How did my kitchen get that lived in look? This picture shows the pre-Easter brunch prep. Working the four jobs the past few weeks...no its been months, my time in the kitchen and in the house shows. My lack of time shows. I have a lighter week this week with two of the four jobs off so getting time to bring my attention and some elbow grease to cleaning up my digs will feel great. We were able to power wash and paint the porch. I still need to paint part of porch to finish but having the floor and the stairs finished is a great start.

The thing that drives me crazy about doing these jobs is the steps of prep to get ready to do the job. Take the porch job as an example. Okay...so before I could paint the porch, it needed to be cleaned off of the furniture, plants and stray cat bed/food area. It needed to be power washed and swept as the leaves from the trees seemed to have a magnetic attraction to the floor. As I painted the floor, I realized that I need to trim the hedges near the stairs so that I can paint the front columns. When I trim the main bush, I might as well, do the other hedges because I have the clippers out. (I can really get carried away with the clippers, as I newly learned with the power washer...how cool.) Realizing that the bushes needed trimming, I remembered that we needed to get some manure and top soil in the garden and on the bare spots on the lawn. Getting grass seed to those bare spots in another job that needs to be done. I will need to rough up the soil with the new garden tool so that the grass seed will take. Now, we can start thinking of some plants: herbs, tomatoes, and coleus for Chris. It is so easy to scatter when doing jobs because each individual job has many sub-jobs that need to happen before the job even gets started. No wonder I am tired!!

So back to the kitchen....... I notice that the kitchen is a good barometer to what is going on for me. If I am messy, the kitchen looks it. When I feel clear and focus, the kitchen is usually neat and clean. Now for the rest of the house!