You know how it is. You find a notepad. Select a working pen. Gather your thoughts. Put pen to paper. Take a breath. Get totally overwhelmed. Take another deeper breath. Decide what needs to go first. Make the first notation on your to do list. Make a second entry. Third entry. Fourth. Fifth. Tenth entry. Eleventh. Seventeenth. Twentieth entry. Start hyperventilating for realz.

If you are like me, just writing the to do list is overwhelming and satisfying at the same time. By penning the lengthy to dos, you get a sense of the enormity of the work ahead of you. You can be upset by the sheer magnitude of the list and invigorated by having a written record of what you need to do.

A week and a half ago I penned my to do list AKA “the novel.” I sat on the list for a moment or two or three or maybe even four before attacking the list full force. With only a few weeks to go til Christmas, I was leaving nothing to chance.

Item #1: Buy gifts for local family…delegated to my husband since each day he drives past the store I planned to shop at. Item #1 = Done.

Item #2 through #8: Work tasks that only I could attend to. Items #2-#8 = some done, some partially done, some to be done. Same old, same old. But, I have it under control.

Item #9: Blog header. Hmmm. A graphic designer I am not. A good, very good blogging friend created a header for me and transferred my blog from Blogger to WP. This friend? She’s a keeper. I splurged on a new domain name a few weeks ago. I probably need a new blog header like a hole in the head, but what can I say? I caught the “I need a new blog to express all the thoughts that are floating in my head” bug.

So, Item #9 had me wondering. Who would I hire to do the blog header? I don’t know many graphic designers. Recently I reviewed Zaarly. Zaarly is a cool, new site where you can post what you need. Post your to do list one item at a time. You can also post items you have for sale. I gave Zaarly a whirl.

My first Zaarly item was a call for someone to haul away a broken bedframe, old paint cans a plenty, and a coule of old monitors. No takers at $25. Raised the price on Zaarly to $50. Still not takers.  The problem could be that I live off the beaten path…probably too far away for someone who hauls stuff for a living.

My next idea was to post about the blog header. I guessed correctly that I would get a number of hits from graphic designer-types willing to help me. Over the course of a few days, the hits have come thick and fast. Started conversations with 3 of the graphic designers. Got a sense that one of the designers was a little too green about the gills. I have minimal graphic experience. I need a serious amount of hand holding. 

After talking back and forth with three of the designers, I drafted a detailed list of what I am looking for with my blog header. I’m ready to see what the designer creates for me. Thanks to Zaarly I was able to find someone who could do a to-do item for me. And with the schedule that I have going right now both at work and at home, any help I can find is golden.

Signing up for Zaarly is easy.

• Use my link to sign up.
• For everyone who signs up for a Zaarly account, Zaarly will donate $1 to Feeding America.
• Follow @Zaarly on Twitter.
• Like Zaarly on Facebook.

I was compensated with a gift card for using Zaarly to get tasks done. The opinions expressed in the post are my own. I follow the tenets of Blog With Integrity.

I’m the worst person to buy for. I buy few clothes for myself as my tastes and specifications are very limited. I can search racks and racks at a clothing store and find only one or maybe two items that I can tolerate. I don’t play video games. I don’t listen to music on my iTouch. I read, but again I can be picky about what I want to read. I love watching movies, but often purchase any movies I want. In short, I’m hard to buy for.

I recently heard about a site that is not a site where you can buy gifts, but it is a site where you can post a job that needs to be done, or an item that needs to be found. As a hard-to-buy for person, what I would really like is for someone to do something on the household “Honey Do” list. Now that would a gift come true!

You know the list of tasks around your house that are not urgent, but need to be done? The timeframe for these tasks is not specified. In my home, it is “needs to be done sometime after all the important and crisis tasks” are done. So the tasks remain not done…forever.

I have had 2 computers with monitors stored in my garage since 2010. Maybe earlier. Neither computer works. Both hard drives have been scrubbed. But, there the computers sit. Why? well, one of these days I will have a free moment to load up the computers and take both to the local dump. While I am at it, I’ll take the broken bedframe, old cans of paint, etc. My local trash service will not pick up computers, paint, or other toxic items.

So, in the name of “let’s get something crossed off my to do task list” I want to tell you about Zaarly.com. Zaarly is a site where you can post about a task you need to get done. You post what the task is — I posted asking for someone to haul my computers, bedframe, and paint to the dump. All I need to do is wait until someone is willing to do my task. A few weeks ago I posted about wanting to find a price on a camera…within hours I received an answer to my question. Stop back to hear more.

While you get ready for the holidays, think about those tasks around the house that you need to do, but would rather have someone else do them. Post to Zaarly and sit back and wait for someone else to do the job on your to do list!

Use Zaarly to find DJs, moving help, personal trainers, pet services, and so much more.

• Sign up for Zaarly using my link.
• With every signup, Zaarly will with every sign up donate $1 to Feeding America.
• Like Zaarly on Facebook.
• Follow @Zaarly on Twitter.
• Use the Zaarly app on Facebook.

