A-ha

For anyone who's reading this, besides my hubby or dear friend Nem, please don't worry that I suddenly dropped dead at the O You conference. Despite my sudden radio silence I did make it home safely. And happily. Since then I've been trying to take it all in and live what I learned. It hasn't been perfect. Just the other day my dear hubby said "hon, maybe you need to go re-connect with Oprah". Ouch.

I had my own "A-Ha" Moment during Oprah's speech. Rather appropriate, I'd say. I was so excited to be at O You and I wanted to share it with everyone who couldn't be there. I felt for the women who were disappointed at missing it, as I had been in the past. I caught myself snapping pictures, recording bits of audio or thinking about what to tweet, and I wasn't being present in the moment.

I noticed it as the little "whisper", as Oprah calls it, when my battery started dying in the middle of the day. Did I really use the phone so much that the battery's already getting low? Then Oprah walked onto the stage looking absolutely amazing. I took a few pictures of her onstage and on screen, like below, to remember being there. I caught myself being so distracted in preserving the moment that I wasn't actually experiencing the moment.

And then an amazing thing happened...My phone died. I actually laughed because I knew it was a small version of the "smack upside your head" that Oprah talks about. I was grateful for the reminder to look around me. I was having a moment that I had dreamed about since I was 10 years old, 25 years ago, watching Oprah after school while my single mom worked. So I listened, and I mean really listened, to what she was teaching. Because that's what Oprah does. She teaches, if you're willing to learn. Anyone who has watched Lifeclass can attest to that. More on that later.

What I learned that day I will share, this I promise. For now I leave you with something pretty amazing...A link to Oprah's speech at O You. Strength + Strength + Strength = Power.

O You Line-up

Here we go!

O Wow!

Well it's 6:15am and I'm in line for O You! I met some lovely ladies in my hotel lobby. Apparently I'm not the only excited early riser!

The lineup is long but the spirits are high. Stay tuned for updates all day!

Atlanta!

I'm now in the back of a taxi in Atlanta, blogging so I don't watch the driver navigate traffic. Next stop is check-in at the hotel, then find something half decent to eat. Why does airport food have to be so nasty? And expensive?

On the road!

It's Friday morning and time to leave for O You! in Atlanta. I'm on my way to the airport now, so stay tuned for live blogging and tweeting all weekend!

And a Happy Anniversary to my sweet hubby Chris. Not many guys would be cool with their wives hanging with Oprah on their 11th anniversary.

Atlanta here I come.

Dear Oprah...

It looks like the Fresh Start Project needs a fresh start.

Here's the ironic thing about this blog. What I created as an outlet to keep on track and relieve stress during a crazy time actually became one more thing for me to worry about. I began self-editing and thinking about blogging as a pain, rather than a really cool way to document getting back on my feet.

After lots of thought (and a long talk with my dear friend Nem) it became clear that I had to take another look at my project.

The move is over, we're (slowly) getting settled, and our new photography business is growing. It's time to focus on the physical and mental areas needing attention, and by that I mean my ever widening hips and how I'm coping with it.

It's back-on-track time. Step One? Hang out with Oprah and friends October 15th at the O You 2011 conference in Atlanta. Step Two? Write an email to Oprah and friends (once again at Nem's encouragement) telling them why you're traveling all the way to Atlanta to see them, just in case they are looking for a pet project.

Stay tuned for updates and tweets from O You. Wonder what the chances are that we'll hear "you get a car, and you get a car!"?

24 Days

A lot can happen in just a few weeks. We sold a house. Then within a week we fell in love with a new one. And in 24 days we'll have new keys in a new town.

A few days after I excitedly wrote about accepting an offer on our house, Chris took the kids for a weekend camping trip. I had a quiet house to myself with big plans to start organizing for the upcoming move. I had been dealing with a lot of back pain and leg pain but was working through it to tackle my to-do list. Life threw me a curve ball on my first day home alone however, and I should have seen it coming.

My first project was to sort and pack up my huge collection of craft supplies. I decided to put everything on the half-open ping pong table so I could reach it easier. The irony is I did this to avoid worsening my back and leg pain. It didn't take long for the table to collapse onto itself, smashing into my right knee and landing on my foot. The next couple of days involved a lot of ice, pain pills and heating pads, but thankfully not a cast. I somehow escaped without any broken bones, but did end up with bruises the size of melons.

It's been a couple of weeks and the bruises are finally faded.  I'm pushing myself to write and concentrate despite my reluctance, because the muscle and back spasms haven't faded like the bruises. Physical pain is maddening for so many reasons, but for me the biggest is how it affects my ability to get things done. It's tempting to stick with the distractions that I've learned can briefly take my mind away from pain...whether it's watching old episodes of Gilmore Girls or the Food Network, or playing a mindless game on the iPad.

