Renovation New Year

Happy New Year, everyone!

At least we are hoping for one. I will know more later in the month.

What does one do on New Year's Eve with no television, way too cold to go anywhere, and we are too tired anyway? Well, we do what any folks who spend way too much time watching "Renovation Addicts" on HGTV would do, we celebrate in our "reno" (boy, am I getting to hate that "word")

Cheryl and I had a nice New Year's Eve dinner at the HyVee grocery store two miles from the house (everything else near here was closed), then settled in for the evening. Our side window looks out to our neighbor's house where they have a big-screen TV on a patio room, and we thought we would camp out and in our dining room and watch the ball drop vicariously through their window, but they went to bed early, and missed the whole thing.

So, being a good geek, I leaped into action, and fired up my Mac, and found the live stream from Times Square in NYC. We cracked open a bottle of cider (using a screwdriver, of course, since all we have are tools in this place. Then I had to scramble to find something to use as glasses. Fortunately, I had a couple of empty A&W Cream Soda bottles, that with a little razor blade work (dangerous), we had glasses.

So we celebrated the New Year in this style:

Back to Work

This morning, we are back to work on the house. We are trying to get more work done on the kitchen cabinets, since the counter tops and appliances will be delivered in a couple of weeks! Today, Cheryl's son, Scott, and "the grandkid" aka "Mr. Colin" are here to work/play (depending on which one you are talking about).

Here is our dining room in it's current state:

And our cool new fireplace. Scott put that mantle together from scratch! Pretty nice job: