February Fling - 2019 - The Studio - In the beginning...

If you haven't read that I am getting a studio in my backyard then you are seriously missing my posts and you better catch up!  I'll give you a recap. 

We have a really huge backyard and I WANT to say that since the kids are grown we don't need all that room but TRUTHFULLY we never really utilized it much even when they were little.  I don't know why.  In time it got to look like this:

We razed the worst section to the ground and it looked like this:

But then we could see we needed a new fence desperately.

So we had a new fence put in.  Thankfully the neighbors behind us helped with the cost.  

Then the yard looked like this for a while.  You can see that the left side is still pretty much just dirt but the middle and right side has greenery.    

The outside of our house looked pretty shabby and the roof was starting to leak in the kitchen so we decided it was time to spruce the mansion up a bit.

We had 21st Century come and give it a facelift.  They are an excellent company to work with and we highly recommend them.

Quite a difference from the old to the new, but now the backyard was overgrown again.

We decided that the bathroom was more important than the backyard at the time so we called our friends at 21st Century again and they did this:  

But still the backyard looked like a hayfield or a jungle.

I tried to clear it myself since my husband has a bad back and can't do this kind of work but after a whole day this is all I could manage.  

One more time we hired someone to come and raze it to ground zero status.

And we even had a tent in it so we could have a get together after our daughter's graduation from college.  That tent is 10 x 10 just to give you an idea.    

We also hired someone to come and keep the weeds and other things from growing back until we could decide what we wanted to do out there.  You need money for these kinds of projects and even if money did grow on trees, we no longer had any of either :) 

That's it for installment #1.  Hope you come back for Part 2.  

Jubilant June

June 29 - Half a year gone already.  Seems like just yesterday it was January and I was making my vision boards for the year.  Now we are almost at the end of June and I am reflecting on what I/we've accomplished so far this year and what needs work on for the next six months.  Using my vision boards I can see that there actually has been quite a bit of progress!





Starting with the "Home" card, I think this is where we have made the most changes.  We got a new mattress, and purged some things from the closets, but most of all, gave the outside a much needed facelift!

Isn't she pretty?  Next comes yard work, but we need to build up our financial reserve a bit first.  For now it will be just making some dump runs and using the weed whacker to clean it up. 

The other card that has gotten a lot of attention is Travel.  

I really wanted to get away, just my husband and I, for a few days to relax.  I guess we could have picked a calmer place than Las Vegas, maybe somewhere in the mountains?  But, I knew that he's been wanting to go to Vegas for a while now so that's where we went.  We did get to see the Grand Canyon, and we did spend time with each other, without the distractions of our usual surroundings.  Maybe later in the year we'll go to Carmel...

The next card is about finances.  

You might think that we are deeper in debt now because of the home improvements, but with a bit of creative money juggling, we actually are not that far in the hole.  We were able to shave $4000 off our "pre-remodel" debt and now that hubby's Social Security Disability has been accepted, we will have a better income than we have had for the past year. 

Business is another card.  

This is one of the areas that I think I need to focus on over the next six months.  I have two things going on, the transcription business that is my real job and the crafting business that I want to be my real job.    

I have read the book by Marc and Angel Chernoff about being happy and successful and found that a lot of their ideas I was practicing already, so I know I'm on the right track.  Here again, organization and planning will help, so I have made an inventory notebook of a lot of my crafting tools (stamps, punches, templates, etc) so that will help when I am looking for something particular and so that I don't buy duplicates.  I also participated in one vendor fair and have an application ready for another.  They won't buy what they can't see, right?  

I am hoping at some point to be able to transcribe less and craft more, but I still have some learning to do about different techniques and how to incorporate blogging and a website into my creative endeavors.  I'm thinking about adding videos and showing how I make some of my projects. My main goal is to be able to continue to work for myself from home and not have to go back out into that jungle.  

And last but not least, is the Healthy Me card.  It seems that I just get started on a healthy program for myself and something happens to derail me (or I should admit, I allow myself to be derailed).  I need to realize that I am worth taking the time and effort to be the best person that I can be and also to know that I am pretty darn good right now as well.   

I am taking steps to get more activity into my life, as I feel my joints starting to stiffen up from sitting so much and I already have bad knees and diabetes.  I know I am capable of following a healthy eating plan because I have done it and had some success.  

But it is important to have mind and spirit health as well as physical health and to that end I am going on an "Inner Excavation" with Liz Lamoreux.  It is a six week exploration of self-care and the inner me.  I started it last year but didn't finish.  I'm hoping to get farther along this time.  You can read all about it here.  Feel free to join in!  

And that is how we end the first half of 2016.  I am sure there are many more adventures awaiting us for the next 6 months, after all, we still have 8 concerts to go to, include ADELE, that I just was able to score tickets to.  You will remember what a hard time I had trying to get them when they were first on sale.

How about you?  Did you have goals set for this year?  Are you meeting them?  Love to hear about your experiences!  Leave me a comment :)