and turned into a monstrous whole house clean out. At the beginning of the break I set up some goals for the 5 days away from school: help Bill clean out and then tear out all carpet in our bonus room in prep for our new 2nd flood carpet, scrub down floorboards and repaint, finish raking all leaves, make 5 freeze ahead meals, shop for a sleep bra, start working on a countdown to Christmas calendar, and if possible make a gingerbread train (from a kit) with Ben.
Starting on Wednesday here's what got done with pictures to prove I need ANOTHER 5 days to re-cooperate.
Wed- Ben and I hit several stores to see if anything looked good for Black Friday, hit the grocery, picked up a trial membership to BJs for the month of Dec, raking, starting cleaning out my stuff from the bonus room. We met Bill for dinner at the mall and did Santa pics. LOVE them, posting one tomorrow!
Thursday- TDAY!!! We started early cleaning and by afternoon all the carpet was up and being taken out of the house. YAY!!! What started as a one room project quickly escalated to also cleaning out our attic storage so we had somewhere to move all the bonus room stuff. Our attic has been the repository of last resort. We took time off to hit Cracker Barrel for T day lunch and then hit it again until about 10 pm cleaning, moving, carting stuff to be donated into our garage.
Friday- Like a total fool I decided to brave the crowds and be in line at Kolhs at 3:30 am to get $200 off a Dyson Vacuum cleaner. I have never thought myself crazy enough to brave pre dawn morning for a sale, but who am I kidding I am coupon crazy. I used to WORK this shift at a local dept store gift wrap department in high school, so I knew to expect shoppers on a mission. Kinda telling that the last song I heard before getting in line was Prodigy "Smack My Bitch up." Just what I needed in case I had to fight someone for that vaccum. I wound up with 4 items total including a king down comforter for 20.00 dollars, vacuum, hand mixer, baby doll for Ben(which I kicked the length of the store in line to check out)
I then got in a line of over 1000 according to the news at Target in hopes of getting a duel DVD player for the car. I figured that it was a long shot but I was pumped from my Kolhs trip. Yep... got it too and yes had to push my way into a massive crowd for it. Not a finer momement and glad I hadn't brough Ben along to see what I did for peace and quiet on our next long trip.
From there I hit Lowes when they opened for storage containers, a fire safe to replace the lock box we had drilled, and Christmas tree Bag. ALL on massive sale. For a brief, brief moment I thought about getting an inflatable for the yard, but passed. By the time I finally made it home at 7 am I was totally buzzed from the one cup of real coffee that I let myself get. Crazy insane given I'm not had coffee since May. I literally never crashed until that night and it was BAD!
Sat- On to the great Bra Hunt of '09. Ben and I drove to Chapel Hill to the granola birth center lactation store. Can I just say the salesgirl was utterly amazed that I was getting close to the A-Z split and politely mentioned they had nothing that went to that letter of the bra alphabet after fitting me. She did give me another store to try and was nice enough to do a little research for me. Ben and I then hit Babies R Us to price a toy box, BJs again for a toaster oven on sale and then finally home where I raked more freakin' leaves and yes more cleaning until the wee hours.
Sunday- Last dedicated day to clean, haul the nasty carpet and bags of padding to the dump, and did I mention the leaves (this picture is the 2nd week I raked this much to the street and STILL have more.) Needless to say what didn't get done was the cooking or the gingerbread train assmbly but with rain this week, I have afternoon plans.
We decided that we are hiring a contractor to pull up the damaged floorboards and help repaint the bookshelves as our gift to each other for going beyond a room to cleaning out the entire house pre baby V 2.0. Add to it 6 load of laundry and general getting ready for the week and I am mad tired. I can't wait until next weekend to get up all the holiday decorations as the majority of shopping is DONE and just ready to be wrapped.
I sure hope I didn't toss my stash of paper with the gazillion of leaves and stuff we hauled out of the attic. I did also make a paper list of Christmas activities and plan to raid my school stash of construction paper to make a tear off calendar for Ben to help decorate. Bring it December and Holiday season, I am ready to meet you with plans-o-plenty that don't involve leaves or carpet removal.
2 comments:
This is MY DREAM for the holidays but I agreed with Jon we would do nothing except enjoy time together. Which we did!!
The only thing on the to-do list that got done was to remove the kidproofing from the treehouse so they can go up there by themselves.
Holy productivity! You put me to shame. But I know you get a perverse joy outta working yourself to the bone, so good for you! LOL. Seriously, so impressed with how much you guys got done. And I know you'll reap the rewards of all that hard work.
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