I have new babies...

I took out my box of Christmas 'mousie' bits when I searched for the Christmas cards in the storage area awhile back.

It was a Herculean feat just to get into that storage area believe me.  It is still stacked with all manner of "stuff" we had to move in there to get it out of the way so we could make our renovation mess.   There were rolls of excess carpet, boxes of record albums, boxes of electrical and electronic gear, my massage table, boxes of tiles, golf clubs and carts, the other pop down movie screen and two long blinds from upstairs reno of 3 years ago....acckkkk!! Disaster area of the first order.  In January, I am going to do a major purge... what fun that'll be.  No, really, I'm actually looking forward to throwing out anything and everything related to renovations.  Goodbye and good riddance to it.  I no longer have to save any of it.  Wheeeeeee!!  oooh, sorry, got a bit giddy there for a nano second..  Oh, alright... perhaps maybe one box of tiles in case there is an accident and something needs replacing.  But, there is going to be a lot of stuff piled out by the fence in the New Year.  We love doing that... we have some regular scavengers who stop by to check it all out and in no time at all...it disappears.  Perfect.  I bet some of them have built houses with all we have chucked over the years.  Complete houses.

Back to the mousies.  It appeared that I had cleaned out several walnut shells last year so I had a head start... thank goodness, as we finished this reno so close to the festive season I didn't have much time to tinker around.  Managed to find a few hazelnuts in the box as well, to make into the actual mice... so, lots of drawing eyes and noses and gluing and playing later...I have several new babies to hang on our own tree or to give to various neighbour kids.. I sneak out on Christmas eve and hang them on doorknobs for a laugh.  Only got caught once when somebody decided to drive home at the exact time I left the porch.  Probably I looked like a deer in the headlights.  I was busted there.  And, one dog barked his head off inside a house...but nobody figured out why, so I sprinted down the block before they opened the door.  Whew.

I love them on our tree... and little kids and parents alike think they are so cute... I make a dozen or more every year it seems.

Here is a shot of a portion of my tree...  you can see a few of the little guys on there.... along with origami and all my other fun little things.. it looks like one of those pics you could make a puzzle out of doesn't it?
Click on any pic to biggify

Here are the little mousies... all the same and yet...all so different.  Just like little babies in a nursery...hahhahahah.... oh, I'll take that one please, the one with all the lovely black 'sticky up' hair...oh, just a minute there aren't any.  Not since my nephew was born.  Okay then..the one with the little blue flower between the ears please?  She's mine, all mine.

Changed my header

That's little Darla, my tiny needle felt I made way back in... uhm.....just had to go to the photo for info.... can't believe it was in 2009.  Good grief!  Time flies.

Yep..it flew past me on the latest renovation as well.... we began it at the end of March and lo and behold...it is now ... December.  Great.  Remember when Sumbunny said it was only going to take "about a month"?  I knew better and said at least 3 ... but, little did I know it would escalate into 8 months plus..... sheeeesh......

My life has definitely not been my own and it was a lot of mess ... and re-creating, and then... well, you get the drift... last Friday the guy came to switch around the glass panes in the office doors and we declared us officially finished!!!  I do have the tree up and am ready for the 'sparkly' season.
Wooohooooooo !!!

Still have to put up my little tree downstairs on the new carpeting and can't wait to see that.... it's totally different now with new carpeting and newly painted and the main wall of speakers etc re-done.  That wall was the main thing we were planning to do when we began things...but, you know how it goes... every project just seems to grow.  Takes on a mind of its own.

I have to say though, that this final renovation has gone the easiest and the best of all we have done in the past 30+ years as far as the professional trades went.   We did lots of it ourselves ... and, then... had professionals finish off baseboards, casings, painting, carpeting, etc.  This time... it was great....I called or emailed them... we set a date for them to show up...they did, I paid them... they went away and we were happy with all the work they did.  Can't say enough good things about all the guys we hired.

All of our worries about each and every stage were totally unfounded... but, in fairness to us... we have gone through some pretty trying times over the years with various trades.... somehow this time we got all the right guys.  What a treat.

At the beginning it was just us, and much as we've done renos for years...... by the time we got it demolished... I think we were saying, "what have we done"??
When a room looks like this.... it is a daunting task to make it right again.

End of March...

By April 19 we had the wall re-built and speaker boxes in place... not too bad for a couple of amateurs.  We did feel proud of our accomplishment at this point even though the end was a very  long way off and seemed even further some days.....













Now, it looks like this.

We re-built that wall around the doorway and also did the ceilings in both rooms and had new carpeting installed.

Here is what it looked like before.... this was the renovation we did ourselves in 2004.  I know that because we take lots of photos of all of our "work".. plus, there were some nasty comments on a 2 x 4 under the wall that I wrote about my "boss" that time around.  No more components collecting dust now.. all hidden away behind the wall in a small "server" room we also built.

After 30+ years of renovating this house... we quit.  Yep... that's right.  Nobody is doing renos again in this place.  They can't.  We've done every single thing that can be done.  It can't get 'old' for many years now.

Somewhere in between things I still managed a bit of golf, practiced at the driving range and on this day..wandered into the park area with my camera... so I give you this pretty one too...