HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!  I hope everyone had a nice and safe New Years.  Our New Year's Eve night was pretty uneventful.  Hylari was sitting next to me on the couch playing on her laptop and my hubby was playing around on his PC while I watched a marathon of John and Kate + 8.  If you have never watched it before it is kind of cute.  I had never seen an episode before so I pretty much got the whole series in by watching the marathon.  It is about a couple who had trouble getting pregnant so they did IVF and had twins.  The wife decided she wanted to have a 3rd child so they did IVF again and they had 6 the second time!  All of their kids are so cute.  I don't know how they do it though!  At about 11:57 I flipped the channel so that we could watch the ball drop and bring in the New Year.  I was kind of disturbed by watching the Dick Clark show with him being on there in his current condition.  Don't get me wrong....I am glad he is alive and well enough to do the show but it is very different watching him now as opposed to before his stroke.  Instead of feeling happy about the new year you feel sad for him. 

A new year means I have a full bank of vacation and sick time.  Boy does that feel good!! I have 408 hours of vacation and 40 hours of sick time just begging for me to pick it apart.  However, I do not want to waste it.  I want to make sure I have plenty of time to do the things I want to this year.  By law, since we are a financial institution, we are required to take 5 consecutive days but can use the rest however we please.  Now that Hylari is in middle school I do not need to take so many days off for school related events like Halloween and Christmas parties, etc.  Instead I can take days off when she is out of school so that we can spend them together.  Anyway...it is nice to know the time is there because I was plum out of time after I took off the day before and after Christmas.  However, it may be hard using time here at the start of the year.  Our main technical guy in our department is leaving January 10 and our boss is going on to Switzerland for two weeks around the end of the month.  That leaves only me and one other associate, who is not that great of a worker.  I fear the time my boss is gone because it will be expected of me to do my job, plus hers, plus the co worker that is leaving's and pick of the slack of our slacker employee.  I hope they get someone hired fast.  Unfortunately if it goes on for too long without us hiring someone our executives will say "they are doing so well without that fourth associate so lets save money and not hire anyone".  I already told my husband if they end up going that route I will look for another job.  I can't do it all.....and our company is known to have their employees take on other jobs after other associates quit and they do not give you any type of a raise for it.  Not going to happen with this gal!

I made it my goal to be able to come back and report that I removed a total of 75-85% of the wallpaper from my bathroom.  But then I decided to blow you all away........yes I have 100% of the wallpaper removed!!!!!!!  Yeah me!!!!  Once I got going I was on a roll.  I did have to stop once and go buy another bottle of Dif.  Here are a few pictures although they are not that good:

The white "specs" on the wall are where some paint chipped off.  I am sure that paint was originally put up somewhere in the late 60's to early 70's! The light fixtures will eventually be changed out as well as the doors are being swapped out with 6 panel white doors.  You can see my paint samples above the light switch.  Although you cannot see it good in this picture I am thinking about going with the second one from the top.

The tile you see on the wall outside of the shower will be taken down and white wainscoting will be installed.  The wall across from the vanity has tile half way up the wall which will also be taken down and wainscoting put up.  I am thinking about painting the wall cabinet and the vanity cabinet white. 

The sliding shower doors will come off and an insert will be installed in the shower/tub area. We are highly considering taking the window out and filling it in with those glass cube things.  What were they thinking putting windows in the showers back then???  It is incredibly hard to keep the window, seal, and blinds clean.  I cannot stand it!

Here are the stars of the show.  I would have never got all that wallpaper down without these babies!

In this wallpaper experience I do one thing for sure.  When we go to buy our next house and we buy a house that had a previous owner it better not have one stitch of wallpaper on the wall or I don't want it.  Uuuuuuuugh! 

After I finished with removing the last strip I had to give the bathroom a good bath.  I had Dif and little pieces of paper everywhere!!

So, I plan on Kilz'ing these walls on Thursday night and then will take a short break from the bathroom.  One...because I want to make 100% I want to go with the dark grey color or perhaps another color may inspire me.  I painted my living room 3 times before I was happy with the color so who knows I may end up doing the same thing in the bathroom.  Two....I am going to work on laying the new vinyl tiles in the kitchen on Saturday. 

Here are the samples I picked up from the hardware stores:

The first sample is the first one I picked up that I said I was not 100% happy with but could live with it if need be.  I really liked the design in the last one but the color is way too dark.  Ewwww! And you can see the ugly floor I have had to live with for the past several years.  It is like a teal, green, and blue marble.  Yucky! Yucky!

And the winner is....

My husband and I decided to go with this white swirly marble look.  Hylari liked the all white one the best.  And the dog....we held on to her and then arranged the samples and told her to go pick the best one.  Two out of two she picked the one that we ended up getting! We went and picked them up yesterday from Lowe's since they need to acclimate to the room temperature for at least 48 hours before installation.  I am so grateful to my husband because this project was NOT in our remodeling budget at all.  He gave me the money that was in the budget for some landscaping so that I could purchase the tiles.  Thank you! Thank you!

Today is the last day our kids have off for Christmas break.  I think it is kind of silly to have them go back to school on a Thursday.....why not give them the whole week off?  I know Hylari has sure enjoyed sleeping in.  I am glad she got the break from school. 

Have a great day!