RAMBLINGS
It has been so long since I’ve blogged…. or designed anything for that matter. Contrary to popular belief I have not fallen off the face of the planet… lol! For the past few months I have been working on renovating my two bathrooms. I got to the point where I just had enough of their current state. We’ve lived in this house for almost 8 years and have done nothing major to it outside of getting new siding and windows 4 years ago. We typically don’t put money into the house and that really needs to change. I actually had a lot of fun remodeling the bathrooms and have learned a lot in the process. I did the majority of the work by myself (like….98%). My husband only helped to pull out the one toilet and help demo the sink in the 2nd bathroom and take down the wall to wall mirror. Here are some photos from the first bathroom that I re-did. I should have just re-tiled the floor during this but at the beginning of this project, I was a bit tentative and felt tiling was a huge step. I wanted to “practice” first in the guest bathroom. LOL! In the 2nd bathroom, I did end up going tile crazy and will eventually come back and put in a new tile floor for this bathroom too. Installing the floor in this bathroom will be so much easier than what I ended up doing in the 2nd bathroom (but more on that later). For the short term solution, I just painted the floor because I had to do something about that nasty green.
[ Continue ]I started potty training Dan on Monday. WOO HOO! The first three days went okay… a few accidents but a lot of making it to the potty. The girls have been really fabulous with helping me. They take him into the bathroom and read a potty book to him while he goes (thanks Jeanine!). On Monday I took everyone into Borders so we could buy the potty book. I got lucky – Dan really likes it and we had to read it a zillion times when we got home. So now the girls read to him in the bathroom. I’m still using a timer though that goes off ever 30-40 minutes… the times that Dan has to go and the timer doesn’t ring is when we have an accident. So he’s not good yet at making it to the potty without being prompted….Did I mention that I HATE potty training?
[ Continue ]Rick has always thought there was a skunk living in the immediate area because we always have several incidents a summer that smell like it is right outside our bedroom window. When Jeanine was out visiting me last week, we saw a skunk two doors down walking around the garbage cans that were put out for pickup the next day. Keep in mind that this spotting was at 10:00pm at night when it was dark. Last night I happened to glance out the front window and there he was. Right in the center of my front yard – when it was still light outside! So I grabbed the camera to show Jeanine our friend had returned. I took about 10 photos but they were all from behind the glass (I was so not opening the door! lol!) These are the clearest I got.. but you can still see him. UGH! Anyone know of anything that can make our yard not so interesting to be in for this guy? Is there even such a thing as a de-skunker or “skunk be gone”?… lol!
[ Continue ]It must be a blog update kinda of day… spent some time fixing the feed issue on Jeanine’s blog and then upgraded word press on both mine and KV’s blog. Everything feels fresh and clean now. Until next week when the next version comes out. lolol!
[ Continue ]I thought this online program was interesting. Not sure how much I’ll really use it but the concept of “Mind Mapping” is very intuitive and easy to do. On this site mindmeister.com, you can sign up for a free basic account and create various “maps”… You just click and type and it automatically builds the “tree” out as you go. Mindmeister allows you to share your maps publicly if you want or keep them private. If you share them publicly you can choose to add a password to them so that your maps won’t appear on mindmeister’s public list but just appear places you want – like me posting this to my blog. You can also collaboratively work on the maps like you can with google docs (oh Jeanine….). It’s an interesting and quick way to make a list or just brainstorm. Remember those brainstorming sessions you did back in school? Anyway, I just thought this was a cool site. 🙂
