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Welcome to my life, my new little plant babies

May 6, 2020

Last weekend, I was sitting outside on my patio participating in a zoom call, as we do these days. I kept looking underneath our little porch at quite the collection of empty planters abandoned under there. It was like a graveyard for dead plants of the past.

I may have stalled out on my home improvement list when I realized that we were going to move sometime soon, but I wanted to do something. Just because I didn’t want to improve our current home didn’t mean that I couldn’t find some new plant babies to add to our life and hopefully edify our future home.

I pulled the planters out. Jax inspected.

After a quick spray with the hose to clean out the likely million spiders living in the planters, I was off to Home Depot to buy some plant babies. Nearly a hundred bucks later, I was home and getting my plant on.

The combination of sunshine, quality time with my dogs and the feeling of actually getting my hands dirty and doing something of real life value felt SO good.

The next day, we found our new home! I had no idea it was going to happen like that because I saw the posting on craigslist in the morning and we visited the property at 2pm the same day. We applied on Monday and signed the lease on Wednesday in the fastest and easiest rental transaction in the history of the Bay Area.

I bought these plant babies with the full faith we were going to find a new home. I was finally ready and brave enough to make a change. I just didn’t know the change was going to happen the very next day. Isn’t it crazy that life works that way? You don’t even know when you wake up in the morning that your life is going to shift so dramatically so quickly, but once you decide it’s like it’s already done.

Are you doing home improvement projects these days? Are you a plant lady? I love them so much, but I confess that Keith is the person in our home who keeps our plants alive. I buy them, he cares for them. 🙂

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We’re Moving!

May 4, 2020

The timing of this announcement is a mystery to me. I’m not sure how it’s possible that we found a home that is a total dream for us in the midst of a pandemic, but here we are. We signed the lease last week and WE ARE MOVING.

Something about seeing our whole world crumble galvanized me. I do not have a single moment anymore to hang back in the shadows worried and second-guessing every decision. I needed to move for my sanity and for the forward momentum of my family.

So, we’re moving. We’re stretching our wings a little bit further. If we’ve learned anything over the past few months, we know that our lives our precious and that it’s worthwhile to listen to the still-small voice in our hearts moving us toward our bigger, bolder life.

I have so many plans for this house. I will have my first dedicated writing space, ever. The kitchen is a total dream for further pursuing my love for cooking. We have enough space to welcome and feed our friends and family with regularity. Our dogs will have the yard of their dreams and my commute for work will become more bearable when I return to the office.

It just feels right.

I’m so grateful.

I can’t wait to share it with you.

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Our Home Project List

March 30, 2020

Friends,

There is nothing I love more than a good home project. Keith can tell you. My favorite line when we buy any furniture second-hand is ‘we can paint it!’

Given the current shelter-in-place restrictions here in Oakland, we have a LOT of time on our hands. Instead of twiddling our thumbs or watching an ungodly amount of television (let’s be real, we’re still doing that!), I want to tackle some projects that we’ve had on our list for ages. Are you doing the same? I’m sure everyone else in the country has a similar list, so I’m suspecting it will be hard to get our hands on supplies, but I do want to tackle anything we can. We’ve been slowly weeding the front yard a little bit here and there and it feels good to look at something and think ‘I did that!’ when so much in this life feels out of control right now.

Here’s our project list:

  • Decorate the mirror I bought at the White Elephant sale in January. See photo above! I have a start… I pulled that oak box out of my closet (it used to be my shoe rack) and added a couple of plants. I’m at a loss for what to put in the actual box as we live on a busy street and our living room gets real dusty, real fast. I also want to put some dried roses above the mirror that are currently in our shed. Will that look creepy?
  • Paint our front door. You can see it in the photo above. Shout out to our dog Jax for totally scratching the heck out of our front door! In all fairness, it had really cheap paint on it when we moved in that flaked off super easily. I am thinking I want to paint it a pretty dark green in chalkboard paint so that I can leave inspirational self-help messages on the door for myself and my family. I’m a real treat to live with!
  • Clean out the fridge. It needs some elbow grease and an organizational system of some sort.
  • Strip the painted concrete outside and add the outdoor lights I bought at Costco last year. We are going to BBQ so hard once this covid craziness is over.
  • Paint Back and Front Porches. I’m tired just typing that.
  • Weed front yard and finally add flowers to the flower bed. I’m totally paralyzed as to which flowers to put in there, but I’ve weeded about half of it so far. A little bit every day.
  • Buy and propagate more plants for our house and backyard. If we have to be stuck indoors, let’s make it feel like we live in a jungle!
  • Paint bedroom a pretty light blue and then string LED fairy lights and put glow in the dark stars on the ceiling. Enchanting!

What about you? Are you on the project train? Feel free to share your plan in the comments. I will totally cheer you on!