I was compensated for writing this post by Zaarly and Blogger Connection. The views expressed in this post are my own. I follow the tenets of Blog With Integrity.

Choices. We all have to make choices. This morning I dithered and dallied and dragged my heels on making a choice. I won’t even get in to what the choice was. It was relatively minor. I should have debated a few minutes, made a decision, and moved on with my day. Instead, I dallied and dithered…

Some decisions are harder to make not because you are worried about making the wrong decision. The problem is more that you have too many options to choose from. Like what stain to remove.

Yes, I said stain. Five people. 17 years in this home — we’re the first owners. Wear and tear of everything in this house. In this home there are stains aplenty. So, when I was asked to review a type of stain removing cleaning pad from a well known manufacturer of vacuums and carpet cleaners, I knew I could find a stain. The problem…which stain to choose?!

After much consideration and running from room to room to see which carpet looked the worst. Fun task, not. I chose the very much trafficked area from the backdoor through the family room to the kitchen. We don’t wear shoes in the house, but you would never know it from the state of the carpet. Let’s just say I won’t be posting pics.

The  family room carpet is in need of a cleaning, but I have been putting it off as I hope to get hardwood floors in the near future. In the meantime, I opened the individually wrapped Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pad. The pad is soft and moist on one side with a plastic backing to the other side. The instructions are easy…

• Vacuum the carpet to remove any excess dirt and debris.
• Place the Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pad on the area to be cleaned.
• Press down on the pad with your shoe. If you wore just a sock, your foot would get a little wet.
• I found that I could move back and forth over the pad without moving the pad around.
  
• Leave the Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pad on the stained area for 30 minutes.
• Vacuum the area after removing the pad.
  

The area I chose looks much better — not spotless, but less grime-y. The Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pad took off the top layer of grime leaving just a few ingrained spots of dirt probably from wear and tear of 17 years of people walking back and forth to the back door. I might hit these stains with the pad again to see if I can lift more dirt and grime. Again I’m too embarrassed to post the before stain and the after shot of the soiled Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pad. Trust me when I say that the pad was put through its paces.

The Bissell Stomp ‘N Go pads:

• Stomp out tough stains.
• Remove tough set-in stains like red wine, food stains, fruit juice, pet messes, mud/dirt, and more.
• Leaves carpet smelling fresh.
• Each box contains 5 individually wrapped, pre-moistened pads.
• Each box of 5 pads costs $4.99 from the Bissell site, but I am not sure how much the box of pads retail for in stores.

I wrote this review while participating in a campaign by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of BISSELL and received product samples and a promotional item to thank me for taking the time to participate.

Wells. Septic. Underground pipes. No waste disposal. Clogged toilet. These words/phrases sum up my plumbing woes.

As we tromped around the property before we had even built our home, we discussed having a well and a septic field. My husband grew up with a well and a septic field. He mentioned something about toilets and flushing. I was only half listening. The fact that stuck with me was only that we couldn’t have a waste disposal. Oh how I wish I had been a good listener!

As a married couple, we were drowning — ha! — in bedrooms, space, and bathrooms. The two of us had three bathrooms to choose from. There was never a wait for the bathroom. Come to think of it we never had a toilet overflow. A drain clog. We lived in a sugar-coated world of flushing toilets, drains that drained, and toilets that never ever ever clogged. Ahh, the memories.

With the birth of our first child, there were no changes. Diapers were extracted from the accursed Diaper Genie plastic sausages and promptly tossed in the trash. Potty training didn’t change anything. No clogged toilets even after the toddler was over her fear of the toilet. Add in Child #2…even when Child # was potty trained…still no problems.

Fast forward 10 years…with two parents and three kids and various guests…we are in a nightmarish world of plumbing issues. And by issues I mean SERIOUS issues. Over the last 5 years, we have:

• had a huge series of leaks from our basement plumbing unit thingie. Every single box, bowl, or bucket in our basement was full to the brim with water during our now-infamous first plumbing leak. We had no idea that our plumbing woes would only get worse.
• paid a boatload of money to repair said plumbing unit thingie and associated pipes and valves.
• bought a water softener system and a filtration system that was intended to solve our acid-in-the-water and acid-eat-through-pipes issues.
• had two burly men pull our well piping out of the well cap to fix a teeny tiny pinprick leak that was causing untold damage…underground and in the house.
• bought a plunger for each bathroom and not the decorative kind either. Nope we have the industrial strength version in each bathroom. Unsightly, but oh so useful.
• have scrubbed the green stain off the bath…numerous times. Over the years the green, became pale blue, and now the blue is now a sickly gray. Have not found a cleaner to fully remove the stains.

After installing a water treatment system, we have had no more problems with acidic water “eating” through our copper pipes. But, we still can’t effectively flush the toilet. 8 times out of 10 I need a plunger in hand as I flush.It’s a royal pain.

