The Great Outdoors

The great outdoors, a far away place for some. I enjoy the great outdoors. I love to camp, swim, walk, boat, hunt, fish, .... I have grown up watching my mother work in the garden during the summer and I have decided that now is the time for me to follow her lead and continue to enjoy the great outdoors in a new way. My mother has decided to completely tear out her flower gardens this year. If you knew my mother, you would understand that next year she will spend countless hours and money recreating these flower gardens. If mom isn't going to have beautiful flowers for me to sit and look at I am going to have to put in the labor and create my own oasis. Come along for the ride and see how a true novice makes it this year in the flower garden. Who knows, maybe I will even try vegetables next year.

Monday, November 25, 2013

Nature Vs. Plans

I had planned to write today about how I was working on raking leaves and completing fall preparations around the house.  I can write about that, but there will be no pictures to go along with it.  My plan was to work in the yard today and enjoy the brisk air while getting in some exercise.  Thanksgiving is coming up this week and that is literally my only day off other than today.  I will be pushing the raking and yard work to next week because the brisk air contained a wintry mix including sleet and rain.

There will be time this week to take care of a few other projects on the exterior of the house.  I will be tackling the repair of the bird feeder at some point.  It should be a quick fix with reattaching the hanging wire.  Watching the birds in the winter months is a great way to cheer up and enjoy the outdoors on chilly days from the comfort of a warm house.

There are a few pieces of yard furniture that will retire to the shop for the winter months for protection against the elements.  Last winter I was supposed to recover the cushions for the swing, that never happened.  This year I plan to get that accomplished by my birthday in March.  I guess if I give myself plenty of time to accomplish it and an end date maybe it will actually happen.

This weekend after the holiday festivities it will be time to get on with decorating for the Christmas holidays.  I will be having a small group of female friends over on December 5th for an annual gathering at my house.  My lovely mother is going to help me transform my house for the gathering in just the few days.  We plan to do minimal decorations inside and outside.  The tree is usually my main focus but even that I always like to keep simple.  Just a few small touches throughout the house.  My main goal will be cleaning and organizing the house as a whole.

A few small projects for the week, inside and out.  Maybe you will be able to mark a few things off of your list for the week as well.

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Time to kill the grass!

I always seem to start on this blog and then abandon it.  It seems that I need a creative outlet in my life and I am going to attempt to keep this blog updated.  I plan to post on here at least once a week and hopefully more often.  I am also going to be posting on Healthy J and trying to improve my life as a whole.  

I have decided to begin to do a great deal of editing in my life.  I am going to be purging a great deal of material possessions in order to concentrate on the things that I love in life.  The eventual plan is to be able to purchase a few acres of land in the country where we can build a very small house and live quite modestly.  We both enjoy traveling and know that we want to work at our leisure doing things that we enjoy.  We have a few self-employed friends and while they have stress in their jobs, they enjoy them immensely.  We both hope to be able to share in that joy one day.  Again, this is an eventual goal.

Purging our material possessions and keeping only what we need and love is our primary goal.  My dearest is better at this than I in many ways.  I am going to put forth a great effort though.  There is no reason for me to need 15 ratty old t-shirts.  I only need maybe two.  We only need minimal eating utensils as well.  There is no reason for the abundance of items that we possess.  We both know this.  We are going to decide on the things that we do want to keep and offer the others up to family and friends for the picking.  What they don't want we are going to donate.  We have discussed selling these items online or at a yard sale, but we honestly don't want to deal with the hassle.  Our time is more valuable to us than the small amount of money that we would make on the items.  Knowing that someone in need will be getting the items and we will have a tax write off is more valuable to us.

Getting to the gardening part of this whole idea now...I am going to be actually doing all of the things outside the house in the yard that I have claimed I was going to do for the past 2-3 years.  My mother is also having a small vegetable garden this year and has done a lot of work to her flower beds over the past couple of months.  I hope to be able to post pictures of the process.  I am going to try to keep this blog on the gardening theme, but I am toying with the idea of starting an additional blog to track our progress toward living the simple life.  I just might keep that one as a private blog until I am completely committed to keeping it going.  One thing at a time.