What I need though is to literally get back on my feet - or find a way to make the boxes pack themselves... We've hired a moving company to do the heaving lifting. If only they also sold magic wands I'd be in great shape.

But I've started us on this fresh start and despite writing about it frequently enough the progress is forward. We've fallen in love with the lakeside town I knew well as a child, Port Colborne, and my father and brother still reside in. With the move there comes great changes - considerably less living costs, the closeness to the water and parks, and a lot of small town charm. I'm sure there will be lots of posts about this in the months to come, since I've been told I "gush" about our new hometown. To that I ask, how could I not gush?

Going once...Going twice...

Sold! Sort of.

It looks like Friday the 13th is pretty lucky after all. After a week of back and forth, and back and forth some more, we've accepted an offer on the house. Now comes the sort of part of the deal - the window of time for the house inspection and financing conditions. Fortunately we have only 11 more days of limbo and if all goes well we'll be popping the bubbly.

Want to know how to ensure an offer on your house? Schedule an Open House for the weekend, then spend two days landscaping the yard and cleaning the house to get ready for it. As soon as the last bag of wood chips hits the garden the realtor will call with the offer. At least that's what happened to us.

Stay tuned for some great before/after shots of the yard and outdoor furniture.

Royal Tea

Why was the Royal Wedding of William and Kate such a big deal? As Frankie on ABC's The Middle said "it's the Superbowl times a thousand....with crowns"! My English granny would have been proud of my Royal Tea Party on Friday. And yes, I did wake up at 4am to watch the festivities live. We invited my mom as well as Syd's best friend Reilly and her mom Jen for an evening viewing at a more civilized hour.

I prepared a variety of tea, homemade scones with jam and cream cheeses,  and finger sandwiches (including heart-shaped PB&J for the girls) and Jen brought the delicious shortbread and Pinot Grigio. I must admit I consumed more wine than tea but granny would have appreciated that too. The food looked lovely on my mom's antique gold china, which I was excited to use for the first time ever.

I couldn't resist hand-making fascinators for each guest - a trip to the dollar store and a hot glue gun was all it took. For those of you who haven't been royal obsessed, fascinators are the feathery/flowery headpieces recently made popular by Kate Middleton. For extra fun I hung a William and Kate poster and put out flowers in tea pots. Each guest received a Ring Pop so we'd all have rings like the new princess.

Here are a few pictures from the party:

our royal treats and tea

the girls watching Kate and her father   (you'll have to take my word for it)

Jen and my mom under the Will and Kate poster. Don't they look awesome in their fascinators and dresses?

Reilly posing with my fascinator on, wearing her new dress

after shots

Here they are! The awesome house photos taken by Chris. Having a professional photographer in the family is so handy. Now to get ready for a second viewing tonight. Cross your fingers and toes!

       flooring, hardware, lighting, window coverings, and painted the walls and cupboards

another view of my favourite room in the house! 

the living room and dining room - newly de-cluttered and freshened up

another view - I love the NYC skyline above the sofa, a gift from Chris

the dining room and one of the entrances to the kitchen

kid's bathroom, newly painted with updated light fixture and some rubber ducky friends

master bedroom, de-cluttered with new lighting and window coverings

Matthew's room

Sydney's room

cozy family room with entertainment centre and lots of seating

the office - freshly painted and organized

the rec room - lots of work done here! ready for ping pong and video games

ensuite bathroom - no more green paint or flowered border

open house day

The sign is up. The flyers are printed. And today we had our first, and hopefully only, Open House. We had around 15 couples attend with a few really interested. After months of hard work and tough decisions we put the house on the market April 1st. We tried convincing our realtor Stan that we'd only accept 1.5 million for the house and not a penny less, but our April Fool's joke didn't get past him.

Showing the house feels bittersweet to me. On one hand it's exciting to have interest and potential buyers. But on the other hand, I want to say "get the hell out". I can't be the only one to be stressed and weirded out by this, right? Have I watched too many Sell This House type shows? The idea of strangers looking around my house is literally keeping me up at night. I stayed far away from the afternoon Open House, choosing instead some retail therapy combined with ridiculous amounts of sugar. More on why you'd be certifiably crazy to try losing weight while selling your house in another post...

One the plus side the house looks great! Chris did the photos for our listing (having a photographer husband is so handy!) and I'll post them this week.

I think this will be one of those times where I have to keep reminding myself that "this too shall pass". In order to get to the finish line, the fresh start, we'll have to overcome some challenges along the way. A new house will bring many positive things - more convenient location, new school and friends for the kids, and a bit more financial breathing room. I just need to remind myself that a few hundred times and I might just make it through this in one piece.

A new addition to our lawn - the sign is up!

back on track...

