I feel like this renovation has been such a long time coming. As I wrote last week in this post, since we converted our spare room to be Ernie’s nursery, our dining room had very much become the dumping ground of the house. It was trying to be a dining room, office, craft room and storage all at once, and frankly it wasn’t doing any of those things particularly well. It was always a mess and Darcie had also decided to add to the ambience of the room and do some of her own artwork on the walls. We decided enough was enough and it became our next project.

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This year was the first year that we decided to take Darcie to a grotto to see Santa Claus. She’s seen him in passing before and once at a Christmas party when she was 6 months old, but we’ve never done the whole ‘grotto thing’  before. At two and a half years old and with a perfect understanding of Christmas and Santa, we decided it was time. I say ‘we’, but Dan is basically Scrooge so really it was just me that made that decision. And I have to say, I was excited! Probably more excited than some of the children going to see him themselves. Because I actually can’t remember ever going to a grotto when I was younger. Santa wasn’t a big part of my childhood, and while I definitely don’t begrudge my parents for that, it does make me even more excited to experience it all with my own children. (more…)