Category: Projects

A little bit of insight and an anti-climactic announcement

April 19, 2023

In the little over 3(?) years that this site has been in existence, there has been one single constant: inconsistency. It started as a place for me to hone my writing because, if you’ve been following, I was going to write a book (remember?). Then it became somewhat of a place of self reflection for me. This is kind of where it is now and where I plan for it to stay. At some point, I decided I wanted to build something to support mental health, and I launched a website called The Pause Project where I wrote one introductory post and nothing more. It turns out starting anything with nothing more than a vague idea of what you want to do with it isn’t a very practical idea. The frustrating thing is that I embarked on both these adventures loudly, and then when the novelty wore off, that was that. I quit silently.

This pattern of picking up interests, jumping in with both feet, and then abandoning them almost as quickly is not new for me. I have never been one for continuity. I latch on to a hobby, learn everything there is to learn about it, buy everything there is to need for it, and put it aside within a couple of months. As an adult, I have never lived in a house for longer than 5 years. I have never worked at the same place for more than 5 years. Every time I have an idea of what I want to do next by way of careers, I talk myself out of pursuing it for fear that I’m going to lose interest and either leave and disappoint people, or stay out of obligation and be bored for eternity (which sounds even worse than disappointing people).

I get that this sounds like I’m unreliable; that I have no grit, but that isn’t really true. Because I’m so afraid of dropping the ball, I obsess about my obligations and make sure I honor my commitments to people, even if it means delivering the bare minimum at the last possible minute because I was paralyzed until it became time sensitive. Because I know I already tend to come across as flaky, I am an exceptionally hard worker. I am capable of seeing things through, but I burnout quickly, and have a really difficult time holding myself accountable. I think that’s why I’ve done ok with parenting – it’s not me I would be letting down, it’s someone else’s life I’m accountable for.

About 6 years ago, my psychiatrist asked if anyone had ever suggested to me that I might have ADHD. I just laughed. I was there for an anxiety prescription refill and assumed I must have just come across as a little scattered that day or something. As she started asking questions, I started relating more and more to what she was saying. By the end of the appointment, I had a new diagnosis to go with the GAD and the MDD: ADHD Inattentive/Distracted type. My head was swimming. Two of my kids had ADHD diagnoses (the third would get his at 21), but my characteristics weren’t like theirs. One of them is Inattentive/Distracted, but it’s partnered with ASD, and the other is combination type – heavy on the H. My experience was unique to what theirs had been. I didn’t pursue medication at that point, but I certainly had a lot to think about. After a couple of years, I asked if medication was practical for a 40 year old adult. My thought was that since I had made it that far in life without it, was there any point in it? What would it really help?

The answer was a lot. In the year I was medicated before I left teaching, my lesson plans were detailed and clear. Maybe even more impressive, I had lesson plans. Before medication there was a fair amount of winging it. I became capable of participating in a conversation without taking a handful of tangents before sheepishly asking what the original question was. My overall productivity went up, and I didn’t feel like I was constantly drowning all the time.

What the medication didn’t help with, is the love it and leave it behavior illustrated above. The need for novelty in an activity is still very real. And as much as I still love to write and hope to be published someday, and as strongly as I still feel about supporting mental health, I have had to accept that turning those interests into some sort of a career isn’t practical for me. I need to quit trying to chase the perfect opportunity where I’m going to love every day, and be thankful that I have the privilege to just have hobbies.

Now to the anti-climactic announcement. Of the hobbies that have come and gone, one that has been pretty constant is creating nice spaces. When I was a kid, I would constantly redecorate my bedroom (looking back, that flag is pretty red). I would ask for bedding and decor for holidays, repaint, and rearrange furniture so that it was an entirely new space. As an adult, I have done the same with nearly every house I’ve lived in. I like spaces with personality in the colors and accessories, and my spaces have historically done a pretty good job reflecting me. About a decade ago, I took my decorating interests outdoors and started gardening. My backyard at the time was a perfect canvas for planting any and everything I could possibly find to put in the ground. With the help of my mother-in-law’s expertise, I was able to create a garden that was not only lovely to look at, but provided a good amount of the produce we ate.

Given that this hobby of creating nice spaces has lasted more than 10 minutes combined with the endless list of projects that came with my current house, I have decided to start a blog independent of this one to document the progress. Make Something Pretty will have before and after photos, descriptions, and any anecdotal stories about all the projects – gardening, chickens (and maybe goats in the future?), The Shed, and any projects inside the house (of which there are many, but it’s spring so they’ll have to wait). If any of this is of any interest, I’d be honored if you gave it a follow. Who knows – maybe I’ll stick with it for a minute.

In the meantime, this site will remain to be a place of personal growth and reflection for me. I’ll still be posting here practicing being vulnerable and authentic. I hope to tackle some topics that might be a little bit tough, at least for me, if I can find the courage. I hope the few of you that currently read my ramblings here will continue to do so.

New Project(s) Alert!

