Seven windows and a third floor

Hello Butter Firkin friends! Oh how I've missed you! With only three weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year PLUS three snow days, the holiday season was kicked into high gear as a school teacher. There was hardly time to breathe, let alone shop for presents and work on your nearly 200 year old Firkin....that said, some things got done around here.

Not the most creative title, but considering how many paper cuts I incurred putting up the temporary blinds in our palatial master bedroom, my fingers felt it was appropriate...literally and figuratively. And, in ALL the blog posts since I started in May, I have not shown you THE THIRD FLOOR!!! Did you even know I had one??? Probably not, because it's not here! Well, without further ado...

The third floor...the stairs are right off of Liam's bedroom and currently it serves as a kind of playroom. The landing at the top of the stairs was very recently converted into an office space for Bill...oh, and also a gift wrapping station for Santa's favorite elf.

The base of the stairs, Liam's room to your left.

C'mon up! Don't mind the mini-split that someone at some point tried to steal and is still hanging off the wall. We will deal with that this summer.

The landing/gift wrapping station.

Bill's new workspace.

Up here we have a HUGE closet on the right and a useless bathroom on the left (pipes all froze and it wasn't worth replacing). We will gut and add space to the amazing room.

I know what you are all thinking: THE FLOORS ARE AMAZING. Yes, yes they are. We did nothing to this room.

That ugly piece of wood is to be the backing for a dart board Finn recently won. I'm a little nervous about this addition....

Once the kids are off to college I imagine this space will be an amazing guest room or office space...it's an incredible room.

On to the master bedroom. It's SO big. Bill and I have never had a room this big all to ourselves. AND, with such an enormous closet, we put our dresser in there...so there's literally nothing in our bedroom except a bed and a nightstand. One day we will have some other things...and art or pictures on the walls...but right now it's very bare. On the plus side, it's super calming, the other side of that coin is extremely bland. Frankly, though, who has time to find the box with all the art/pictures, unwrap and hang them???? Not us.

In fact, I was so strapped for time, I really didn't have time to take pictures. So I snapped the following three just minutes, really seconds before I tossed the kids in the car for our trip ton New Jersey. Apologies.

**This post has been amended - When Bill and I lived in Texas we did have a very large master bedroom...in fact...it might have been larger than this one...but the difference is that I did not paint every square inch, including the ceilings. Nor did I scrub mold, or scoop crud, or spend months making the house livable. So...after reading the first draft of this post I felt like I had to go back and amend it. We have had bigger bedrooms...but the Firkin bedroom FEELS like the biggest. And it is till the biggest house we have ever owned. And sitting here thinking about it...after marriage and childbirth...the Firkin might be the next biggest thing I've taken on.

Paper blinds...they actually give the room a spa-like lighting effect...they'll do for now.

So...there's a LOT of space here.

This hallway needs to be painted and have light fixtures installed. You might have noticed we don't have a door to our room down at the end of the hallway. Another detail we are working on.

I hate to end on a negative, but last week when one of our boys was using the sink in their bathroom water began to drip on my head in the kitchen. -_- They seem to be able to use the shower and the toilet, but the sink seems to cause leakage. Grrr. So...I see another hole appearing in my kitchen in the near future. We are just praying they won't have to break the new tiles in the bathroom to fix this problem. That would be devastating.

Drip

Drip

Drip, drip, drip...

Current situation...

I lied. I can't end on a negative note. It's just not in me. Here are some happy Firkin moments. And I am sure our first Butter Firkin Christmas will be magical. In the meantime, a magical holiday to all of you!!! Drive safe, stay warm, and cherish your loved ones.

Beginnings of a snow day...

Stockings hung by an exhausted member of the NLB swim team.

Best part of a snow day...