Five Hundred Dollars

About a week before Ross left for Australia, I started making a list of things that I wanted to do while he was out of town.  You know the list - one of those massive and overly ambitious "Ill show you how capable I am doing everything on my own" sort of lists.  Well, after about 4 days the list got whittled down to the manageable stuff, but I still got quite a few things down.

I decided to pull some money out of my savings account for the "home improvement" project fund.  And, with the help of my sister, my dad, and some babysitting from my mom, here's the short list of everything that I got done in two short weeks.

• Hang blinds in all the house (10 windows to be exact).  The blinds were of course, all the wrong size so my dad and I had to hacksaw our way through this project, and I had to return a couple that just weren't going to work.
• Paint and create a map wall.
• Print and display cute cell phone pictures on cork boards.
• Make and hang a head board for my bed.
• Dig a distinct flower bed all around the house, pull out the grass, plant flowers and tall grasses - i.e. make the house look a little more civilized.
• Hem living room curtains.

These were the 5 major projects and I came in $6 under budget. There were lots of other little things I had to do like yard work, and house work, and laundry, and shavy jones work, and taking care of the kids, but finishing these projects on my own (with my family's help) felt like a major accomplishment.