I am getting my birthday present from Mommy & Daddy and Poppa & Grandma a month early! They’re all chipping in to give me my first big girl room makeover!

He said

It’s funny how quickly things can happen in the span of a week. Last weekend Danielle and I had just decided we would forgo Christmas gifts to each other in lieu of redoing our bedroom completely – something we had put on the back burner since long before Emelia was born.

Then Monday rolls around and Ikea announces a Cyber Monday deal that was almost too good to be true! Free shipping for any online order! It meant a bare minimum savings of $200 for the online order, but easily more than double that if we had gone to the Ikea to pick it up as we would have had to rent a van, paid gas, mileage and meals for the trip down and back. And before we knew it we had the entire bedroom suite that we had been wanting for at least 7 or 8 years for a considerable savings, and delivered right to our house!

So, with that out of the way and a lot more quickly than we expected, the conversation turned to curtains and paint colours. And by Wednesday we were settled on the Benjamin Moore colour Palladiun Blue for the walls and well on our way to sorting our the idea I have had for the curtains in our room for years.

By Friday night after work, at 10:30pm, Danielle and I started to put down the first two coats of the new paint after Danielle had already taped off and cut in earlier in the evening. And as I type this now, the room is all painted, and our new bedding is even in place! Tuesday during the day the new furniture arrives, and in theory by the post next week, the room should be pretty much complete. Aside from those drapes we have to get a seamstress friend of Danielle’s to make.

Tuesday this week we also have a pretty big deal going in that our friend Jenn Grant is playing a house concert – in our house! I am pretty excited about that. It is our first official one, and I hope it will not be our last either. We’re hoping to work out one with our other friend Jim Bryson… sometime in the spring maybe.

This week I treated myself to a brand new Rega RP1 turntable as a reward to myself for the new job I have taken on. It is a deck I have been looking at and wanting for a few years at least and with the cool Union Jack Flag design on it, something I will hold dearly for years to come. And Emelia approves of the turntable, so that made it all the better.

This week Emelia has a Christmas Concert for her school which she will be singing in the Junior Choir for and she has been excitedly telling me all about it, and how her choir practices are going on Wednesdays. It’s definitely one of the highlights of her week! Thankfully I am off work early that day and will be able to go to the concert — my second in the week!

It’s funny but here both Danielle and I are all pretty much completely done Christmas shopping two and a half weeks from Christmas. Which isn’t really surprising for Danielle as she is organized… but this is a real first for me! It feels like all there is left to do is to kick back and enjoy the season. Oh, and a bit more painting and decorating I guess.

She said

The last 7 days have been an absolute blur. For months John and I have been talking about red0ing our room. This year for Christmas I asked if he would like to forgo the idea of presents and just get our bedroom redone once and for all. We agreed, but once Monday’s Ikea sale was announced we knew that even stocking stuffers for each other wasn’t going to happen, we were going to do the bedroom from top to bottom.

So after months of pinning ideas and colour schemes on pintrest we are finally putting some ideas on the walls. We still have a ton to do but the painting is done, the furniture (unfortunately unassembled) arrives on Tuesday during the day and then we can focus on art and the fabric for the curtains that will dictate the scheme for the rest of the room.

A friend of mine is a talented seamstress and we have her making some curtains, she won’t be able to get ours done until the new year with the upcoming holidays but we need to order the fabric and hardware to get this all in place. So what this means is that we won’t have final after pictures until January.

With the big cyber sale the discussion had already started with family as to what to get Emelia for her birthday. Her birthday being so close to Christmas has always been a challenge, this year John and I decided that we would ask the family if they would focus on her new room. She has been asking for the better part of a year for her room to be redone. Sadly the room her daddy and I planned for months when she was 2 is no longer the scheme she wants. She honestly didn’t know what she wanted she just knew it had to be girly. But that meant many things to an almost 7 year old. So when we discussed this with Helen and Doug they offered to get her new furniture to suit her growing needs.

What does this mean? Well Emelia will have to remember in January that she has already received a big part of her birthday present in December. Grandma and Poppa got her a new bed and dresser, mommy and daddy got her a new bookshelf, paint, accessories and bedding. After a bit of debate with herself she finally has bedding she loves and soon she will have a new room to go with it all.

So needless to say it has been a crazy filled week, next week will be even busier but in the end we are finally after years of putting it off getting some redecorating done in this house. It certainly has been fun putting together and well expensive!

It was a welcome distraction for me since there has been a fair bit in the media and government legislation has threatened the livelihood of my daycare and many other providers I know. There is strong opposition to this from parents and providers.

Bill 143 has been introduced in legislation that will drastically impact home daycare and the children in their care. I won’t go into great details but I will say it will be a disaster for middle class families and providers if it passes as it is written right now. So many providers I know will have to close. I am in a very fortunate situation that as long as my enrolment for the next two years does not change drastically I am OK and can remain open at my current group and can stay open. I just hope that the powers that be have listened to the grave concerns of parents and providers over this new bill and make some major changes in key areas or there will be a shortage of care for young children in this province.

But I digress, the week was not all government and decorating!

Saturday after spending our morning painting again Emelia and I brought John to work and then after some shopping she and I were off to the Pioneer Village for our annual tradition of Breakfast with St. Nicholas. Emelia loves going to the village and even more so she loves spending time with her cousins. Sadly John had to work from 12-9 so he missed the entire day with his family. There were lots of laughs, good food and even better company. It certainly put you in the Christmas spirit.

That was the crazy week that was, next week will be even busier but that is what life is all about!