3 Projects Completed

Remember the three projects we started working on back on February 21st? Well, we're done with those:

1. Prepare the front yard for veggie garden
2. Decorate the living room
3. Organize M's arts and crafts collection from last year

Ok, the #3 was the easiest of all and took me just a couple of days. It would've taken even less than that, but I had to wait until M was in bed or else I wouldn't get anything done at all.

I wrote about project #1 - veggie garden - some time ago. Here's an update - not only did we prepare the veggie beds, but we planted some of them mostly with greens. The radishes and lettuces are sprouting already!

Now, decorating the living room is kind of a really big project. What I had in mind was to put some kind of art work on one of the walls that looked bare and also to get a side table of some sort.

The art work project was done and I now have a place to show off my (for now very small) collection of sea shells, pebbles and driftwood. As for the table, we didn't have the budget to buy one. I thought about getting an old (antique) wooden crate at the flea market and make it into a table. But luckily I didn't get around to it.

Instead, I got a different and a much better idea (from the Decorating Junk Market Style book). Basically, it's a tree log from the tree that was cut down back in February. My super-strong hubby hauled it inside and screwed in 4 casters that we just happened to have (we misplaced them months ago, found them recently when cleaning out the upstairs linen closet and were getting ready to stick them into the attic). I think the end result looks very nice and it's totally FREE.

Now we are ready to select new goals and start working on them. Will update you on those as soon as we get them on paper.

3 Projects - February 21, 2010

What d'ya know? A few days after writing my previous post, 3 Projects - February 15, 2010, I landed a new client. This completed all 3 of the projects and I immediately came up with 3 new ones:

1. Prepare the front yard for veggie garden

2. Decorate the living room

3. Organize M's arts and crafts collection from last year

We had a small veggie garden in our front yard last year. It was so much fun for all, especially for M that this year we are expanding. In addition to the 3 raised beds, we will now have veggies and flowers all around the perimeter of the yard. We also hope to plant a couple of dwarf blueberries, some strawberries, and a goji berry.

Of course, there's a ton of work to do. So far we've done the planting diagrams for all the beds (subject to minor changes), bought all the seeds and ordered tomato and pepper plantings through Seed Savers Exchange and built some paths using woodchips from our woodchip mountain.

The plan for this weekend was to build all the planting beds (using sheet mulch), but the weather was nasty on Wednesday and Thursday and very cold on Friday; so we couldn't go pick up all the supplies for the mulch. This will have to wait until next weekend. That's ok; it's still too cold to plant even the hardy lettuces and radishes.

In the mean time, I am busy working on a DIY flea-market style project. Actually, it's a sub-project of #2 on the list - decorating the living room. Last weekend, what with all the nice weather and all, we went for a stroll at a flea market. And I happened to find this awesome bargain - a antique (?) printer drawer for an unbelievable $8! I've been wanting one (or three) for over a year, but could never justify spending $20-40 that they usually cost.

The awesome thing was that there was very little structural damage - only 1 small crack on the back, not a big deal at all. Of course, it required lots of cleaning. Actually, I didn't even realize just how much cleaning it'd need until I got started. But cleaning wasn't hard and even, to an extent, relaxing. Plus the results were amazing. So now I'm going to finally have a place for my tiny collection of sea shells (and with room for expantion).

Oh, and M's artwork project is DONE! I collected all his artwork from last year, cut it down to size, wrote dates on the back and filed in a storage box. It only took about an hour, but then again, we didn't have much stuff to begin with. Hopefully this year we'll do more arts and crafts projects.

3 Projects - February 15, 2010

I'm reading Leo Babauta's Power of Less book and it's great. So now I'm taking some actions. Don't want to make it a very long post (since I already wrote 2 long ones today and don't want to bore you to death with the details).

So, last week, on February 15, I wrote down 3 projects. The rule is you write down 3 projects, at least one of which has to support your BIG goal (more on that some other time) and concentrate on these goals until ALL of them are completed.

Here was my list:

1. Get the tree cut down


2. Find 1 additional client for my biz to stay on track for March


3. Build new compost bins

Each of this projects involves many steps. For example, before the tree could be cut down, we had to get the estimates, select the winning bid, raise the money ($850 in 2 days courtesy of my parents, our neighbor whose house the tree was about to crash, our renter who paid on time, and the Sell section on Craigslist), and schedule the removal itself.

Finding 1 additional client for my business is still a work in progress. But hold on, while we're on this, let me brag about my new client - Transparent Languages - and the blog I now write for - The Russian Blog.

And today we spent half a day building 2 new compost bins using some of our huge stash of woodchips. I think the bins turned out really well!