Sewing Room Construction - A Thanksgiving Adventure

In November 2021, contractors were hard at work adding the wall that would eventually separate my sewing room from the dining area. We'd lucked out, and the electrician (typically the long pole in the tent) came and went the weekend before Thanksgiving. We had lighting:

new outlets, and a dimmer switch: 

But the inner walls were still bare, leaving plenty of exposed electrical. 

This wasn't anticipated to be a big deal: We'd just move Thanksgiving to my MIL's apartment. We have other family in the area, but typically they visit *their* in-laws on T-day, leaving our Thanksgiving to be a cozy 5-6 person affair. Well, not *this* year.

3PM on Wednesday before Thanksgiving - as I was taking my kids to to local library for some unstructured play time - my husband got a call from his sister. Having just had twins 2 months prior, she confessed that she wasn't feeling up for the long drive to her husband's family with three kids in tow. So, she wanted to see if they could join our family's celebration instead.

Of course she could! We certainly weren't going to turn down an offer to celebrate Thanksgiving with her and her family (did I mention baby twins???) but... My MIL's apartment was *not* going to accommodate all of us. Soo... back to the drawing board.  

Or more accurately, cue epic panic.

My SIL's son was 3 years old. The sewing room had exposed outlets, and no doors. There was paint, and ladders, and construction supplies and random sewing implements EVERYWHERE in our dining area. Remember, the sewing room is right next to the dining room.

My husband called me, and I rounded up the kids to go home. The first thing we did was send my MIL to the grocery store for an extra ham, but then the next thing we did was tackle the sewing room. 

Fortunately, we had a pet gate that we usually use so we can leave the front door open without letting the cat out: it was JUST wide enough to cover the opening to the sewing room. Phew. 

And then, we had to get everything that was OUTSIDE the sewing room into the sewing room: here's how it looked when we were done:

Thanksgiving that year was lovely - and with the lights off in the sewing room you could barely even see the mess that was in there. But oh boy, was that a memorable holiday, and not just because of the twins!!!