#23 Curb Appeal

When our realtor showed us the picture of the house we were going to go see, I thought, "I don't want to live there.  That house is ugly."  However, we went inside, the house was in perfect shape, the price was right, and we were able to get all the paperwork ready and accepted before our wedding that weekend.  It's not my dream house, and I never found myself proud of my house.  I found myself looking at other houses, wishing mine were so cute.  Ours was just plain and boring.




 Well....I have done something about this.  Over time, I have added a planting bed, painted and put up some porch rails, painted the trim around my door, painted the front door, and added a rocking chair, which I also had to paint.  I also painted the mailbox post, and Brandon put on a new mailbox and new numbers.  HELLO CURB APPEAL! 

 

#22 A Rail Tale

I am a project starter, not a finisher.  I started this project about a year ago, maybe 2.  We moved into our house, and it had no porch rails.  It did have some rails sitting in our basement, waiting to be painted and put up.  So, I started the project, and finally, a long time later...I finished it!  Hooray!  It makes my house so much cuter (you will see in my next post) and I am so thrilled that I finally finished it!

 

#21 My Son, The Graduate

Hurley was my extremely excitable, not very well behaved little puppy son.  My mother graciously paid for training for her grand puppy.  We did it through Petsmart and went for 8 sessions.  I was so impressed at how quickly he learned ( I think that's the Border Collie in him), and I was so thankful for the authority that I now had over him.  If I told him to sit, he actually did!  If I asked him to stay, he would!  Obviously, he's not perfect, and he is still a young, energetic dog, but he is so much more well behaved.  I can even give him the command to sit, stay, come, and sit again, without saying a word.  And the bonus?  Vincent is following in Hurley's steps and is a much more well behaved dog, too!

#20 New Work Schedule

Lately, work has been very overwhelming for me.  I've had to give some of my tasks to another person just in efforts to make sure everything gets done.  I don't like to let people down, and I want to be a good worker.  But, I also don't believe in working too much.  I was working about 9 hours a day and still had things left undone each day.
This was causing me a lot of stress, so I decided to take action.  I opened up a blank Word document and I proceeded to type out each day in time brackets scheduling what I would do with each minute of my work day.  Of course, I'm not sticking to it rigidly.  If I need a few extra minutes on a task, I'll take it.  If I need to skip something, I will.  But, I'm in week 2 of following my schedule, and it is working so great.  I feel so much less stress, and I am so much more efficient.  I guess it's easier to know what to focus on.  And, I know that everything should get worked on each week.
Also, I'm trying the only touch it once rule.  This means that if I have a paper (or an e-mail, or whatever), I try to take care of it right then, rather than set it aside for later.  Obviously, I can't do that entirely, but my version of it is helping me get things accomplished, as well as my new schedule.

#19 Gettin' Steamy

We had our carpets cleaned right before we moved into our house, two years ago.  Since then, we have potty trained two dogs.  Even when you clean things up, eventually it resurfaces from underneath the carpet.  I wanted to get our carpets cleaned, badly, but money is tight and I couldn't find a good time to "splurge" on getting the carpets cleaned.
Enter Jolynn, my kind coworker.  She bought a steam cleaner and told me how wonderful it was.  When I asked if I could rent it from her, she said I could just borrow it.  And borrow, I did.  My carpets were so wonderful afterward, that my husband said, "We pretty much need one of these, huh?"  Yes we do.  We'd have luxuriously clean carpets so much more often.