Does anyone else adore Halloween? We love it to death!!!
Entertaining Ideas for Your Halloween Guests
22 Sep 2018 13 Comments
in Positive Energy Tags: decor, design, entertaining, fall, fun, Halloween, October, skeletons
Another Jo Project – A Daughter’s Room Makeover Surprise with Ocean and Beach Themed Design and Decor
29 Jul 2018 10 Comments
in Positive Energy Tags: beach, child, children, decor, design, design and decor, makeover, ocean, parenting, redecorate, room, rustic, surprise
***Originally posted on https://anotherjoproject.com/.
I struggle with a tremendous amount of anxiety when my kids are away. It’s a long-standing pattern within my persona, and my therapy of choice for stress relief is to tackle another self-created project. To my husband’s great dismay, it’s an endless task, but I do turn out some fun results at times. So when my children went away to camp this past week, I channeled that nervous energy into decorating my daughter’s room.
She had been asking me to create an ocean and beach themed room for her since we moved into this home several months ago. Her walls remained bare because I had yet to put her room at the top of the design agenda. I didn’t have a design plan in mind, but I typically don’t until I get to work on a specific space. Regardless I was certain that it was going to be a monster project. Consequently it was perpetually hanging at the caboose end of the “Rooms Still Pending Design Work” list.
Although her room was bland, she kept it lively with random and ever-changing mountains o’ crap. As the mountains weren’t her optimal theme, she patiently waited her turn. To her sincere credit, she never complained nor did she make the slightest fuss when multiple other rooms were completed long before her own. As she had no idea that I was going to do anything to her room (likely because I came up with the plan minutes before her departure), it was a tremendous surprise for her (and an excellent time crunch motivator for me).
To put it mildly, this room was a serious beast to knock out in under a week but I had been stockpiling a few ocean and beachy knick-knacks here and there. Thankfully Amazon Prime and Hobby Lobby were able to fill in a substantial amount of the gaping holes of my unplanned approach.
We also created several large display pieces with some unused distressed wood that we still had on hand from an office wall project I put together several months ago (that’s a separate post for another day). The pieces included a unique picture frame holder, a wreath display, and a name board. From a skill perspective, these weren’t difficult to complete. However from a time and pain in the butt-ness perspective, they were projects I would not recommend one do in a limited timeframe. I will write a post with DIY tips on how to create these for those who are interested.
Incredibly, we completed the room and put on the finishing touches right before we ran out the door to pick the kids up at the end of their camp week. It was exhausting beyond words, but her wonderfully shocked and ecstatic reaction made it all worth while.
More often than not, my life fails to look like the stuff of Hallmark movies. We mess up constantly. Lose our tempers. Get it wrong and then find a way to make it even worse.
But every now and then, we really get it right. And when that happens, it’s an immense gift to all of us.
I believe strongly in the value of creating a personal space that makes a person feel good, and it is extremely important to me that my family feels that their home is warm, inviting, and special. I love that I was able to create this room for my daughter because her elation with calling it her own is palpable.
Rejoice in the big parenting wins when they happen, but find joy in the smallest of good moments as well. It doesn’t have to be a room redo or a massive surprise. A simple “I love you” in the morning or a sweet note in a lunchbox is a world changer for children.
It’s not about the presents. It’s about your presence. Be there, see them, and let them know that no ocean in the world is anywhere near as deep as your love for them.
If you would like help with your kids’ rooms, drop me a line. If you have fun posts on your child room decor, I would love to hear about that, too!
I wish the very best to you all! 🙂
Jo Price
***Originally posted on https://anotherjoproject.com/.
Resurrecting a Little Humor
24 Sep 2017 43 Comments
in Positive Energy Tags: cemetery, decor, fall, festive, Halloween, holidays, humor, irrelevant, remodeling, skeletons, spiders
We couldn’t afford to put in a pool, so we added a cemetery to the front yard instead. Oddly enough we couldn’t find a pre-made sign to highlight that addition, so we had to create the other hanging piece ourselves. Isn’t it so lovely???
As some of you already know, we have had our home on the market for a seriously long time. I wrote a post earlier in the summer discussing the countless joys of having numerous strangers tramp through our home to do fun things like breaking our blinds, leaving our doors unlocked, tracking muddy footprints from room to room, going through our drawers, and (still my personal favorite) sitting on our beds. (Note to prospective buyers: Neither our beds nor our bedding will be included in the sale of our home. Consequently you don’t need to test either of them out. Keep. Off.) While I never would have imagined that some buyers could behave so badly nor would I ever have planned for our house to be for sale for this long, I am truly thankful that we are still in this home at present.
Some of you may recognize that terrifying doll from the donation post I wrote. At last she has found her true purpose.
With that said, there are rules about what you should and shouldn’t do when trying to sell a home. Have the temperature at a comfortable level. Leave the house smelling fresh or with the scent of baked cookies hanging in the air. Don’t have clutter. Remove personal photographs. And maybe avoid hanging ginormous spiders and skeletons lurking around every corner.
