Author: Staci

Staci blogs about travel at TheVoyageer.com.

Happy Administrative Professional Day to me and to you
(if you are in fact an administrative professional)! 

Fun fact: I love getting flower arrangements, as long as it’s at a
convenient time and I don’t have to walk around with them or anything.

Thankfulness

It’s so easy to get trapped in a tunnel of unhappiness… one bad thing makes you think of everything else that’s going wrong, and suddenly your life has no meaning or purpose or hope. Yes, I’m the champion of this, and lately it’s been easier and easier to go down this tunnel.

Today, instead of getting bummed out by any number of things I could dwell on, I am choosing to be thankful instead. Here’s my gripe list turned thankful list, in parallel order. Is there a fancy term for that?

Gripe list:

  • Doug’s truck was doing something strange this morning so he took my car & I biked to work.
  • My job is stressful and for the past three weeks has been running me ragged.
  • I have too many projects started and have stalled out on all of them.
  • The feeling of stagnation I have regarding my blog and my career dreams…
  • A good friend is moving far, far away and I’ll miss him too much…

Thankful list:

  • I’m thankful my work is only about 1 mile from home and that I have a new bike that is a better size for my body (the old red one was too tall).
  • I’m thankful to have a well-paying, 8-5 job, and for the experience that will help me know what to look for/avoid when the time comes to move on to something else.
  • Payday is this week and I can get a jump on some of those projects (swapping out some “cold gold” paint for a more “goldy” gold, for example).
  • Again, in reference to payday–ordering a custom stamp online so I can make some blog/interior design business cards is a goal for this weekend!
  • I am thankful he is getting the opportunity to spread his wings and experience another state, and be close to his love.

Hasta La Vista, Juan

For all that our lot lacks in width, it makes up for in depth. Just take a gander at the space we have available for our upcoming backyard rehab. I’d estimate that the lot is at least three times deeper than it is wide. This is great! Except for the fact that our bathroom window looks directly into our neighbor’s carport/side door. Creepy.

So here we have the bathroom (photo lazily plucked from my home tour), note the nasty yellowish mini-blinds:

When we moved in, there was a ton of very tall and thick bamboo (some of it sickly/dead) that grew well past the window and blocked any visibility. But during the house-painting process, we weeded out the sickly pieces and the bamboo got chopped fairly short. One day we arrived at home to find out that our neighbor had removed it altogether! (Pretty sure it was on our property… but whatever…) We were left with nothing but extremely dirty mini-blinds to prevent any kind of peep-show from happening. We do not want to build that close of a relationship with our Spanish-speaking neighbor.

(Ah, now the post title makes sense…)

This photo not only shows how terrible the artificial light is during a cloudy day (in our case, last Saturday, you may have heard about the day when 100 tornadoes touched down in Kansas. Luckily our city was spared) or when it’s dark outside, but… “Oh, hello there!” You can see all up in our neighbors’ business.

As I mentioned before, the mini-blinds were dis-gus-ting. They had to come down. But we had to come up with another solution. So, as an alternative I took my inspiration from Young House Love (as usual) and got some window-frosting film from Home Depot. Following their hilarious photo-based instructions here we successfully applied it to the windows. Let’s just say it wan’t HARD, but it was no piece of cake either. But these two small panes were a great opportunity for our first shot, and it turned out OK.

Now, the mini-blinds are stored in the basement, with all the hardware attached in a ziplock baggie, just in case someone wants to put them back up someday. I surely won’t.

Doesn’t the room look nicer without all that junk off of the window? Let me tell you, it is much less claustrophobic. Still needs to be touched up where I removed the hardware. The paint can is literally sitting in the bathroom, I just have to do it. I’ll probably take care of it this weekend.

Now if only we could do something about that horrific lighting fixture above the sink… Naturally… I have my ideas for it…