March 24, 2023

One thing about me; I like pretty spaces. More accurately, I like to create pretty spaces. I like to think I’m pretty good at it, too. Once I get a picture in my head of what I want a space to look like, it usually ends up pretty accurate (case in point: The Shed). Every now and then I tend to bite off more than I can chew so to speak, and what I think will be a month or so of weekend work turns in to 3 months of basically full time work (again, I submit The Shed as evidence). So here I go, diving in over my head again.

This is my backyard. It’s half an acre of unkempt, wooded mess. Does that look like a tree laying across part of it? That’s because it is. It snapped off and fell a few months ago, and there it has lain, a priority to no one but me. Why do I care? The space it is laying across it gets the best afternoon sun of the entire yard, therefore it should be growing plants and not playing resting ground for dead wood.

While the tree graveyard is priority number 1, it’s far from the only space on the improvement list. I plan to improve the chicken run, plant a secret garden in the far corner, plant a pollinator garden behind the house, and build a giant picnic table off the patio.

If this was an episode of an HGTV show, this is the part where I would expect them to say “the scope of this project will take 2 weeks and cost $20,000,” and a crew of capable professionals would roll in and my backyard would be a beautiful oasis 14 days later. Since this is real life instead, I’m going to say the scope of this project is going to take all summer and given my budget of as close to $0 as I can get, cost whatever time and energy I have, and my crew of yours truly and her very handy, yet very busy husband when he has the time will eventually make it happen. It’ll just be more of a season than an episode.

As with The Shed, I plan to update here and on Instagram, so if you’re interested in following, I’d love the virtual company. Episode 1 (which could likely be a season on its own for all the work involved): Space for a Vegetable Garden starts tomorrow.

An Update on The Shed (and a few other things, but mostly The Shed)

May 9, 2022

If you are one of the potential tens of regular readers of this blog, you may (but probably not) have noticed a couple of things. One, the site now has obnoxious ads. This is due to the expiration of my WordPress Pro subscription, and my inability to justify continuing to pay for it. They’re distracting, I know, but this blog has no business potential, and if it’s not going to bring in money, I can’t allow it to cost money. Anyway, on to the headliner of this show: The Shed.

Back in January, I introduced a pretty big project I had decided to tackle: transforming a small shed on our property into an office space for myself. The shed was an outwardly ugly, inwardly dank, dark, 98 square feet of plywood and mildew. It was full of boxes whose contents were unknown (and largely not missed), computer parts that haven’t been used since 2008 (I could rant about clutter and packrattiness for hours, but I’ll save you the read), and our disassembled – now water damaged – pool table. What it lacked in charm though, it made up in potential (much like the rest of our property). It already had electricity running to it, which seemed to me like a pretty good start, so off I went guns blazing or whatever, ready to tear some walls down.

Just a reminder of what I was up against
Look how ready I am to tackle some demo!

Day one: Demo Day! I invited a couple of friends over, and armed with sledgehammers and crowbars, we went to work. While I do watch a fair share of home remodel shows, I am not naive enough to believe that home construction projects go anywhere near as quickly as they do on TV. That is to say, I did not expect to have this shed cleared out in an hour. I did not, however, expect demo to take an entire week. The girls and I spent most of a Saturday afternoon prying off trim and taking down shelves, but at the end of the day, the walls still stood.

Don’t underestimate us – we’re a force!
Unfortunately, these walls were also a force

While I am an enneagram 9, my 1 wing is incredibly strong, and I am an organized, scheduling, planning machine. I had a timeline of how this project was going to go, and at the end of week 1, I was somehow already almost 2 weeks behind schedule. I had hoped to be caulking and looking at whatever electrical work would be needed (a job I outsourced to my husband – electricity is not something I have any desire to play with), and instead I was still tearing out plywood and eradicating wasp colonies.

I may have gone a little overboard on the wasp spray
Part of me believes this entire shed was being held up by the plywood walls
Seriously though – they were so tough!
This was a satisfying moment

Once the walls were gone, I was ready to rock and roll. I marked off where I wanted my windows framed in (another job for the husband), and started planning the next step, which in my mind was insulation and drywall, but turned out to be adding trim to the outside to stop water from getting in. The enthusiasm you see in the first picture? Waning quickly. Still, I kept myself encouraged by thinking about the end goal, picking out paint color and light fixtures, and reminding myself there is value in learning to manage expectations. My kids kept me encouraged by continuing to live their lives in full volume on either side of the guest room where I still worked.

Eventually, The Shed was ready for windows, and because I am equal parts brilliant and foolish, I proposed to my husband that we replace the windows there were in our kitchen with french doors and put the windows in The Shed. This was a project we had already planned to do (eventually), and would save us from having to buy windows. Obviously, my timeline took a hit since we couldn’t take the windows out of the kitchen and put them immediately into The Shed – we had to install the french doors first. In a perfect world, this side quest would have been roughly a 3 day adventure, but it’s well known that the world is not perfect.

Just as we got the doors installed, but before the wall was put back up, my husband got the call that his father’s passing was at the any day stage. The weeks that followed were a blur of his travel to and from his mother’s house across the state, an ice storm with no insulated kitchen wall, a frantic push to finish the wall before the whole family traveled across state for the funeral, and finally, a week in the mountains where we all took a collective breath and got our heads back together.

