Merry Christmas to me!

and to you, by the way. and Happy New Year, too! i hope you and yours had blessed holidays.

but really this post is dedicated to bathrooms. one in particular, of course. over Christmas i remodeled the bathroom with the help of a motivated Colorado friend. here, let me introduce you to my bathroom on the day i received the keys...

at first glance it's not so bad. but when you're sitting on the toilet looking around for more than one minute, you notice things. that's what i did, every day, for the last 4 months. i looked around as i was taking care of business and noticed things. old things. new things. ugly things. and hated it.

and even though i tried to dress it up temporarily with a new sink and vanity and previously owned accessories, i still hated it. it was just ugly. and boring. and needed something. ANYthing!

and here was the closet on the first day. GROSS! i hated that too, so i immediately tore it all out with mom's help. which turns out was a bit of a hasty mistake, seeing as how i NEEDED a closet to store stuff, but the boxes that stuff had lived in for the last two years continued to work just fine.

but then my friend came for Christmas. not only did she bring delicious cookies, she brought love, motivation, and encouragement. first we re-built the closet shelves (because i'd recently finished drywalling and painting the closet). then we tackled the bathroom ugliness with texture and paint and new furnishings i'd recently picked out. and voila! i now have a new old bathroom. yay! :-)

and to boot, as a house-warming present my aunt & uncle bought me a new toilet! yes, i believe the original was still in the house. it had a stamp of 1942 in the tank and was sealed with rusted bolts, so i'm fairly certain it was time to replace the old throne. this new one comes highly recommended and adorns this blog recommended as well. Toto makes a fab toilet, water conservative and all. i think from the second i push the handle to the second it stops filling is about 20 seconds total. that's pretty fast! and it really does use very little water to do it all. that'll help in the summer when i'm using extra water for the yard!

thank you, Gae. and thank you Mom. and thank you Aunt Donna & Uncle Bob. you've all blessed my Christmas and New Year's greatly. :-)