What a Year.

Christmas Eve marked our one year anniversary of living in our house.  You may remember that even though we bought it in August 2011, the major renovations we took on didn't allow us to move in until the holidays.  I can't believe how quickly this year went by, and even more than that, I can't believe just how much our home has changed in such a short time.

Here are pictures of our house from Christmas Eve 2011...

And here it is Christmas Eve 2012...

Quite the difference, huh?

I'm so very proud of the hard work that hubby, my parents and I have put into this house.  Every single thing we have done turned this old house into our home.  I cannot wait to see what we can do in the year to come!

Oh, and before the holiday season is truly "over"...here is a little recap of our wonderful holiday, spent with both sides of our families.  First up, we travelled to Connecticut, with my parents, to visit my sister's family and to see their new house.

Then it was time to go to the in-law's and spend time with hubby's family.

Hubby and I didn't exchange gifts this year...which isn't something super new to us.  {We didn't exchange when we were saving for our house in 2010 or when we bought our house in 2011.}  We chose to pass on the holiday gifts, and do other things....like, say make an investment in lots of Christmas lights so hubby could go crazy outside....buy three extremely discounted rugs that we need for our house...and scoop up an awesome deal on Craigslist'ed campaign dressers.  We even decided to go nuts and get our lawn aerated and over-seeded this past fall.  Doing these "house things" makes us extremely happy, so we are okay knowing that since we are tight on money, Christmas gifts may have to wait until another year.  Heck, just creating our cozy home together is a gift in itself.  {Way cheesy, but 100% true.}

But we did manage to buy a couple gifts for some family members.  My favorites happened to be these UH-MAZING wood pieces that we got for our niece and nephews from the Smiling Tree Toys shop on Etsy.  Their handmade, organic stuff is totally worth checking out.  They even managed to rush my order and get it to me in time for our trip up to CT before Christmas.  In short, they rock!

I hope you all have a wonderful NYE...and a BIG, HUGE THANK YOU to each and every one of you for taking the time out of your day to keep in touch with me and hubby and our home.  It means the world to me, and I appreciate it more than you know!

I'll see you in 2013! :)