Once we got back, somewhat refreshed and ready to put a fork in this thing, windows went in, and suddenly the dark, damp cave started showing some real promise.

Let there be light!

Things started really moving after that. Insulation, hanging drywall, and taping/floating became three things that I knew wouldn’t make it on my list of hobbies to pursue, but I had no idea I’d hate them so much. Each step was more awful than the one before, but they got me visibly closer to the part of the project I was excited about (design), and ultimately closer to my goal of having my space.

These pictures represent everything I’d like to never do again

And then it was time. I had electricity, walls, windows, and air conditioning and it was time to take the vision out of my head and put it into this little space. The week I spent painting (yes, an entire week) was far more enjoyable than the week I spent tearing walls down. I happily touched up scuffs and bleed-throughs because it wasn’t mudding drywall seams. For three weeks, putting the touches that turned this space from a storage shed into The Shed was my full-time job. We ate pizza at 8:00 on a school night because I HAD to get the flooring laid. I woke up every morning with a list of what I wanted to accomplish that day. It really did border on obsessed. I set a deadline of April 23 for move-in. It would be one year to the day of when we moved into this house. And with the help of my amazingly tolerant husband, I made it.

I give you: The Shed

It’s not a dark cave anymore!
This ceiling was a literal pain in the neck, but I love how it turned out!
Love this quote from Audre Lorde
A 4th grade student painted these pictures of my dogs 4 years ago, and I love how they identify their area

It is literally everything I wanted it to be. It’s quiet and cozy. It’s feminine and inspiring. I feel creative and at peace in this space. I could not be more pleased with the outcome. I can’t wait to see what I create in this space.

The Shed

January 18, 2022

About a year and a half ago, in September-ish 2020, the housing market in the area I live in went crazy. We’re talking houses with multiple offers 20% over asking price within 24 hours of being listed crazy. Unfortunately for my family, we are not prophets, and we sold our house about a month prior to this boom; thereby missing out on the insane profit that houses were suddenly fetching, as well as facing a weird situation where we couldn’t afford to buy a house equal to the one we had just sold because of the unexpected market shift. To call the whole experience frustrating would be a gross understatement. I’ll admit, our list of what we wanted in a new home was pretty specific: we did not want a new build (BTDT), we did not want an HOA (also BTDT), we wanted at least 1/2 acre of land, and it had to be in our current school district. We were looking to downsize from our previous house, but with my husband now working from home (thanks, Covid) and me exploring starting a business of my own, it had to have enough space to accommodate offices for both of us. Finally, after 8 months of renting and 10 failed offers, we ended up in a cute little farmhouse on 1/2 acre with enough projects to keep us busy for the next decade.

After 8 months of waiting, we finally moved into this little yellow collection of projects (but those trees!)

The house checked all the boxes, if barely. It’s definitely not a new build (it’s “newly updated” which is code for “don’t look too closely”), there is no HOA (this neighborhood would give an HOA board a nervous twitch), it’s on 1/2 acre, and it’s in our school district. It’s smaller than our old house and it has a separate office space for my husband. The only thing missing is a designated office space for me. Fortunately, there is a guest bedroom, and we only host guests a few times a year, so I set up my desk in the corner, and it works just fine as long as neither of my kids are home as the guest room shares walls with their bedrooms, and being the passionate gamers they are, it can get loud and somewhat distracting. It usually is an acceptable space though, and has served me well enough for the last 9 months.

I’m coming to a place that “well enough” isn’t really good enough anymore, though. My business plans need a space that isn’t confined to a corner of a bedroom where spirited shouts of a computer game from the wall behind me don’t rival those of the wall beside me. I want a place that is mine; a space that is quiet and calm and invites creativity. Luckily, among my 1/2 acre of projects there is… a shed.

So nice of them to paint it yellow to match the house

Words to currently describe this building are: small, dark, mildewy, wasp-filled (mostly dead – we’re working on it), and ugly.

I’m choosing to look past all that though, and see the potential for what it could be which is cozy, bright, inviting, and MINE. The more I’ve thought about it, the more excited I’ve gotten. This could not only be my perfect office space at the end, it could really be a great experience in the journey. I’ve told my family of my plans, and instructed them that this is something I want to do on my own terms; meaning I may need help, but make me ask for it (I struggle with that). And when I do ask, I don’t want someone to jump in and do it for me – guide me. If this is going to be my project, I want to have ownership in it. If it turns out amazing (in my head it already is), I want to allow myself to feel the pride that comes with it. If it turns out to be a flop, I want to learn the lesson in the failure and pull myself up and try again.

I’ll be posting updates on Facebook and Instagram under #operationmonyascastle and periodically, I’ll post about the process here. If you can’t tell, I’m crazy excited about this. People in my real life are going to be sick of me talking about it in a month, and I don’t even care. I have my tools, gloves, and safety glasses ready – demolition starts Saturday!