A whirlwind holiday..but not in the way you might think!

The last couple of weeks before school gets out were unusually horrific this year. The time seemed to be flying and yet dragging at the same time. I love my students but I am able to love them better after a little break. Anyway, the first week and a half was taken up by some projects we have been doing around the house.

Here are the before pictures:

Boring, I know. But hey, I can blame it on my staid Mormon upbringing and the fact that my mother never let us paint her house anything but white. However, she did not count on my bold, creative, temperamental and hot-blooded Spaniard husband! Also remember that I am NOT decoratively gifted. I finally just had to stand aside while JC created his vision. Be forewarned: he definitely did not choose white.

And here are the after pictures:

It turned much more, um, bright than I had anticipated and though I didn't love it at first, JC did, so I was happy. I have to admit though, that it is nice to come in out of the cold and the grey that is New England in winter and feel like I am in the south of Spain, so it is growing on me. We did two upstairs rooms as well, but we haven't finished putting those rooms to rights as of yet.

I also have to say that the favorite Christmas gift that we bought this year was.....(drum roll)

A vaccuum cleaner.

It sounds like a very unromantic gift, but after spending the last 18 months scraping dog hair off of the carpets by hand, we both went into ecstasies when we turned on the new vaccuum cleaner and it actually picked up all the dog hair stuck on the carpet. We couldn't be happier, and neither could our backs.