First and foremost...
Merry Christmas, everybody, from my family to yours!
Second, let's get to that year in pictures by segwaying into where the tree is sitting this year.
We put up our tree in the den this year. With how everything has gone down the last few years (and especially this year) I decided early this year to redo the den so that my husband would have a library space, work out area and a spot for his work table (for electronics and stuff). Our den, since the pandemic, had become a huge mess and was just a catch all for EVERYTHING...food storage, tons of donations for the used store...you name it). I became obsessed with the Youtube channel The Masculine Home to study masculine style (which my husband and I both enjoy) interior design and after months and months of stacking up boxes and furniture to stay in a budget (my husband was worried, I could tell, as the boxes stacked up in a corner of our catch all room on what in the Heck I was doing). Finally, I got everything in to the point I could put it all together and I spent a good week on the floor putting furniture together and getting books and things put away. I do plan to eventually get the cabinet in the corner out of the den and broken down into what wood we could reuse for other projects (it falls apart more and more each year), but that is for another year.
I am really glad I got the den redone this year as we got the emergency wood stove area all set up and ready to go once the den was emptied out. We ended up having to use said wood stove this month during some horrible arctic vortex storms we had and we were very grateful to have it as it kept the house warm during some pretty trying weeks. It ain't pretty, but it is functional. We are planning on putting in a proper hearth and stone surround sometime soon (to make it look better and get it up to standards), but I am very glad we have it if we need it. And yes, we had plenty of wood to burn in it (more on that later).
So, here's a "before" shot of some of the clutter that was in the den (forgot to take a picture until I was well underway getting things emptied out and things).
And here are the "after" shots. I know the wood doesn't match on some of the shelving (the disadvantage of shopping online), but sometimes you have to deal with what you can get online because shopping in stores with a cranky teenager who sits over a foot above you is just not feasible. (and in Alaska would have cost me about five times as much...no joke...the chairs were less than 200.00 a piece from Amazon and shipped up here, while trying get to get something similar from a furniture store would have been 400.00 per chair).
Enjoy!
