Christmas and home improvements - celebrations abound!

I've been very delinquent in blogging and catching up with people in general these past few weeks. As there was for many I'm sure, there's been a lot going on including multiple Christmas celebrations. Our first stop was a quick visit in Logansport with my mom and Grandma Murphy and then we headed up to the farm for celebrations with Dad and Zander and the rest of the Deetz clan. We had a great time baking, watching lifetime movies, eating way too many sweets and working on Ryan's car (well, that part was more necessity, but I think Dad and Ryan enjoyed it too.) Unfortunately Ryan and I came home feeling... well, bloated from all the food we consumed over the trip. But we've been behaving much better since we've been home and I think we're both feeling a lot better!

Ryan with the pups in their Christmas pajamas at home before we left.

Zander opening up some gloves. We just don't get many pictures of Zander so I had to throw it in there!

Dad and Ryan working on the Jetta.

When we got home we got to celebrate Christmas #3 with Carl, Kathleen, Lily and William which was, as always, fun and entertaining. Ryan had to go back to work, but I was lucky enough to have last week off as well, so I got to spend some time working on some home improvement projects as well as spending some quality time with my niece and nephew.

Lily really tearing into her presents!

This is sweet William all bundled up and smiling in his sleep.

My big home project last week was venetian plastering our downstairs bathroom. This was a bit more of a task than I really understood when starting it and not really at all what I expected. I'm not sure why, but for some reason I thought it was going to be more like painting, but really it was more like plastering. Go figure. :-) After the first coat I was feeling pretty confident that I had this down, but after waiting for it to dry and doing the second coat, I realized I had no idea. I could not figure out how to make a "thin layer" cover all the white spots that the first coat had left behind. After some consultation with Ryan, I opted to put a third coat on and now it's looking much more like it's supposed to (I think.) Unfortunately, I think I caked the plaster on a bit too thick in a few areas so there are a few places that the plaster has actually cracked a little. Ryan says he likes the look it creates, so I think we're going to leave it as is for the moment and know that I can always sand down and re-do those sections later if we want. I'm actually pretty proud of the results. We'll see how it holds up.

After the second coat. Not looking so hot.

It's hard to see, but this is looking much better after the third coat.

This is an up-close shot of the wall texture.

Now this coming weekend, Ryan's parents are coming to town and we're going to enlist their help in re-tiling the bathroom floor and replacing the toilet. Doesn't that sound like fun??? I'm just excited to have it all underway and close to complete. It will be nice to have a functional (and not gross) bathroom downstairs.

And as we're finishing up this project, we're doing some groundwork for the next which is putting in two new sections of fence in the backyard. Though for this one we plan to hire it done and will probably not have much involvement. I can hardly wait! I think once it's done, I'll be much more willing to do some landscaping back there. Let's hope anyway - it needs some help!