This year, it was our major outdoor renovation that we scrambled to finish and we managed to get everything done by December 16 – plenty of time before Christmas!

With much of the mess outside and mostly wrapped up by Christmas, we were left with plenty of time to fill our weekends with our usual Christmas traditions: visiting Santa, visiting a Christmas tree farm and spending time with friends.

We couldn’t be without a little bit of drama, so we made sure to fit in one last renovation project before the holidays. On December 16 our contractor came and installed 3 of our 5 remaining windows. With Alex’s mom visiting on the 20th (and sleeping in one of the new window rooms), it was a mad dash to get everything done and clean before she arrived.

We had to put in her in the basement for two nights while I finished priming and sanding the walls, but at least it was clean and all of the windows were in. Once everything was painted, it looked great (minus the giant hole in one of our new windows thanks to a mishap during installation).

We still have one more window to be installed after the holidays, but at least we had 3 new windows for Christmas!

Now that we’ve been in kid mode for 5 years, we’ve started to develop some Christmas habits – or traditions – that everyone looks forward to.

Our Christmas season usually starts with a visit with Santa, in hopes of getting a decent picture of all 5 of us to use for our Christmas cards. Over the past couple of years, mall Santa booths have changed from real photographers to basically an iPad taking a photo, so the quality of the photos have really gone down and are almost unusable. We happened to be visiting a photographer friend right after our Santa visit, so he took a group shot for us that we ended up using for our Christmas card.

Our next Christmas endeavor is picking out the perfect Christmas tree. We’ve recently upped our tree game and go to a Christmas tree farm to either cut or pick the perfect tree.

We also cracked out the always popular advent calendars.

It’s also becoming a Christmas tradition – three years in a row now – where our microwave oven blows a fuse (or two) right before everything shuts down for the holidays.

Because we weren’t bogged down in construction projects, we were able to fit in a couple of fun Christmas-y things on the weekend, including a visit to Nathan Phillips Square and a new miniature village called Little Canada (which is really a hidden gem!). We also managed to get an impromptu visit with Santa.

This year – for the first time – we made gingerbread houses. It was a big hit with the kids!

On Christmas eve-eve we took another kick at the Santa photo can and tried to get a better photo with Santa at Yorkdale. But no dice. There was also a major snowstorm, so driving was a bit dicey but it almost meant very few people were out and about.

It also seems to be a tradition now that our Christmas plans get cancelled. Last year it was because we all got Covid and this year was because of a major snowstorm. We didn’t make it to Christmas eve in Port Hope, Alex’s mom’s train into Toronto was cancelled. So once again, we were alone on Christmas. But the kids had a great time and we got through it with new toys and a lot of patience.

To finish off the Christmas season, we had a small New Year’s Eve party at our house with some friends, bringing in the “new year” at around 8pm.

This year I ended my maternity leave with the twins, going back to work and switching jobs early in the new year. Alex was on paternity leave for most of the year and then also switched jobs. We made our lives even harder by deciding not to send the twins to daycare at the end of Alex’s leave because Covid19 was still rampant and the cost of two toddlers in daycare was astronomical. Working from home, flexible working hours and long toddler naps) allowed us to take shifts and still manage – although barely. At the end of the summer, we had had enough so everyone was in daycare full time and we could have a break from the kids during the workday.

We also made considerable progress on our basement renovation over the last year. I finished the first half of our family room, which included built-in cabinets; 99% of our basement bathroom is now done, and the other half of the family room, including a wall feature and custom cabinet for our electronics, is all set up.

Like every Christmas, the latest project – our TV wall – was finished just a few days before Christmas.

We had semi-social plans for Christmas, including a trip to Port Hope and a small family gathering for Christmas. But as luck would have it, all 5 of us got Covid19 on December 24. We had to cancel all of our plans and were house-bound for 10 days.

