Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday... we didn't do any of the traditional Christmas shopping this year. I don't think either one of us has ever shopped on a Black Friday. Small business Saturday was a new thing this year, but that sounds more appealing to me than Black Friday. We didn't do any Christmas shopping this year at all. The house will be our Christmas present to each other. We may not be in it by Christmas day, but the house is a gift we've been waiting for years to have completed. We're still looking for some few odd pieces of furniture but just haven't found what we want and can afford yet. We still need a dining room table & chairs with maybe a matching china cabinet, plus we'd like one of those portable kitchen islands with a couple of bar stools for it. Then it would be nice to have a recliner for Drone too. At some point in time, I would also love to have a rocking chair. Other than hanging up a few Christmas cards received, we have done no decorating. No tree, no lights, no doo-dads. That itself seems kind of strange. We haven't sent out any Christmas cards, either.
He is putting a lot of work and time in, but he does that on an every-day basis -- Not just in working on the house, but cutting firewood, splitting it, and then stacking it for the mobile home and the house both this year. Then there are the farm chores, which are also a daily thing. We did get the meat saw blades, so we'll be butchering 3 fat hogs pretty soon. It'll be nice to know the freezer is full of meat and also great to have them off of the feed bill. We still have 3 of the little 13-week-old feeder pigs, with 2 advertised for sale and one left to keep for our freezer for next year.
The drywall is at the point of only a little hand-sanding left, which he figures to have done today. Then he'll be waiting on a paper/tape machine then, which should be delivered any time now, and then he'll be prepping the windows, etc., for texture and paint. I haven't been able to spend a lot of time in there due to the drywall dust, but it's looking great! Almost every time I go in there, I walk through every room. He asked me one day why I did that, when he was working in certain spots and not in every room every day. I told him I was picturing the rooms finished and where the furniture will go, where pictures and wall hangings will go. I picture where I will organize things in the pantry, in the wall of cabinets that will be there in the bathroom, all the cabinets in the kitchen to organize dishes & gadgets, etc. I'll be able to organize the canned goods by contents & dates when we move everything over to the new pantry. Just looking, planning, and dreaming.