Recently we were clearing out a closet and I found a box filled with my old grade school diaries. I thought the box was lost years ago so finding them was a big surprise. There were several of them in the box, each one reflecting what I was into at the time. There was a green Anne of Green Gables diary, a sticker and glitter covered diary and a personal favourite, the diary covered in dire warnings to anyone who dared to read it.

Of course I had to stop what I was doing and immediately start looking through the pages. It's amazing how quickly you can be transported back to a different time, and a different version of yourself. I couldn't resist reading parts out loud to Chris, laughing until I cried at private jokes only I could possibly get. 

One thing stood out to me though, as I looked through the box. While I had a dozen or so different diaries in the box, they all had one thing in common. All of them were written in for a weeks, sometimes days, then left blank. I started them with enthusiasm, even writing messages to my future self, and then abruptly stopped. I couldn't help wondering why. 

Then I realized my 34 year old self had done the same thing with a blog that the 13 year old girl did with her diaries. It's been more than a month since I wrote on this blog and that's not ok with me. Today I sat down and forced myself to think about why this pattern was repeating itself, and why I had been putting off writing again. I started thinking about an article I read in May's O Magazine titled "Hope Springs Eternal" by Robin Romm. She ended the article with "There would be new fresh starts. There would be new hopes."

So here's what I figured out today...When the initial excitement of starting a blog, or a new teenage diary, wears off what you're left with is the actual look inside. You're writing down your feelings and thoughts and it's more real. When I would get to the point where this honesty became uncomfortable I'd make excuses to put off writing. Too busy with getting the house ready to sell. No one will read it anyway so it doesn't matter. I'll do it tomorrow. After time goes by it's easier to start a new diary, or blog, than it is to pick-up where you left off. 

Fresh starts don't have to be all or nothing, a one-shot deal. You can fall down, as I did with writing, and get back up. Here's to breaking the cycle of my 13 year old self and finally keeping a diary, because this version of me has lots left to say.

naked in the driveway

Last week we took advantage of some warmer weather and tackled another big item on our to-do list. My brother Paul kindly (or possibly insanely) offered to give us a hand on his day off. I don't think the poor guy had any idea what he was signing up for.

It was time to finally deal with the dreaded garage clean-up. We had let our garage turn into the dumping ground for everything imaginable, including boxes and cans from missed recycling days, furniture waiting to be re-finished, and leftovers from our fall yard sale. 

I've been told most people have similar "dirty little secret" rooms...you know, the room that always has the door shut when company's coming.  For me, the garage had become completely embarrassing because it didn't reflect how I wanted our home to be. 

Less than an hour into the project I found myself standing in front of my garage, feeling completely exposed to the neighbourhood. I was naked in the driveway. Ok, metaphorically, but it sure felt real. Cleaning out your messy garage isn't easily done behind closed doors, like a messy guest room would be. We were providing a show for anyone walking their dog or driving on by. The local Goodwill store actually asked us to stop bringing loads of donations that day because there was so much stuff. Seriously.

And that's when I decided I was either going to laugh about it, or cry about it. It was that simple. I grabbed the camera and decided to embrace the chaos. Chris was pretty puzzled by this, since I had been complaining about my embarrassment since the garage door went up. He just shook and head and laughed at me for taking photos and blogging about the mess I had been wanting to hide from the world.

You can tackle these procrastinated, embarrassing, messy, and chaotic projects, and come out the other side better off.  The time comes when you need to just do it and to hell with what the neighbours think. Because the truth is, somewhere in their lives they probably have their own room with the door always shut too.

Here are a few before & after shots of the garage clean-out. Next up will be a few hours of organizing what is left, a project we're saving for the next spring-like day. Stay tuned for the finished look in the next few weeks!

The chaos before! The enormous recycling pile is to the left and all the Goodwill stuff is in boxes and bins.

Empty floor space after! Imagine that. Still unorganized but a million times less cluttered with junk.

What's left after many, many trips to Goodwill. 

cutest helpers ever

It has been all-hands-on-deck around here lately. Here are some shots of the kids and Chris tackling the big kitchen paint job.

Sydney

Matthew 

Chris

melting down

I've wondered if all my recent change the world kind of talk sounds annoying and unrealistic. Am I painting a picture of this being a piece of cake that's not accurate...I thought writing about today's meltdown might make sure I'm showing the whole the reality of how I'm managing.

Picture it. It's early morning and I've just spent the past half hour trying to drink a cup of hot tea without wearing it. Bella, our 6 month old Golden Retriever, has more energy at 6am than my nerves can handle. She's determined to get on my lap, and help drink my tea, whether I like it or not. Follow this with her attempting to drag me across the icy backyard to bark at her nemesis Oliver (the neighbour's Labradoodle, who by the way isn't even outside) and my blood pressure is getting up there.

