Saturday, December 23, 2006

Christmas is Coming

I knew that the end of the year would not be easy. I had scheduled time to have almost all of my wood floors refinished the week before Thanksgiving with the hope of celebrating Thanksgiving in my home as we have done almost every year since we moved here.

In a time management class, I learned that to estimate the amount of time it takes to complete a project, one should add half of the original estimated time to get a realistic figure. I should have doubled the amount of time for this project!!!!!

My parents were on a cruise in the Bahamas and we stayed in their home while the floors were being done. It rained the entire week which greatly lengthened the amount of time it took for the floors to dry between coats. On Sunday, when my parents returned, we could not yet move in. To top it all off, my mother in law was in the hospital before Halloween and was soon being moved to a Rehab for recovery.

My brother was due to arrive at my Mom's on Wednesday night and would stay until the following week. So, being ever so careful, we moved some of the furniture in on Tuesday but could not set up everything until after Thanksgiving. So much for Thanksgiving dinner at my house unless we all walked barefoot and sat on the floor to eat.... Not to mention the challenge of trying to cook in a kitchen that had my dining set and half of my living room set piled in.

The floors are beautiful!!!! In fact, the transformation was so stunning, it brought tears to my eyes when I first saw it. My husband decided he wanted to take the one large bedroom that was refinished for our own room. This led to a whole new project including stripping wallpaper, putting up crown rail, replacing windows, the porch door and the closet door and of course, painting. This room had been our office and needed a LOT of work to transform it into a bedroom.

Finally, several weeks later, we were able to move all of the bedroom furniture in two weeks before Christmas. Between spending as much time as I could with my brother and his family and trying to re-organize my home, I was unable to even think about Christmas.

Thank God that I managed to schedule vacation time the week before Christmas! The week is almost over already and still so much to do! If anyone finds a few extra minutes, please float them my way!!!! I sure can use them!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!