When we bought our first house, we were truly excited.  Not only were we moving on from living in our small apartment, but we were finally going to have a place that belonged to us.  We wanted to make it our home, so we decided that we would come up with our own landscaping design ideas for our property.

We tried our hand at creating a perfect yard, but honestly, we failed badly.  We didn’t know anything about lawn or lantana care, and as such, we ended up with no plants left after just one short month.

Upon hearing our stories, my parents rushed out an bought us some books on landscaping designs to help us learn what to do.  It was a strange gift, but I know that they mean well.

We’ll have to wait until next year to try out the skills that we have learned from the book - maybe next year, our yard will be something to be proud of.

Last summer, during a severe wind storm, the big spruce tree in my front yard became uprooted and came smashing in through my living room window. Luckily, no one was home at the time, so nobody got hurt, but it was a scary sight to come home to.

We picked up the glass and covered the window as best we could for the night. The next morning, I called to have someone come out to give us an estimate on what it would cost to replace the broken window.

In the end, we decided to replace the whole thing with a box sash window and I love the way it looks. I figure that if the tree had not broken the window, it would be years before we would have ever replaced it, so in a way, I am thankful for the wind storm that night.

Usually, I don’t really care how dirty my house gets, but today was an exception.  You see, there was a terrible dust storm last night, and it pelted my house so much that it looks like a sand castle.  I know that might sound a little funny, but you can see the dirt on the house, and it is not pretty.

But thankfully, my dirty house has given me a chance to play with a toy that I bought last year that I haven’t had a reason to use yet.  I bought a pressure washer to do a little pressure washing around the home, but since it rained so much last year, it never left the box.

So, this afternoon I had the opportunity to do a little concrete cleaning and house washing, and things look much better now.  I had never realized that a pressure washer would be so much different than a garden hose, and it shows.

My wife thinks a good job of cleaning, but if you ask me, I just had fun playing with water.  Lets keep it as a little secret between us, okay?

The summer after we built a deck onto our house — there were four new decks  on our street alone — our baby was eight months old. In addition to undergoing another hot summer, we had a huge yellow jacket infestation in our neighborhood.

One of the problems with wood decks is that they are, unfortunately, a place yellow jackets like to build their colonies. We had a particular problem with them appearing through the gaps in the decking.

Our daughter was too little to understand what they were and when she was playing her little pool and a yellow jacket crawled up between the boards, she reached down to pick it up. The look on my child’s face nearly broke my heart. Why did it hurt her? Why would anyone or anything hurt her? It was such a harsh lesson for such a little girl. She wasn’t totally traumatized, but she also never tried to pick up a yellow jacket again. She was nothing, if not smart.

The last time that my mother showed up to visit, she made a comment on how cluttered our house was.  Even though our home is small, I was a little insulted by her comments as we have been making due with what we have.

So before she was going to come and see us this time, we decided that we would rent a self storage unit and hide everything from her.  It really wouldn’t take too long to move everything if we did rent a self storage, so we decided that we were going to do it.

We did a search online to see where we could rent storage units in town.  There were a number of places, but we made sure to shop around to get a good price.

It only took about a day to get most of the clutter out of the house - I hope my mother appreciates what we did for her (though we really won’t tell her).

I was so excited about our family vacation last summer. We had never really ventured too far from home, so when we decided to take a vacation to Europe for a month, it was a really big deal. It was all the kids could talk about for months before the trip and I was sure that we were ready. I just had to put last minute details together.

I didn’t want to forget anything. We had canceled the paper, our neighbor took our cat and we gave the fish away. I couldn’t think of anything else that we needed to do. The night before we were to leave my mother asked me who we had hired to do garden maintenance.

Okay, so there was something that we had forgotten. This made me upset, as I knew if we let the garden go, it would be hard to get it back the following year. My mother offered to hire someone for us and I told her I would bring her back something extra special. She told me an older Greek gentleman would be fine. Ha ha!

I don’t know how many digital photographs I have taken in the last six months with my new digital camera - but it has sure been a lot.  There is definitely some freedom in knowing that you can take as many pictures as you would like, and that it won’t cost anything until you print them.  I often find myself taking pictures of just about anything just because I can.

But, one of my biggest complaints that I have with digital photography is that you rarely print your pictures.  With the thousands of pictures on my computer, I maybe only have one or two of them on the wall.  The simple joy of enjoying a photograph has somehow been lost - at least that is the way I feel.

I thought that I could take some of the pictures I had on my computer and go somewhere to put my photos onto canvas.  That way, I could put some of my new pictures on the wall, and enjoy them, just like back in the days of film.

We recently decided that the walls in our home needed a new coat of paint.  I think it has been about five years since the last time that we painted, and you can still see the evidence of our work. 

Last time we painted the walls, we did it ourselves and made a big mess.  Even though we looked for tips and tricks on a painting website, we just had some issues.  You can see what happened if you look at our carpet - there are paint stains everywhere.

So, this time, we decided that we would hire an Arizona house painter to do the work for us.  This way, we figured we would keep the time commitment and the mess to a minimum.  All we had to do is find one.

We checked out BestHousePainter.com and we found the recommended painter in our area.  We booked a date with them and anxiously waited for them to arrive.

When the day came, they painted our home in about an hour!  I was so surprised and shocked at the speed and quality the painter had with his work that I don’t think I will ever paint anything again - I am just way too slow.

Seems like just yesterday, it was 1997.  Okay, it has been a little longer than I thought since I purchased some furniture, and with the recent comments from my friends, it is time for a change.  You see, I have had about ten bad comments in the past week that my furniture is old and outdated and that I should get some modern furniture to update the look of my place.

It has been over ten years since I stepped into a furniture store, and I was in for a shock.  You see, none of the contemporary furniture bore any resemblance to what I had at home - it was sleeker and nicer than the brown furniture I had at home.

I especially noticed the difference between the contemporary bedroom furniture compared to the hulking steel bed frame and wood dressers I had at home.  The newer furniture seemed to give off a welcoming vibe, whereas what I had at home was just scary.

I found myself buying furniture for most of the rooms in my home.  Perhaps the most memorable part of the whole shopping trip was the comment that the salesman made to me after I told him my story of what I had at home.  He said: “Welcome to the 21st century.”

I’ll admit it, our bathroom is kind of ugly.  Nothing like showing your friends your ugly green tub and toilet to make your friends laugh.  To be honest it is embarrassing.  What tops it off for us is the "nice" wood paneling - which is completely nasty.

We decided to go to our bank and see if we could get a loan for our planned renovations.  The night before we went to the bank, we looked online to compare loans and get an idea about what was available.  We printed off some of the more promising offers to take with us to the bank.

We walked into the meeting expecting to get a personal loan.  The thing is, we weren’t as educated as we thought.  It ends up since we own our home, we qualified for a secured personal loan which allowed us to get lower monthly payments and the bathroom we wanted.

Now we can show off our new bathroom, it is almost sad to see no green toilet anymore.  No longer ashamed, we feel more at home now.