I was recently forced to move my Cinebeats blog over to WordPress and to make my life easier I decided to move all my blogs to WordPress. I’ve been neglecting Mid-Century Living lately but I’ve got a lot of material for future posts so I’ll be trying to update more regularly from now on. I’ve also just opened an Etsy shop that’s been in the planning stages for a few years so this blog will also serve as a news portal for the shop where I can share updates and information.
While moving my Blogger archives to WordPress I came across an old post I wrote last year detailing my plans or “New Year Resolutions” for 2011. Naturally all my plans didn’t succeed and I was knocked off course by some unexpected problems including a costly car accident, dental surgery and pet health expenses but I did get a few things accomplished and I learned a lot. I learned that restoring & renovating our old house – with no previous renovating skills & a very limited budget – is going to take much, much longer than I had anticipated. As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve spent most of my life living in apartments and adjusting to living in my own home hasn’t been easy but it’s also been incredibly rewarding. For the first time in my life I genuinely feel “at home” and I fall more in love with Napa every day. With all this in mind I decided to revisit my 2011 New Years Resolutions for 2012 and share an update of what I did accomplish and where I fell short.
1. Organize My Office & Finish Unpacking
My office is almost ready for its debut but we’re still unpacking. And there’s a lot of organizing to do and updates I want to make to my office closet space but they’re going to take time & money to accomplish. I’ll post progress photos soon.
2. Finish Patching & Painting the Living/Dining Areas
We’ve still got a ton work to do in the living area but the dining area is almost finished. I’ll also be posting some progress photos of this part of the house soon.
3. Refurbish & Update Our Fireplace
Hasn’t happened. Hope to get it finished before the end of this year. Don’t want to go through another winter without a fireplace.
4. Landscape the Front & Backyard
Hasn’t happened. We hope to make some progress on it in the summer but it’s going to be time consuming & costly. And we need to renovate our laundry room first (more on that topic later).
5. Create A Small Vegetable & Herb Garden
Attempted and failed. Tried growing basil and it didn’t work out. Instead of a green thumb I seem to have a black thumb. Hope to try my luck again when the weather’s better.
6. Research My Family’s History
Done! I accomplished a lot in this area but I’ve hit a brick wall. If I want to learn anymore about my family’s history I may have to hire some professional help, which I can’t afford to do. But the stuff I did learn has been well worth all the effort. I plan to share some of my discoveries soon.
7. Learn to Cook Better
Didn’t happen. The kitchen still needs some major repairs, which are slowly getting done. I really wanted to tear out the existing kitchen but we can’t afford to do that so our plan is to paint it and fix all the broken cabinets. I’ll share more about our Kitchen project later.
8. Take Part in More Physical Activities: Bowling, Hiking, Wii, etc.
Didn’t happen. I try to take 2-3 hour hikes at least every other week but I need to do a lot more than that. I spend way too much time sitting on my butt in front of a computer screen.
9. Open an Etsy Shop
Done! The shop has no inventory at the moment but the official “Grand Opening” is currently planned for next month.
10. Take more photos & write more fiction
Didn’t happen. I’ve had to put most of my creative endeavors on hold but I do have a couple of nonfiction book outlines in the early planning stages that I hope to complete by the end of the year.
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All in all we didn’t get nearly as much accomplished as I hoped we would but I’m not sweating the small stuff. We’re making progress and ever so slowly turning our old house into a home.
MID-CENTURY LIVING 