[ Continue ]….MY OFFICE!!! In my attempt to be a better blogger (definitely not housekeeper), I’m going to share the nightmare that is my office. I took these photos just yesterday (and yes not much has changed) to show Jeanine the pit that is my front room. Awhile back Brenda Pinnick did a messy office contest from her blog and I sent photos for that too. Ironically those photos weren’t nearly as bad as what I have here…. We do not have a basement in this house. I used to use Dan’s room as my office – and that worked well because I could close the door and leave the disaster in there to be dealt with when I was ready. But now the kids have their own rooms so even though we have 4 bedrooms, Dan has taken over what used to be my office and we got rid of the playroom when the girls got their own rooms. So this has brought my office out to the front room as well as all the toys. Yes… this is why I don’t have people over to my house. LOL! Ironically the rest of the house isn’t bad. I spent a good chunk of a Friday two weeks ago reorganizing my bedroom. Decided my pile of clothes that I usually stack on my dresser or on the dogs cage had to go. So I reorganized the way my bedroom works and it has been a very good thing. The next day I spent the entire Saturday cleaning the kitchen like a crazy person. I even moved the stove and cleaned the floor under it – wow what a nightmare that was… I was a mad cleaning whore… that doesn’t happen very often so I ride … Read more
[ Continue ]There is nothing like walking into the kitchen thinking that your coffee has been brewing and is ready for you only to find that the coffee filter was not in correctly and you have water sitting in the filter and half a cup of coffee in your holder… sigh… I use the Gevalia “Gevalia Coffee for Two“ since I am the only one in this house that drinks coffee. (Got it for free when I joined their club – actually this is my 2nd one been using this coffee pot for about 2-3 years now). It’s easy because I don’t have to make a whole pot of coffee. I can make one of these jumbo cups just for myself. The coffee maker also takes regular coffee (not those pad things) so I can use whatever coffee I want. I tried those single cup makers that came with the pads awhile back but hated that I couldn’t use my own coffee. I have never actually used the right side of this coffee maker. lol! I only make myself a large cup. I see they have a personal maker similar to this. Not sure you can get that one for free though.
[ Continue ]I came across an article this morning before I posted that last blog post. (2 blog posts in one day? WTF?) The article hit the nail on the head for me and my “crazy ass scoped projects”… How to Actually Execute Your To-Do List: or, Why Writing It Down Doesn’t Actually Get It Done This one fits me to a tee… REASON #2 – “I am terrified of certain tasks, or of working on certain projects.” There are usually a few reasons those tasks or projects terrify you: They are too intimidating in size or scope. To combat this, break it down into tinier chunks — actually, just the first tiny chunk (as David Allen tells us to do in GTD). It’s intimidating to do a task like “Create report on X” or “Make a yearly plan for Z”. But if you just need to do the first physical action, which might be, “Call Frank for figures on X” or “Make a list of 10 things we should accomplish this year”, it’s much easier to tackle and less intimidating. >>> OMG! Right on the head… can you say storyhelpers anyone? You don’t really know how to do it. If you haven’t done something a million times before, it is unfamiliar and unknown to you. And we are all terrified of that. The solution? First, get more information — learn as much as you can about it. That might require some research on the Internet, or talking to someone who’s done it before, or reading a book, or taking a class. Whatever you need to do, make the unknown become the known. Second, practice it as much as possible. Once you’ve learned how to do something, you need to practice it to become good … Read more
[ Continue ]FINALLY got some portfolio stuff up for Kristy Valshan… FINALLY! It’s only been what A FRICKIN’ YEAR?!?!?! I don’t know why I have such a hard time designing my own websites. I always have. And all the items that I wanted to originally put on the KV website just made the website grow into a monster before it even got off the ground (sounds like so many ideas I have). I have no problem with the conception of monster projects… it’s the execution of them I get derailed on. The project seems so intensive before I even get started that I ended up not doing it. Jeanine and I decided about 3 weeks ago to change the KV site to be very simple and put only 3-4 designs out in the portfolio. You think that would be easy for me? yeah… think again… Even a “simple” site took two full revisions and I still was not happy with the results… the shell changed, the design was awful and there STILL was no portfolio out there. sigh… (you may have seen the one over the past two weeks – the first didn’t stay up past 2 hours) Not sure what happened to me this weekend but I just started working on it… thought we should have a bit of color. While I really like a black and white design because it doesn’t clash with our designs – we can put any color palette out there and it’ll still match – it really doesn’t matter much without a portfolio now does it? But my two “simple” renditions were way too blah looking.. Not that what I have out there now is any great shakes… but I think it’s much better… I actually enjoyed working on the site to the … Read more
[ Continue ]