I've been thinking of writing a blog about nothing or everything for a while. I've tried the blog thing before, but I find it difficult to focus on a narrow beam of material over and over again. I have eclectic interests and tend to skip around from being very interested in one thing, say, software development, to another, like home design. Then I flip to Girl Scout leader mode out to being a food gardener. For a break, I might go all Disney obsessed. A lot of the time, I feel like writing a bit about the topic of the moment, if for no other reason than for capturing my current thoughts for the next time the topic strikes my fancy.
I own a domain that could host this blog, but I've found blogger to be user friendly enough. If I stick with this I will probably move it to a more "official" spot. I've started and abandoned a few blogs. It happens. I tried to grab the blogger URL "MindCapers" as that would
match my real domain name, but someone grabbed it years ago. "Aliya" posted once and abandoned it. Like I said, I've done it too, so I can't fault her much, but if she ever decides to give up the name (if that is possible), I'd be happy to have it. Maybe sometime after I get past one post I'll think about that some more. For now, I took "Capers" and combined it with "Crumbs", since this will be about all sorts of bits that bounce around my brain.
The thought of the moment is that I've had enough of gray, cold, icky Ohio winter. I'm not a fan of winter and every year about this time I ask myself why I didn't choose to live elsewhere. I could have lived anywhere, but this didn't occur to me when I was young and unrooted. Now that I'm older and rooted, where moving would involve getting myself a different job, getting Hubby to get a different job, selling our house, yanking our girls out of their good school to some unknown school, etc., well, that is a lot of work. Someday when Hubby and I don't have to work any more and the girls are out of school, someplace warm is on the agenda. At least during the icky winter. Snowbirds have the right idea.
On that thought, with several friends posting messages about their upcoming Walt Disney World vacations, I have Disney on the brain. We went last summer and I really, really want to go back. The checkbook says "no". It is saying "no" to next year, too. I was about to ask it about the year after, but it gave me a dirty look. Instead, I asked myself what it is about Disney that I find just so wonderful. My girls and I are big fans of
My Yard Goes Disney on HGTV. We have every single episode ever made recorded on our DVR and the girls and I watch them often. I think we've seen every one several times. One thing I know I like about Disney is all that glorious Florida sunshine. We get that in Ohio as well for a few months in the summer.
I've been reading a book about landscape design called
Home Outside: Creating the Landscape You Love by Julie Moir Messervy. I first encountered this author while reading
Outside the Not So Big House: Creating the Landscape of Home, which she co-wrote with Sarah Susanka. I like
Home Outside better right now, it breaks down landscape design better for me. The
Outside the Not So Big House book is more esoteric, but might make a good re-read after I get a good plan designed from
Home Outside for refinement of my plans.
Am I aiming for
My Yard Goes Disney? Mmm, not so much. Maybe some touches here and there, but I don't have the budget to make our property scream Disney. Don't get me wrong, if Brandon Johnson and friends want to come make over my 5 acres, they will get the green light, lots of smiles, and some Girl Scout cookies. We have lots of space, there just isn't much compelling outside to make me want to spend a lot of time out there. Read: 5 acres of mostly lawn. So, I'm working on a plan to improve our landscape, to be worked on over several years, as I've recently come to the decision that adding onto our house is never going to make financial sense for us. I had to get past the house addition idea before I could focus on the yard that would surround it. Alas, that dream has by the wayside, it's time for a new dream.
However, no matter how fervently I work this landscape plan of mine, it's still snowy, gray, icky Ohio February. For a quicker fix, I sucked down a bunch of Vitamin D and Googled this article about
Creating Disney Magic at Home. Though a trip to see The Mouse isn't in my near term picture, I bet I can swing a Disney night at home.
In a couple years, less if you gauge desire and more if you gauge funds, I'd like to take my three daughters on a girls trip to Walt Disney World. Though Hubby enjoyed spending time with us during our last two trips, truth be told, he'd rather be fishing. The girls will be older (9-12ish, depending on where the balance happens) and I want to see New Fantasyland. The whole thing. A lot. Just the first part had been unveiled when we went in June, and I mean just unveiled. The construction walls had been taken down the day before we went to the Magic Kingdom around the second Dumbo spinner, but it wasn't running yet. I do want to wait until they are done with the whole thing, including the new dwarf mine train. Ok, really, I'd like to go several times between now and then, but seeing as that isn't happening, I'll compromise to waiting until the whole thing is done. I'll still be lucky to pull it off when that happens.
I was looking through our vacation pictures and found this one of Peter Pan's Flight. One of those pirate ships would make a pretty nice swing to hang under a favorite tree. Hmmm, how to get that done...