City and the Sticks Designs

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

 

Why, hello there.

If you’re looking for signs by City and the Sticks Designs, you’ve come to the right place !  Well, sort of.  My website is currently under renovation (as is my house… fun how they both are taking ages to complete.  Not.).  So pleas

e bear with me.  To be honest, I’ve been spending any and all of my free time focused on designing and hand painting new signs and preparing for markets.  That and I am so not website literate.  Which means that it’s much easier to put off hunkering down and working on the good ol’ website.  Sorry ’bout that.

Anyway !  If you are interested in checking out my signs, please head to the Welcome page, or just jump right on over to my facebook business page, City and the Sticks Designs.

I Can See Clearly Now

**HOUSE UPDATE !!!!!!**

I’ve been waiting a long time for this.

This piece of the puzzle has been the biggest hold up in ‘finishing’ our kitchen renovation.
And now – it is done!!

Our kitchen was installed over a year ago and Lee and I had poured over tile samples for our backsplash for a long time. We then had our tile guy, Derek, come over to quote the work and a small little question that he asked made everything grind to a halt.

“You’re planning on replacing the window, right?”
“Yup!!” [With big smiles turning slightly less toothy]
“Good – when? Because it would be a bad idea to install the tile before replacing the window.”

[Cue head smacking]

Of course. The window. We knew that all of our old, leaky, single pane windows would need to be replaced eventually but for whatever reason we didn’t think about the order of installs. Duhhh.

Or the dolla dolla bills associated with window replacing.

[Cue wallet clutching]

After a bunch of window quotes and style changes, we realized that this pricey endeavor would put the entire kitchen on hold for a bit.

And a bit ended up being over a year.

The initial quote we got was $1200 for supply and install of a new window. It blew our minds. We were scraping bits of our jaws up off the floor for weeks. We realized windows were pricey but the install was going to cost us even more than the window itself!!!

So, we decided we would tackle a window install DIY style instead, so we could “pocket” the $700 plus instead of throwing it out the proverbial window.

But $300-500 for a window was still no chump change when budget cuts had recently been made due to an addition in the fam jam and curveballs that life throws our way sometimes – so it took a long while of saving pennies for them to finally add up to somethin’ somethin’.

Which brings is to March 2014.

On one of the sunniest weekends we’ve had in the great white north lately, my dad and my man went to town removing the old window and installing the new one.

My nerves were going – quite fearful that the window we had saved for would accidentally fall and shatter – but lo and behold, all went so well you’d think they were pro’s.

 

I don’t even care that I have yellow spray foam as part of my kitchen decor right now. It serves as a reminder that the step I’ve been waiting for for far too long is just around the corner!!

Bring on the marble backsplash, baby!!

Resolving to NOT have a New Years Resolution

Happy New Year! Hello to 2014 and the wild adventures you’re sure to take us on (as wild as adventures can get as a stay at home mom with two kids can get, that is)!

So many things happened last year. More than I could keep up with at times, and definitely more than I blogged about. Can I get a round of sad looking eyes for the pitiful fact that I only blogged 8 posts in all of 2013?! Seriously, pitiful.

Yes, I’ve had my hands full (really though, who doesn’t?!). Yes, ‘being busy’ is a great excuse for not writing on a blog that is mostly read by people who already know most of the happenings in our life. And no, I’m not calling it pitiful because I’m trying to become some great blogger who writes a post a day (or even a week) who has an insanely large following (which would be cool but not the intention of me writing). But, I do find writing only a measly 8 posts sad because I enjoy writing so very much. It’s cathartic for me and it is also so very fun to look back and read posts and remember that time in my life. A life that is super full, sometimes makes me spin and ‘I can’t remember if I ate lunch or not’ kinda life.

Which leads directly into this thought that the life I’m living is a life that I love. And choose. But for 2014, I also want to choose to be better with my time. Which means less farting around, mindlessly scrolling on various social media sites (aka time suck sites), and purposefully avoiding things like cleaning and laundry and more about bringing Balance and Productivity to my life.

I’ve decided that will be my New Years ‘resolution’, folks, and a slightly atypical one at that.

But instead of calling it a resolution, I’m calling it my mindset, my focus, for this year. Not necessarily needing to eliminate anything from my life, only to fall short a few weeks in, but to be conscious of the decisions I am making every day. And to allow for it to spill over into many facets of my life.

To see the cause and effect in my decisions. To be aware. To be productive in my life (in all areas – from laundry to putting away said laundry, to feeding my kids, to blogging more than a sad 8 times in a year, to managing my newly founded business, etc!). And to be incredibly balanced while I do it.

Finding balance is one of those big toughies for plenty of folks and can only really be accomplished when being 100% present. So I readily recognize that saying ‘I’m gonna have a super balanced life’ is easier than doing, but there is so much that I yearn to do or be a part of. Which means that I need to be constantly aware of whether or not I’m twiddling my thumbs or being mindlessly unproductive versus being too busy or too rushed or too productive even, to sit down and enjoy the little things. The important things. The eternal things.

And to get you thinking… what mindset change would YOU want to work on for 2014 ?