Since we were house-bound anyways, we decided to potty train the twins. Why not just add to the utter hell of being stuck inside with 3 small children? Our couch was also still several weeks from being delivered, so with a completely empty but clean basement, it made the most sense to do it now.

It was a pretty rough couple of weeks, followed by an extra week of hell when daycares and schools stayed closed to help reduced the spread of Covid19. By the time January came around, we were exhausted, frustrated and completely depleted.

But, we still managed to smile for a couple of Christmas photos to make it all look like a good time. Except for Sam. Sam’s never having a good time.

To help with all the stress from living through a pandemic, having infant twins, not being able to rely on family or daycares staying open, I’ve focused on renovating.

With so many things out of my control this year, being able to frame and drywall the basement has been very rewarding and feels like progress when the rest of the world is standing still. It’s been a break from daily monotony with the kids and given me a sense of purpose when I otherwise feel stuck.

When we started the year, the basement was still just a big storage area of all the things we don’t have a spot for or haven’t sorted through.

But over the year, I built a spare bedroom, finally got our custom storage installed under the stairs, and started on the family room area.

Like all Christmases since we moved in, the weeks leading up were dust-filled and relentless, but I finally managed to get the first half of the basement family room drywalled, sanded, primed and painted. It felt good to clean all the drywall dust throughout the house and set myself up for my next project: some built-in custom cabinets in the family room.

Christmas was quite different this year. For the most part, we celebrated alone with only a couple of outdoor, distanced visits.

At least 2020 is now over and things can only go up from here.

First, we finished our kitchen renovation!! After months and months of never ending delays and working like crazy (while pregnant) to get it done, we did! And it’s beautiful!

But even before that, we had a major family event: the birth of our second and third sons, Sam and Elliott (no, not named after America’s cowboy). After more than a week in NICU, we brought these brand new babies home to enjoy a mostly construction-free zone.

Even though life was an absolutely sh*t show, I still wanted it to feel like Christmas, so I sent Adam and Alex out to find a tree (mostly because we don’t actually have a vehicle that can hold all 5 of us).

Since my baby shower was cancelled (because I had the twins 5 weeks early), we decided to have a Meet-the-New-Babies and Come-See-Our-Beautiful-New-Kitchen party. Friends and family came and enjoyed meeting the new babies.

We even ventured out to see Santa – and took the bus (again, no car fit us)!!

We still managed to travel to Port Hope on Christmas Eve, and even hosted Christmas dinner at our house on Boxing Day for our family. You know, just because we’re masochists.

With our dining room walls gone, we had a few last minute projects to complete before Christmas. Mainly finishing the drywall and painting the living room, and patching the floor so our Christmas guests wouldn’t trip.

We now have a very open concept living and dining room!

The start of Christmas for us is getting our Christmas tree. This year we decided to get it at Ikea. They have a decent deal (buy a tree for $25, get a $25 coupon when you spend $100+ in January) and we went early enough that the selection wasn’t bad.

The tree itself was a bit thin, but for the price it was more than fine!

For the first time, we took a picture with Santa. Adam wasn’t a huge fan but we managed to get one decent photo of the 3 of us.

This year we hosted Christmas at our house.

We then headed to Montreal for a few days!

We returned to Toronto for New Years Eve and even managed to go out this year!

We got back from our epic parental leave trip just a few days before Christmas, but still wanted to celebrate Christmas in our usual way.

The day after we got back was a little rough. We fought through the jet lag by doing a grocery store run to restock our fridge for the next few days until we left for Montreal. The struggle was real. Adam slept through most of the drama, but Alex and I really struggled.

We were super ambitious and managed to get a Christmas tree. There weren’t many options left, but we managed to find one at Home Depot that wasn’t too Charlie Brown-ish. The best part was when it started to slide off the roof of the car and we had to stop mid-way home to reattach it to the car.

We even managed to get in some baby Christmas photos in Adam’s super adorable reindeer sweater (from Vietnam, no less!)

Then we were off to freezing cold Montreal for a few days.