The situation is this – Halloween is approaching. With it comes the chance for me to sass up the home and basically give my inner child a chance to be an outer child. Yes of course I already know that my inner child does not do a good job of staying hidden on most days anyway, but I utterly adore Halloween!
More accurately, I love every festive minute from mid-September to the end of December (except the post-Thanksgiving clean up and ugh my back hurts just thinking about that). I play Halloween movies (kid movies, horror flicks, dorky tales, lame 80’s VHS rips – whatever I can get my Freddy Krueger gloves on) until October wraps up, and then I’m right in Christmas movies (anything and everything except “Santa Buddies” – I must draw the line somewhere). I just love being surrounding with fun and magic and countless reasons to smile that can be seen anywhere you go.
But last year was different. Our house had already been on the market for a few months at that point and had yet to sell. I was extremely worried and didn’t want to decorate our home in a way that might turn a potential buyer off. We did very little to decorate the home, and the kids complained incessantly about it. Since this whole “having kids” business is old news to me, I didn’t sweat the actual complaining. The part that bothered me is that I didn’t feel like we were allowed to really live in our own home. We had to keep it looking a certain way just in case someone happened to come in who maybe might not like Halloween decor or might have a phobia about something we had displayed (I call those people “Halloweenies”).
Ultimately, we didn’t have one showing for that full month and a half. I had kept our traditions boxed up for the sake of someone who never showed up. Can you say Suck Central? That was then, but it’s a year later, and this next month and a half may be a completely different story.
And if that’s the case this time around, I sure do hope that they like Halloween. If they don’t, they don’t. If this isn’t the house for them, it isn’t the house for them. I’m done with living in a way that feels disingenuous to my family for the sake of a maybe. Until this house belongs to someone else, their decor plans are not relevant in my home. I’m not looking to taint my water bowl, but I’m not interested in feeling like I’m spending another hollow holiday in someone else’s house either.
It may seem like an insignificant move, but this is about telling fear to shove off (which is doubly ironic given that I am loading up the house with skeletons and spiders). This is about paying attention to what feels right to me and my family, and then honoring that feeling no matter how silly it may be. It’s also about remembering to keep humor at all times, and sometimes most importantly, during the stressful situations of our lives. We all face challenges and problems that are beyond our control. Our best option is to give our worries to God, pray for strength in the meantime, and just set those skeletons free.
“Life is too important to be taken seriously.” – Oscar Wilde
Isn’t she bootiful???
Love and light always – Jo
The Paragon of Purchasers – Get Out of My House Goldilocks
15 Jun 2017 15 Comments
in Positive Energy Tags: consideration, daily post, daily prompt, decor, design, home, house, house hunting, moving, paragon, photography
“Doesn’t want white kitchen cabinets” – So sorry about the misleading photo. I should have explained that these are NOT those fancy color-changing cabinets that look white in pictures but are actually dark brown in person.
Having your house on the market is a monster headache. People keep their shoes on, but they leave their reasonable standards of decorum and general sanity at the door.
Shoes on? No sweat. You may enter.
Basic consideration and sanity off? No way. You may bite me.
***Quick note of clarification – In our area, the seller’s realtor is NOT typically present at the showings. This means that potential buyers will view a house accompanied by their own realtor only. Consequently we have to rely on those other realtors to monitor their clients who are unable to behave like adults. Sadly that doesn’t happen as often as we would like.
“Wants to be on a cul-de-sac” – We mistakenly believed that the map on the listing showing that there was zero possibility of our home actually being on a cul-de-sac would have clarified that in advance.
I would like to highlight and respond to certain feedback left by a handful of memorable prospective buyers AFTER they viewed our house. These paragons of home buying madness serve as the model reason for never wanting to go through this crapola again.
If you are a home buyer with eyeballs (and based on security footage, they have all had them so far), I know that you viewed the detailed photos available online before you scheduled the showing. Every realtor and buyer within a zillion miles does this. Many of these same shoppers also had lengthy conversations with our realtor about our home prior to their appointments. They could have asked her about their specific requirements if they were in fact subject to ocular limitations.
“No upstairs patio.” – Let me start by thanking you for the few minutes of notice you gave us before demanding that we leave our home with our 2 giant dogs and 3 young kids because you HAD to see it right then or never. Although the online photos (the ones you mentioned you had reviewed extensively before the showing) clearly displayed that the back of our home did not have an upstairs patio (the requirement you mentioned after the showing), it was good to know that you felt compelled to verify that it was true from the inside of the home. From 8-9pm. On a school night.
Certain things seem rather obvious, but I have personally confirmed that being obvious means nothing in the world of realty. People leave useless feedback and ask our realtor questions that are so crazy that I wonder if they realized that they were using their out loud voices when they said them.
