My Winter To-Do-List… OMG winter might not be long enough!

My Winter To-Do-List just keeps getting longer lol. There is so much I’m planning to do in my home and I am SO excited to get started! The first one is the glaring one that has been staring at me ALL summer. I really need to finally tackle my workshop and get it complete. I spent literally this entire summer looking for that one tool I could never find.

Yesterday was the one year anniversary of my divorce and I spent it exactly as I should have: DOING WHATEVER THE HELL I WANTED!

It included dancing in my kitchen, listening to my favorite music way too loud and replying back to “happy divorce anniversary!!” messages from my friends and family with lots of fireworks GIFs.

The very best part of my day was spent with my mom and aunt with my mom’s tradition of making Christmas goodies. We pick our favorites and settle in baking together.

It entirely exemplifies exactly why I love the holidays. And it was the perfect thing to do as it was exactly what my ex would have been livid at me for doing.

And today I spent working on my house.

I worked on the one room that would never have existed as it is today before my divorce. One of a million things that have come around to me with so much joy sometimes I just have to sit down and breathe it in.

(I have these moments now where time seems to just stop so I can hear and feel the click of a puzzle piece falling into place. As though everything is becoming right now when before it was a terrible mess.)

It seems to me that divorce should be a sad thing and it seems awful to celebrate it though all I wanted to do that day was throw confetti and pop open a bottle of champagne.

In fact that’s kinda how I’ve felt for the last 12 months most of the time!

Once I got far enough away (from the relationship) after throwing him out, every single day just got better. They say you can’t see the elephant in the room and I think situations like mine are examples of that.

I simply had no idea the extent of it, truly.

I had some inkling though, at least enough to save myself. But even today, as I tackled my workshop with my heart and my hands. Every step I took, the entire scope of it all down to the very millimeter of what was making me so happy, not a single inch of it would have been allowed in my life before.

It is the biggest of things.

And I look back now at that elephant still just in aw that I never noticed the majority of him before and that I let him stay and stink up the place for as long as I did.

So, here we are gals, cheers to things falling into place!

And here is the state my workshop was in yesterday before I started work on it, OMG!

Horrifying!

To be fair to myself though this is northern Minnesota and when its nice outside any inside work just goes on the back burner. And then there are the holidays and then FINALLY my inside work can start for real!

You can kinda see my modem sitting in the closet and plugged in outside of the closet… Yeah so… that happened. I have brand new super fast internet which is totally amazing but when I ran the electrical for this house I had not planned on it being here lol.

So, first thing is first, I need to put an outlet in my closet and build a little spot just for my modem where it can be safe from workshop stuff.

From there its time to truly get on my workshop design, tool placement, wall board plans etc. I am SO DONE looking through boxes for a screw driver.

Then its time to tackle my laundry room!

The other night I just decided that I hated my laundry room. It turns out that actually I’ve hated it for a long while now. But I guess I just hadn’t come up yet with an idea on how to make it better.

Is it functional? Sure.

Is it utilizing the space to the best of its ability? Certainly not!

My laundry room is technically a closet albeit a really big one at 4×8 feet. Big enough in fact that I want to move my washer and dryer combo unit so it faces into the room and is on one of the outside walls.

Besides that it really needs a good cleaning, some trim and a coat of paint not just on the walls but on the floors too! This is gonna be one of those little makeovers that I think is going to be very dramatic!

Next I’ll be moving on to my entryway.

Because of smoke and ash from my wood stove my walls and ceilings are totally DISGUSTING.

To be fair it wasn’t JUST the wood smoke that was at work here it was also my decision to use matte paint because I hate gloss. Well I’m gonna learn to love gloss!

Regardless though, even high gloss paint would still look awful after that wood stove.

It isn’t actually a HUGE job, its my office/entry and dining room, my kitchen and my living room. I plan on approaching this one with a one room at a time attitude and just putter away at it.

After I finish my laundry room I’m starting with my entryway with a top to bottom cleaning, some TLC to my floors and a new coat of paint on the entire space.

(For the first time I’m even going to put the ceiling medallion above my dining room chandelier that I’ve had for over four years!)

Then I’m excited to tackle my kitchen!

When I told you guys about my pellet stove install I was ecstatic because it went in a totally different spot than my wood stove so now I can revamp my kitchen!

I’m going to be making the closet under my stairs bigger and I’m also going to move the door which is now by my cook stove.

This means I’ll be adding five more feet of wall/storage space in my kitchen and it also means I’ll have more storage for pellets under my staircase. And, thank goodness, because I have bags of pellets coming out of my ears lol.

Moving on from there is my big closet in the hall by my workshop which is basically empty! My aunt gave me an ancient little wrought Iron bed this summer and my brain started turning.

Don’t we all deserve a book nook/napping spot?

I’m not taking the walls out totally because I am just not messing with the ceiling. Instead, I’m leaving them from door height up and I’m going to mount a DIY curtain rod that runs all the way along on the inside.

The curtains will be tied back the majority of the time but they can be pulled to create privacy if I have so many guests I need another bed. But, mostly, its just going to be my awesome napping day bed area!

I plan on painting the two “inside” walls a darker color and really distinguishing it as its own tiny, cozy room.

The closet light will need to be moved so I’m going to put it in a place close to the bed and use a fixture that can be turned on and off at the light.

My Indoor turned Outdoor furniture project left me with just AWESOME futon-like-cushions that will work great for my day bed.

I will need to recover them and I really don’t sew so we’ll see what I come up with lol

The painting of my main floor actually got me thinking about another project I’m excited about.

I’m going to be painting the fake rock on my chimney because I hate it beyond all reason!

That will move me in to painting out my living room and also giving my floors some TLC in there too.

PHEW! I never thought I would say this but winter might not be long enough lol!

(No – I don’t mean that at all really. Winter started here with our first snow in September so we’ve already seen quite enough winter thank you very much!)

In all honestly I do not expect to get all of this done this winter, in fact about half of these projects will probably land on the back burner for NEXT winter.

I still have a lot of projects I’m planning outside that I’m really excited about but that To-Do list can wait until April!