom(almost done). J has to put the new vanity and sink in, this involves piping and he has to buy the stuff to do it and all that.
Living room all tidy and stuff - this room looks very nice other than the walls need a fresh coat of paint.
And that was my mini reno. It was a lot of work for 2 days but it's(almost) all done now. Hopefully J won't be too long putting the new vanity/sink in. He's working this weekend so maybe next weekend or some evening this week ...

Xmas Summary, because no one wants to see all that red-eye!

Okay, I'm going to make this short because only a Mommy & Daddy can enjoy looking at pictures of people opening gifts(and then only if those people are loved ones). To everyone else it is boring. I tried to hit on the high points with the pictures I've chosen but the 12 I am posting are not all of the pictures I have of the big day. I am, however, using them as reference so I can get the general gift list right.

I have to start with Xmas Eve as we gave the children our traditional gift then as well as a second gift that I figured would be better set up before the business of Xmas day itself. Our traditional gift is pajamas and sometimes a little extra gift(this way everyone looks nice in Xmas morning pictures). This year we did jammies and a book. A also got a little bag of plastic soldiers and M's book came with a necklace. The children's other gift was individual computer desks - I had been telling them for over a week that I had bought them cages. When J and I went down into the basement to set them up I sent the empty boxes upstiars to the kids with this label taped to them:
I went on with a back story that caging kids was a new parenting method and that I bought the cages from the people that ran the website that was talking about this new parenting trend. I told them as soon as Daddy and I were done setting them up we would let them try them out. A figured it out but the girls(especially M) were almost fooled.

Their reactions were wonderful, I think there is relief in those smiles:

Of course everyone was happy with their new jammies as well and were happy to show them off to the camera for me:

Here is a shot of our tree with all the goodies:

Me on Xmas morning, I insisted on this shot because my dog has her head on my ankles and I thought that was sweet:
Yes it's still dark outside but is around 7am. I'm not going to list everything everyone got because that's silly. I think my best gift was the new camera J got me, J got 6 new t-shirts from me but he thinks his best gift was the Percy Jackson and the Olympians book set I got him, K's fave gift was probably the cash she got, A's is either the DS or the Lego Star Wars PC game we got him, M has gotten the most use out of her Littlest Pet Shop play set and I think Mom liked the pictures of the kids we gave her.

The kids lined up for the first gift of the day:I had just said, "You're lined up like three little soldiers." what hams I have!

A has, by far, the biggest reactions to everything, he was shocked to get a DS of his very own:
But nothing beats getting something you really wanted but didn't think Mommy & Daddy could find:He went right downstairs to install it and play for a while!

Even Mom's Shi Tzu was into the Xmas spirit:

That's it. Using our 'one gift each and then take a break' method we managed to keep the gift giving going until noon. This is really good since the kids only had 4 gifts each to open. It was a great day and well worth telling you all about!

Cass :)