Yes, I know I need to use my calm, assertive energy with her at this point. I have all the Cesar Millan books and most of the time I do well channelling the Dog Whisperer. I even attempted watching recorded episodes in the morning to practice staying calm with Bella. Guess how that worked out? Bella likes to watch with me (very cute) and then bark at Caesar and his dogs (not even a little cute).

However...knowing what you should be doing and actually having the patience to do it are sometimes two different things, especially when someone won't let you drink your damned tea. What should come out as a firm "tssst" sound to correct Bella actually comes out sounding more like a snarled "ssssssstop itttttt!" followed by a rather childish "ugggghhh, Bella!" Anyone who has tried to handle a puppy's energy not matching your own should know what I'm talking about here.

Add to this a ringing phone, a kid who keeps telling you she doesn't want to go to school but you know really should, lunches to make when you forgot to get groceries (again), the moody cat sitting by her empty bowl glaring at you, dishes in the sink that still haven't washed themselves and by the way, a realtor coming over in a few hours to talk about the house that's not ready.

And that's when I lost it. As in head-spinning, ears-ringing, get-me-outta here kinda lost it. Those around me could sense the shift in atmosphere and took cover. I had the kids dropped off at school, puppy in the crate and cat in hiding within minutes. 

Then I did what any good overwhelmed mother does. I grabbed a piece of chocolate and locked myself in the bathroom. No one can find me there, right? I found a quiet place to catch my breath and re-group. When I finally emerged, slightly calmer but still frazzled, Chris (my hubby) smiled sweetly (and also fearfully) and said "Hun, remember you started a blog....the whole fresh start thing...new approach to life and all that?" Damnit. I hate it when he's right.

So it's been a few hours since then and I've remembered that whole blog thing. The realtor came and went, and you know what? I survived. Yes, he did comment "wow, you still have a lot of work to do, eh?" several times, but ok. So does my father-in-law. And as Chris said, we'll just prove 'em wrong.

Closer to the For Sale sign

Today has been another exhausting but productive day tackling the list of projects to finish. Many more bags and boxes made their way to the local Goodwill store. There was a new sense of urgency today because tomorrow afternoon our realtor is coming by to talk about selling the house.

It's one thing to know you're selling your house sometime in the near future. It's another to realize you're actually about to have strangers walking through your house, even the rooms you use to hide your mess. Everyone has that room you don't want anyone to go in. The place where your old exercise equipment and boxes of clutter go to die.

Here's the thing...When you're in the process of downsizing and selling your house, you're forced to take a look at your house and your stuff with a different perspective. You have to see things how a potential buyer would, because we all stop noticing things after we've looked at them for a while. I found myself asking questions today like "How long has this been here?" and my favourite, "Why the hell didn't we do this sooner?".

Letting go of things hasn't been easy to say the least. Feeling how different and good a space feels when it's free of clutter has made it easier it though. Because as I told my son today, if something doesn't have a purpose or make you feel something when you look at it, why hold on to it?

Speaking of "why didn't we do this sooner?" here are some "before" shots of our kitchen. I have despised the wood cupboards and pepto bismol paint colour (not to mention the grapes border just removed) since we moved in 5 years ago. The transformation is almost complete and I'm thrilled with the results. Stay tuned for the awesome "after" shots.

Before the painting and new light fixtures.

Cupboards before their makeover. Won't miss them for a second.

Chris and his dad worked so hard on the new laminate.

New Year, New Beginnings

Six weeks ago the new year started and it kick started a lot of big changes. Weight loss and exercise that I took seriously this time. Downsizing our home and our stuff. Re-focusing priorities. Organizing what matters. Getting my strength back. This is not your cliche resolution made on a whim. This is a complete look at my life and anything that is bringing me down. Around here we're calling it our Fresh Start Project. It's anything but easy to take your life and shake it upside down, but so far, it's oh so worth it.

I've started and stopped blogging several times over the past couple of years. I never stuck with it but couldn't figure out why. What I've realized is that I hesitated because I didn't believe that I had something others needed to read about. I didn't want to write during the difficult times in my life because I didn't think the world needed another blog complaining about life. What's different now? My perspective. I've put one foot in front of the other to change what's not working instead of waiting for the change to come to me.

I recently heard Oprah ask someone what the world needs to know about them. She asked what their purpose was. It made me think long and hard about how I would answer that question.

What I'd tell her is that I've learned the meaning of "this too shall pass". You can reach the limit of what you think you can handle - physically, mentally, financially or even all three - and still keep going.  When you come out on the other side of this tough time you absolutely have to get what this experience has taught you, and change your life because of it. 

And that's why I'm finally ready to write.

Our "before" shot taken Dec '10. Sydney, Bella (4 months) me and Matthew