What a glorious Sunday afternoon! I grabbed lunch, went to get groceries, and wondered around Lowe's looking at plants and trying to conjure up ideas for landscaping our sad little new construction lot. I still have no idea what to plant, or even what will work/where. I'm just anxious to do something, since our neighbors just had like a whole forest hauled in on Friday and planted, and it looks soooo good. Not to mention a house in our neighborhood that I looked up on Trulia because I couldn't figure out why the listing price was so high, only to find they had a lush oasis in their back yard, complete with outdoor kitchen and a pool with stone surround and waterfalls. Then I gaze out the back porch of our house, staring at flip-flops and dog toys on the back porch, the grill just off the covered back porch, and at the back our our neighbor's house. I wish I had about $10,000 to landscape a more private oasis, but it's not in the cards at this moment. I don't even mind doing most of it myself, aside from planting huge trees- but I don't even know where to start.
I love our house, and our neighborhood has a demographic that is closest in age to us compared to all the different places we've lived, and, well, that's a lot of places considering my husband and I have moved a combined number of about 25 times in the last decade. We have the living room and kitchen looking pretty good. It's been painted, and we have probably the most furniture in those rooms. We need a new couch, and a few more pictures on the walls, but overall it's getting there. The dining room is another story. It's empty aside from a spare rug that our dog has taken to rolling on, and four chairs leftover from my apartment-sized kitchen table, which is now in my office. And the foyer is pretty big here and there is NOTHING in it. I spent a lot of time yesterday looking for a console table and a rug for the foyer and nothing ended up being what I have pictured in my head. I keep searching Craigslist hoping I can sore a nice dining room set, but everything is dated and ugly, or just completely not our style. Putting this house together is taking a lot longer than I'd hoped.
I suppose a little planning on both the landscape and the home decor fronts would probably help me be a little more efficient and focused, so maybe I'll start to keep a log of things I want/need to be on the lookout for. One kind of planning that I always love to do is planning my meals and exercise for the week.
I started doing this back in my Weight Watchers days and I used to be kind of crazy about it. I would plan everything down to the wire (or points) and get really mad at myself if I strayed from what I'd planned out. Eventually over time, I realized it was okay if I didn't follow my plan to the letter. Sometimes life happens, you forget to defrost the chicken, or something comes up and things have to change. I quit planning completely and found myself going through a time of eating a lot of really unhealthy convenience foods, which left me feeling gross and bloated and not motivated to get to the gym.
Now I do what I refer to as "loose planning". I decide between one or two breakfast items for the week, and one or two things for lunches and snacks and then just kind of jump back and forth between them. Dinners are a little more concrete for the most part, as I usually have to work them around after work workouts and such. Also, I've tried to be mindful of the prep time and elaborateness of weeknight meals, knowing that if I go to the gym after work, I'm likely to be too hungry to want to spend and hour prepping and another hour baking something. I want quick and simple. Stuff on the grill, stirfry and variations of pasta are good weeknight staples for me. I love to make fancy stuff too, but right now I'm just too busy to stress over it.
I also try to plan out my workouts for the week. I stick to the plan about 50% of the time with that, but at least I write down what I intend to do- what classes at the gym I want to attend, or what days I want to do weights. I do frequently change my mind and do other things (or nothing, some days), but at least it's a loose plan, and it does feel really good when I stick to most of it. Somewhere I've got to fit swimming into this equation if I want to get better, but those master's swim classes are at 7:30pm , and about 30 minutes away, meaning I get home/eat dinner/prep for next day at 9pm. Ugh.
It's so pretty today, and I didn't do much yesterday, so I think I'll take the dogs for a walk.
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