School starts up again around here today, for better and worse. I do like a break, but . . .
Especially this year. This holiday season has been an absolute blur of new house stuff.
There was some back and forth as to whether we would be able to remodel the house, henceforth to be known as Gramblewood,* before we moved in. I assured the husband that I loved it so much that I would have lived in it without a kitchen. Or electricity. Or plumbing. But I think he knew better.
Anyway, it was weeks of back and forth of figuring and planning and first we were just going to do a couple things, then all of a sudden we were going to do pretty much everything it needs, right this very second.
Which meant finalizing designs and supervising demolition and spending entire days in flooring and tile and furniture and appliance and fixtures stores making ALL the decisions for the rest of my life. But no pressure.
I think most of the big plans and decisions are done (and on pinterest) and I'm still enjoying the process and am really REALLY excited to see how it all comes together.
We also had a lovely Christmas and a lovely visit with my sister and her family and went to the parade and shot each other with silly string and ate all the treats and watched all the shows and had all the fun.
Let's pause for a quick holiday photo dump.
Christmas:
New Year's meant silly string and writing in the air with glowsticks and Mass and parade and football:
All that, and none of it got blogged, (gasp) and that was okay. Necessary even, for now.
January 2nd marked the beginning of the fourth year of this blog. I love it. Really, I do. I love all the parts of it: the writing, the photography, the graphic design, the Facebooking, the Instagramming, the comments, and emails, and community.
But because I like it all so much, I do it to the exclusion of other hobbies and projects. Even when I get way out ahead on writing posts, like I did before Mary Jane was born, comments and emails and social media manage to fill my free time.
I have many non-blog writing projects in various stages of completion that have been floating about for months and years, plus projects for the house that I really want to be able to do with my own two hands (assuming Mary Jane will relinquish her claim on them sometime in the near future).
Like refinishing this actual Victorian copper clawfoot bathtub, stamped 1891!
The original ad!
And that means I will have to be here less, for a while anyway. I plan to still post regularly, just less frequently. I plan to still be available via email and on social media, but maybe not as much as I have been.
I have a few commitments for sponsored posts that you'll see, and I'm not going to be able to resist blogging the remodel every now and again, and I WILL catch up on my emails if it's the last thing I do. And you'll see some of those here.
So, here's to new opportunities and getting out of my comfort zone in 2016, but with every intention of ending up right back here spending way too much time blogging sometime in the not too distant future.
Happy New Year and Merry (still) Christmas!
*when Jack was a little guy and he was having trouble with something, he would complain that it had gotten "grambled up." Somehow, the husband and I turned that into the name of our fictional dream home: Gramblewood. As in, "That renaissance masterpiece would be lovely over the mantle at Gramblewood." It was always just an inside joke, but when our friends universally demanded that this crazy house have a name, we realized that this is it: our dream home. Our Gramblewood. Let's hope we don't gramble it up TOO badly.