Unfortunately our house was broken into on Christmas night, which put a damper on our trip. We got a notification from our Nest camera at around 9:30pm on Christmas night that there was someone in Adam’s room. The police eventually came (guns drawn) and a friend stopped by to see what damage had been done. There wasn’t much stolen (maybe $500 worth), but the violation of having someone in our house – especially when we were so far away – was very unsettling. The most annoying thing that was stolen was my breast pump! The first thing we bought on boxing day was two more cameras for the exterior of the house and we paid for the play-back subscription.

Aside from our break-in drama, the visit was nice and we spent a lot of time with family. Everyone was excited to see Adam.

We had another family visit when we returned from Montreal, but I think Adam was familied out.

We didn’t have our own family Christmas until all of the other Christmas celebrations were over. Luckily our gifts weren’t stolen!

Last year, we were living like this:

Just a few weeks ago, we were living like this:

Over the past year, we’ve renovated our second floor, dug down our basement and completely changed our heating system. The last couple of months have been particularly challenging since all of the projects finished within a week or so of each other – but all in time for Christmas!

Now we’re living in a more finished version of the house than we’ve ever had before!

We celebrated our construction milestones by decorating for Christmas!

We didn’t add any lights outside this year, but at least you can see our Christmas tree through the window.

But the biggest change of all doesn’t even include the crazy house alterations we’ve made. Alex and I will be adding a third member to our house in the Spring!

Upstairs was a different story, however. We had a decent set-up in the back bedroom, but we were still surrounded by that awful yellow and burgundy paint.

We’re doing the upstairs renovation in phases since we need somewhere relatively clean to sleep at night to keep our sanity. We’ve been working on the front two bedrooms and they now have fresh plywood subfloors, so we’ve moved out of the back bedroom and into the front room while we rip apart the back room. Then we’ll move around again when it’s time to install the new hardwood flooring. So all of that is in the works and the final blog posts will be up as soon as we’re done.

We are also in the middle of hiring an architect to design and manage the construction of our new kitchen (and more, if we decide to let the scope creep a bit). The kitchen really takes away from how beautiful the rest of our downstairs is.

Just like last year, we got a beautiful Christmas tree! 

We even tree-pooled with my dad:

Our outdoor decorations are improving considerably. I was hoping the nasty green trim would be gone, but no such luck. With so much to fix inside, we barely managed to rake our leaves this year. We bought some greens from Home Depot and made a garland out of it.

Now for a less happy note.

Although I try to keep this blog specifically about our renovation, I can’t help but mention something major that occurred this Christmas. On December 20, my mother passed away unexpectedly.

RIP, mom.

Our first bit of festive cheer began with getting our Christmas tree. We always attempt to buy one from a local tree lot, but trees over 8′ are always so expensive. So every year we reluctantly go to Home Depot where supply is high and costs are relatively low. I think this year I chose the heaviest tree in the lot.

We weren’t quite ready to set up the tree, but we needed it for this year’s holiday photo.

Our photo shoot took about an hour, but we finally got a shot that wasn’t blurry or off-centre. I’m sure our neighbours enjoyed watching us run back and forth between the tree and the camera to make adjustments. Perhaps next year we’ll recruit a photographer to help.

The final product looked like this:

But without snow or furniture, it still didn’t quite feel like Christmas. Then we had the first real snow storm of the season and things were feeling wintery…

Eventually our living room was tree ready, so we dragged it inside and set it up. It was a heavy tree, so getting it inside and in its stand was a bit of an ordeal. It was also considerably lopsided.

We managed to smush the fat side against the wall and stand it up straight thanks to some awkward tree adjustments.

I think this might be the best tree we’ve ever had.

I added a few more subtle decorations, like a beer bottle filled with greens.

Our efforts outdoors were less magical. We had two strands of lights and no plan for how to attach them to the house so I made a wreath and called it a day. 

Next year we’ll do better… and perhaps the awful green trim and matching mailbox will be gone…