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January – a beautiful fresh new start. And what a wonderful start to 2023 we’ve had!
January is the month of birthdays for our family! There are birthdays every week leading up to the end of the month and Braelynn’s birthday! Our sweet girl turned EIGHT this month (and Leander singing her ‘Happy Birthday’ when they first woke up that morning makes me melt into a puddle!)
We also kicked the year off running with a big house project! We decided to (finally) renovate our dining room! I guess, after our house got a new roof and new siding in December, we just felt like we were on a roll and we decided to keep that momentum going by completely tearing apart our dining room.
Over the course of the month, we ripped out the walls (all 4 layers), pulled down the ceiling, ripped out the fireplace (and found a few VERY old postcards), pulled up the floor, and removed the “built-in” china cupboard (and found a VERY old blender!) We also found a ton of space behind that built-in china cupboard – which completely changed our plans for the room (more on that in a minute).
After gutting the entire room, we put up new insulation, ran some new electric wires, (and with the help of Derrick’s Dad) put up new drywall, installed a new drop ceiling and new light fixture, laid our new laminate flooring, and got the entire room spackled.
AND – that’s where the room currently stands! But not for long! Within the next few days we’ll be finishing the spackling, putting up trim, installing the baseboards, and creating my brand new office space (it will live in that “nook” we “discovered” behind the china cupboard)! So, lots of very exciting things to come with that project!
Braelynn’s birthday party is not included in this video – it’s separate and you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/TLuNUvCCQq8
Moments of note this month:
(0:30) Leander confesses that there is just one girl he loves (and kisses) – spoiler alert, it’s NOT Mommy!
(1:27) Happy Birthday to my Dad!
(1:52) Derrick begins to gut the dining room
(3:10) We found these old postcards behind the fireplace
(3:27) Leander asks Mommy to marry him
(3:46) Happy Birthday to my sister, Amy!
(6:20) Our first “big” snow of the year (it was truly only like 1.5″)
(7:02) Happy Birthday to Braelynn!
(9:17) Since our dining room has been in limbo all month, everything from our dining room has been in our living room – including our table! It’s been INTERESTING to say the least.
Just in case you’ve missed what I’m doing – I decided that I wanted to create a curated “home video” for our family every month (remember those old “home movies” our families used to create? with the giant video recorders that an entire VHS tape fit in?) Those videos were fantastic, but if you’ve ever sat down to watch one (does anyone even own a VHS player anymore?) you very quickly realize that you do a lot of “fast-forwarding”.
So, my goal, is to take all the little videos I take of our family over the course of a month & create a short (my goal is to be around 10 minutes) video of my favorite snippets. I am SO excited to finally have a dedicated place to chronicle my family videos & keep them safe & accessible.
Enjoy a little peek into what our January looked like!
PS: don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE to my YouTube channel while you’re at it!
