Halloween and Rentals

Well, the same thing happened this Halloween, as last years - we were preparing a rental house and didn't have much time to do anything fun for the kids. Have I mentioned how great these kids are? Last year we were very busy at Hugo house, and they didn't dress up - but did snag a few candies from Lauren (Aunt & neighbour!). This year they really wanted to dress up, so here we have...

A flag football player, Huckleberry Finn - the cat, not the literary character:-), and Batman

Practicing some cat makeup!

We didn't have a ton of time to fix up a few things - from Thurs night to Sat noon. So Thursday night, the kids slept at Aunties, while we scraped, sanded and re-finished the hardwood floors in the entire house, and fixed (put down new "floor boards") in the back porch area.

Cute little house! It's a two bedroom, but laid out very efficiently

From the front door - you have livingroom, dining room, and then into the kitchen. Bedrooms and bathrooms are off the dining room to the left

Friday afternoon and evening was PAINTING time! We set to work painting pretty much everything. All trim and walls needed to be washed, and then painted. It's been 3 years since it's been done, so it needed it. The walls throughout the entire house are Behr's "Ostrich" - it looks pure white on the chip, until you compare it to pure white (trim is Behr's untinted plain white). Brian had a few other little chores to do - switching out light fixtures, etc, but overall the most time consuming thing was the painting.

The kids played so nicely, in their costumes, waiting for us to finish our work. Around 7pm we decided to go have fun and leave the remainder of the work for the morning. We decided to go to a pizza restaurant, and then to a ice cream place (Cold Stone), and let them build their own ice creams! They have never been there/done this before, so we thought it would be a fun treat!

The bathroom - why did they always put windows in the showers?!? There is a shower curtain needed on both sides, to keep water off the window and molding. (The shiny look is the shower curtain that covers the window).

On our way to the pizza place, we got a call from a friend - "lots of candy, little party, come over" - so we decided (gave the kids options) to get pizza to-go, and go to party instead of ice cream place. We show up at friends house. No one is home. Hmmm. Phone call again - It had been neglected to be mentioned that they were not at their own home, but another friends home - 30mins away. By this time it was nearing 8 o'clock, so we just had to scrap that plan and have no party - but realizing it was now late for the ice cream idea - we let the kids trick or treat to a few houses in our friends townhouse complex, since we were already there, and we wanted to give the kids SOMETHING fun to do with their night! So it was a bit of a disaster, Halloween "fun family night" wise, but it worked out in the end. The kids each got a few candies, and we all got to bed at a decent time...because we had to finish at the rental in the morning!

The breakfast nook area - I previously had no pictures of this, so I made sure to snap one for future rental advertising

We got everything painted and ready to go by Noon on Saturday!

Flash back! The last time we "did this" at this house was in 2011. These kids are well accustomed to "helping" us by staying out of the way:-) Here is little Grey in the playpen. They really are rock stars and very patient when it comes to occupying themselves in an empty house and yard for HOURS.