“There was no pool.” – Only one sly buyer was clever enough to recognize that the grass in our backyard was not an actual aquatic feature. This savvy shopper refused to be tricked into thinking that the large community pond located outside of our enclosed iron fence and backing up to two dozen other homes was actually a gigantic private pool we had built for our own use. This ruse was brazen on my part, but my cunning nature could not be suppressed. Most people who want to buy a home with a pool will be unable to comprehend the “No Pool” statement on the listing nor will they understand that the absence of a pool in all photos means that we don’t have one.
“Would they be willing to build us a pool?” – I’m not making this up folks. One bold prospect contacted our realtor to ask her if we would be willing to build them a pool. Naturally we said yes. We had just been waiting for someone outside of our family and income stream to ask. Please refer the photo (above) of the lake we told our realtor she could ask them to jump in.
And then there are comments like this…
“Whole house is green.” – Green like this pink room?
Or green like this blue room?
Maybe green like this aqua room?
Or probably green like this rusty-red room?
Despite my photographic evidence to the contrary, I would have been unaffected by the color comment if that was where it had ended with those people. The whole house isn’t green, but I will concede that a large portion of the house has grey green walls. Most people love it and we receive tons of compliments on it, but paint preference is subject to personal taste. The magic of these buyers was not in their feedback. It was the way they pushed their appointment back a full hour after we were 45 minutes into their original time slot. That meant an additional full hour of sitting in my car in a parking lot, being unable to work, being unable to go to the bathroom, and being unable to take my hungry kids home or anywhere else because we had the dogs with us since they can’t stay home either. I could have dealt with the rescheduling request, but they upped the ante and showed up at the second half of their appointment window and stayed to the very end even though they didn’t like the house.
Well apparently they wanted to be thorough to make absolutely sure that they didn’t like it because there were multiple drawers left slightly open. My OCD would never permit me to leave any drawer open at all ever, but this would be especially true if a possible buyer was coming. It would look unkempt in my OCD eyes. I arrange my Keurig cups, remember?? And on that note, they actually moved some of those cups around. I couldn’t believe it, but I laughed when I found it, because hey – at least they noticed the effort! I could also tell that they had tested the sofas both downstairs and upstairs because the pillows and blankets were smooshed and out of place. That wasn’t a big deal to me because I understand that people need to sit down. It’s when you opt to pull a Goldilocks move and SIT ON MY BED that I have to push the eject button. At what point will this mama bear be okay with total strangers parking their happy butts on my bed? If you responded “never ever ever ever ever,” you were correct! At least their comments didn’t say, “Sheets not soft enough.” But that’s silly. Of course my sheets are soft enough. Shout out to microfiber!
We have seen all sorts of wacky and tacky behavior over the past few months of living in a house on the market. There was the guy who tracked muddy footprints throughout the home, messed up all of my window treatments, and broke some blinds. He didn’t like the layout of the house, but I guess he needed to shred the house to confirm it. And then there was the local realtor (who also happened to be a neighbor) who scheduled an appointment so she and her husband could take a private tour. Not too long after that, she became the official realtor for another seller a few doors down. The sad part is that if she had just asked me if she could look at my house, I would have said yes. Instead she booked an appointment as if she was working on behalf of a potential buyer. We were forced to turn our Sunday upside down in order to prepare our home. While we were doing this, she was busy displaying her faithful devotion in Sunday school. Maybe it helps to cleanse prior to casing one’s competition (us). I guess they weren’t studying “Thou shalt not behave like a behind.” that day.
Here are a few other comments we have heard that are clear as day on the listing:
- too expensive (maybe don’t come here if you don’t like the price?)
- too big
- too small
- too many bedrooms upstairs
- not enough bedrooms upstairs
It’s exhausting.
This post is not directed at every prospective buyer who has entered our home. Most buyers and realtors have behaved like normal decent people in a stranger’s home. Some have put our home on their “maybe” list, and others were looking for something that we couldn’t offer. Maybe they disliked the layout or it just wasn’t they were looking for. I don’t mind that, and I really do get it if this isn’t your jam. House hunting is personal, and my prayer is that this house will be purchased by someone who feels like they are stepping into their new home, not taking a tour of someone else’s house.
“Fairy highrise is incomplete, and there are insufficient ladders.” – This is the one annoying comment I haven’t received, but the day is still young. I’ll finish it soon, but then I’ll probably get a comment about the need for a fairy elevator instead.
We aren’t on the local historical register, we don’t make money selling entry tickets, and we aren’t offering a design tour. This is where we live, and every showing disrupts our family immensely. Our children are tired of being pushed out of their space by careless people whom they have never met. We don’t allow strangers to test-drive our furniture and track mud throughout our freshly cleaned home because it’s fun for us. We want and need to sell this house. This is about courtesy and common sense.
It’s also about removing one’s head from sphincter prior to scheduling an appointment to enter another person’s home. If you are a perspective home buyer, please do that and do it in that order – not the other way around.
Thanks in advance!
***MoJo***
Paragon
A Paragon of Love
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/9418777/posts/56319
https://wordpress.com/read/blogs/100921263/posts/32880
Momentum of Joy 