Christmas will happen even in the middle of construction chaos....

I am determined to create a Christmas card out of our home even if we are missing an entire 2 rooms in our house currently and everything is covered in drywall dust.  

Pete was wonderful in helping me put up our outside lights 4 times.. YES 4 times!!  They had to be just 'right'..a touch of color, a touch of white lights, not too much..but just enough pizzazz.  What a wonderfully patient husband I have.  The end result... MARrrrVElous, if I may say so myself (again.. minus all of the construction going on inside and out).    :-)

Our  Christmas deer that I am enthralled with this year and so it turns out, so are our neighbors.  We have gotten lots of compliments and one threatened deernap.  

"YES Virginia there is a Santa Claus..."

While I wrapped.. Pete cooked dinner on an old grill we found in our backyard.  Don't worry we used pots and aluminum foil.. we just needed the heat since.. Yep you guessed it.. no kitchen.

All ready for Christmas!! 

Oh..and right.. the turkeys.. gotta love the turkeys (in our yard as I was posting this). 
 

Work work work

Our new house was completely covered in ivy and overgrown bushes that had to GO.  You could barely see out of the front windows so first things first.. 'they have to go'

Pete working hard, "Overgrown bushes be gone..."

And...after a lot of work, cuts, scrapes and thorns they were gone...

The neighborhood turkeys seem to love our yard, they come around for a visit every few days.  Pete and I are still astonished at how 'tame' they are.  

You never know what you have until it's gone........

Our old kitchen, very small and very outdated, complete w/a door to the back patio that you couldn't open at the same time that you opened the fridge:

Our now completely gutted kitchen.   The old kitchen door mentioned above has been taken out and covered to make more room on the back wall: 

Below is the wall and built in bookshelves that used to be in our living room.  We have now had this wall completely removed and in it's place will be an island creating a very open living space.

 The windows in the dining area (to the left and back from the bookshelves) will be removed and french doors w/side lights will go in it's place creating a wall of windows and lots of light.  This will open out to our back yard patio. 

What we see now in our living room, a wall of plastic...This 'zip wall'  complete w/a huge zipper to enter/exit out of , is to keep the dust and debris out of our living room, it works well.  At night the animals who can't help but be super curious go crashing through it.  Greta has this SuperMan move that she does w/her legs fully extended out behind her as she dives through and kicks her feet hitting the plastic.  The only thing we can figure is that she likes the noise it makes.  Go figure....