A Quick Look Back

A Quick Look Back

It’s almost impossible, on the last day of the year, not to sit and reflect on the year that was. It’s even cathartic. And 2014 was a pretty darn good year. We finished some huge improvements to our house — an all new kitchen and two bathrooms; totally changed the look of our house with a new paint job; went on an amazing European adventure; and added a new member to our family!

Since I love to make lists, I always like to take a look back at our to-do list for the year and see how we did.

1. The kitchen is DONE. And after living with the new kitchen for the better part of a year, we can only say we still LOVE it. I don’t think we’d change anything if we had it to do over. Read all about it here.

2. The master bath is DONE. Well, there’s a couple other things we need to do in there, like add a towel rack (wouldn’t THAT be nice), but again, we still love this room so much. It’s SUCH a crazy improvement from what we used to have. Read all about it here.

3. We still have some work to do in the pantry, including adding cabinets and a countertop above the washer/dryer and finishing the build-in of our pantry bookcase.

4. So. Much. Painting. Painting the kitchen/pantry/hallway took forever, especially painting al the black trim white, but it’s DONE and looks great. I still need to paint the bathroom, closet and basement doors, so that’s on my to-do list for this winter.

5. We started refinishing the back door but cold weather made us stop. We’ll need to come back to this project in the spring. We have a gorgeous old door that we want to use to replace our current back door, but it needs to be refinished… and we don’t know how to replace a door! Something to learn.

6. In the process of painting our house, the painter removed the shutters that were blocking our pantry window, so this is DONE. They weren’t original to the house and we found out they were there because the storm window was missing. We had a new storm window made, for about $150 and the pantry window is as good as new. It’s amazing to get some natural light in there now! Somehow I don’t have a picture. Boo.

7. But speaking of light, ugh, I cannot stand the horrible track lighting in our rumpus room, but that’s a bigger project that will just need to wait.

8. We were hoping to be able to finish our new office and new guest room before Christmas, but so far only the office is done(ish — as done as it can be while we work on the guest room). Getting a puppy put a huge delay on our ability to get any painting done (or anything done, period), so I’m really looking forward to the day she’s old enough for puppy daycare! You can read about our plans for the office and the guest room here and here.

9. We did some work on the attic, changing our old guest room into an exercise room (oh, um, I should probably go visit that room after all the cookies I’ve been eating lately!). We have a lot of work left, though. Honestly, I think it’s a bit ambitious to think we’ll even get to tackle the attic this year, when we really want to focus on finishing all the details in our living spaces.

10. Our house is PAINTED. And it’s BLUE. And we’re SO happy with it. You can read all about the difficult 8-week-long process here.

And while home improvements are sort of what we do around here, our year was so much more than that.

We travelled to Ottawa, Ontario in February; Palm Springs, California in May; Traverse City, Michigan in June; Dublin, Paris and Lisbon in September; and NYC in November.

And probably the biggest thing that happened this year is adding Ruby to our family! We went from a family of 4 (me, Andy, and two kitties) to a family of 5. Life with an almost-3-month-old puppy isn’t always easy, and we’re certainly still in a major adjustment period, but we love her so much … especially when she’s sleeping!! We’re also pretty sure she’s the cutest puppy ever. Sorry to every other puppy.

(I can’t do just one photo right?!)

So 2014 was a good year for us, and I think 2015 will be the best yet. We have a million plans, a million house projects, a million blog posts, a trip or two, and a million puppy cuddles on our to-do list for the new year. Stay tuned for an all-new 2015 to-do list next week.

We hope you have a wonderful New Year. Stay safe, have fun, have an extra glass of champagne, and we can’t wait to see you in 2015! Thanks for reading Burritos and Bubbly!

— Kerry