Archive for September, 2008
Power Of The People
We relish in the kindness of strangers, and we especially love watching this play out in community swap forums, like yard sales and flea markets or even virtually on sites like eBay and Craigslist. That’s why we had to revisit one of our very first (and still all time favorite) posts: The Power of Craigslist.
I’m still amazed that this experiment worked, but basically we got a bunch of strangers to laboriously dig up all the bushes and haul away the pea gravel from our heavily manicured backyard (seen below during our wedding) to make way for the grassy, puppy-playground that we now enjoy (pictured further below last November).
You’ll have to read the post to find out exactly how it all went down- just forgive us if anything looks majorly amateur – it was only our fourth post!
Just like some of the original readers back in September of last year (all 8 or so of you) – you may be feeling some heartburn over us destroying the beautiful garden that the previous owner had painstakingly groomed. And I’ll admit that we even had some hesitations ourselves when we started the process last fall…
But now that it’s been a year, I can say with 100% certainty that it was the best decision ever. It’s totally easy to maintain (no more weeding that gravel path to nowhere! no more trimming a million hedges!) and it makes our yard look much bigger (while creating Burger’s own personal outdoor paradise). There’s not a day he’s not out there chasing squirrels, fetching sticks and otherwise running amuck. And since I can’t seem to get a good photo of him in action, I can only submit this shot of him catching his breath (and some rays) in the grass as evidence.
Now we wanna to hear all of your great Craiglist, eBay or yard sale stories. Got an amazing find to share or another smart tip for using sites like those in unconvential ways? Give us the goods, kind people. And share the hope that some of the best things in life are, in fact, almost free.
So, HGTV Just Stopped By…
…and filmed us for an upcoming episode of Rate My Space.
So bravo to Shaina, Layers of Meaning, Abbie in Co, Elizabeth and Heather for successfully guessing after we teased you with the news a few weeks ago. Sadly we still can’t say a whole lot more about the experience without revealing details that we’ve agreed not to.
But we can say that it went really well. The Rate My Space crew was lots of fun and the host Angelo Surmelis was über friendly. They don’t know the exact airdate of the our episode yet, but it’ll be either late December or early January- and of course we’ll letcha know more once we’ve got a firm date. Til then, just help us practice patience. And for those who don’t get HGTV on your tube, you can catch full episodes of Rate My Space online. Hooray for free cable.
And since we can’t even reveal which room was involved, all we can share so far is this shot of them filming our exterior. Thank goodness for good weather, eh?
But rest assured that we have lots of juicy pics to post once we’re allowed to let the cat out of the bag. Stay tuned…
Do The Math
When it comes to the how long, how many, and how often, we don’t usually take the time to quantify our blogging. But for our oh-so-special blogiversary, we wanted to break things down for you a bit.
380: The number of posts that we’ve written to date
2,592: The amount of comments we’ve amassed from our lovely readers (this is already out of date thanks to the great responses to our previous post).
1,799: The total number of spam comments that our stupendous spam filter has intercepted. (No thank you fake commenters, we don’t need anything “enlarged” around here.)
8: The number of posts we like to have in the hopper at all times (just in case John surprises me with a fabulous vacation someday…)
18: The most posts that we’ve published in a week
4: The most posts that we’ve published in a day
2: The average number of times a day I call John with a technical blog question/emergency
2: The average number of times a day I call John to tell him about something funny that Burger did
10: The average number of hours each day that I sit at my desk chained to the computer
5: The number of steps from my desk to the couch (where I relocate with the computer on my lap after John comes home)
4: Average number of times per week that I use the word “swankify”
5: The number of “Sherry-words” John refuses to use when blogging (swoon, swankify, gorge, fab and purty)
America’s Next Top Model: It’s not a number, but it’s our favorite non-home-improvement show to watch while blogging (although there’s a fair amount of pausing so we don’t miss any of Tyra’s insanity)
Anything we missed that you must know? Ask and we shall calculate (to the best of my math-challenged abilities, that is).