Oh, and a not-so-good and very much ongoing issue is that when we lose power, we lose our well. Without power we can’t run our well pump, without a well pump there is no way for water to come out of the taps in the bathrooms, or the toilet. If I get advance warning of a storm coming, I will run a bathtub of water. At least with a tub of water, we can scoop water out of the bath to flush a toilet. With hand sanitizer at the ready and a tub full of water, we can last in our home without power for about 24 hours before having to stay with relatives.

Our kids are now of an age where I don’t have to remind them not to flush or run the fawcets when we lose power. Thank goodness. What is your plumbing issue or should I say nightmare? Share below, so we can commiserate with each other!

In response to @1momof5‘s post over at Mom It Forward, I left this comment, which I added to.

I have a large basement storage room…too big, really. I reorganized the storage room by moving items I never use but can’t bare to part with or want to keep for grandkids/my children to the back of the storage room. I now have a large area in the storage room to store overflow items from every room in the house.

I recently moved a couple of vacuum cleaners, paint cans, old clothes, toys no longer played with, and a host of other items to the now-clear-of-stuff area in the storage room. Lest you think I am a complete and utter packrat I do have 8 garbage bags of stuff and a couple of ancient computers in the garage ready for AmVets/Purple Heart. Baby steps!

I have a project brewing where I plan to move the family room furniture to the kids’ playroom. We will get a sectional for the family room. No decision has been made yet, but I am mulling over the different furniture options. The present family room furniture has not worn well over the last 7 years. The playroom has no furniture except beanbag chairs and folding chairs not designed for adults.

I want to make the playroom more tween and teen friendly. I plan to move all the toys including a doll house, stable, and the ESPN Zone basketball net to the end of the playroom that you don’t see when you walk in to the room. When my girls have friends over the kids have to find space among the toys to sit down.

I have removed a large number of toys from the playroom, which are now stored in the storage room. The storage room is very large — almost half the size of the basement with the playroom taking up almost all of the rest of the basement. My office and the laundry room make up the rest of the basement floorplan. When we finished the basement we made the storage room larger as it was cheaper than making the living area of the basement larger. We had my FIL do the work on the basement, while we purchased most of the drywall, ceiling, and paint.

Even finishing the basement ourselves was pricey. Why are home projects so expensive? I wish that we had had the money back in 1999/2000 to make the playroom larger/laundry room and office bigger, too.

What is your household renovation plan?

The photo above shows the rare moment of complete laundry nirvana. This moment occurs on extremely rare occasions. Almost never. Struggling to think of any other time it has happened. Thinking. Thinking…

Do you know I don’t think I have ever had a clean laundry room? If you don’t count the day we moved in to the house that is. Yes, on that day the laundry room was blissfully free of clothes. It didn’t last long.

I won’t show what the laundry room looks like right now. It isn’t as pretty as this photo I can tell you.

We may not be hikers or outdoorsy people, but we stay active. Teen and preteen play volleyball. Kid plays lacrosse. All three kids are on the swim team. Dad is in a volleyball league. Mom — even I — works out at a health club. Some of us are more active than others…ahem.

One constant in any of our active activities is the value we place on safety. Whether it is wearing a helmet for lacrosse or skiing. Or wearing appropriate shoes for volleyball. Or getting enough sleep before a swim meet. We stay safe.

Underwriters Laboratories and Disney have a list of tips for summer safety — pool, water, and playground safety.

Keep your family safe by reading the following tips:

POOL SAFETY AT HOME
·    If you have a pool at home, install a fence. The fence should be at least four feet high and have a self-closing, self-latching gate that has a locking mechanism beyond a child’s reach.
·    Cut overhanging tree limbs and remove chairs or ladders from the pool area to prevent children from climbing over the fence that surrounds the pool.
·    Keep grates and drain covers in good repair and secured in place. Alert your family and guests to stay away from these devices, as the suction from drain outlets can be strong enough to cause entrapment of hair or body parts, which can potentially cause a person to drown.
·    Make sure you know infant and child CPR if you own a pool.

BE SAFETY SMART WHILE SWIMMING
·    Supervision is a must. Follow the 10/20 rule when you’re at the pool. The 10/20 rule states the supervising adult needs to position themselves to be able to scan the pool every 10 seconds, and reach the water within 20 seconds.
·    Always have rescue devices, such as UL-LISTED life preservers, nearby.
·    Flotation devices, toys and inflatable swimming aids are not safety devices. They are toys and can easily puncture and deflate.
·    Always drain wading pools after children are done playing. Infants can drown in just a few inches of water.
·    Have a telephone nearby and appropriate emergency numbers posted.
·    Remove all toys when you leave the pool. Toys may attract children to the unattended pool.Check out these guys…Timon and Puumba from the Lion King…in a video teaching kids how to stay safe while swimming during the summer, and all year long.

BEFORE INSTALLING A BACKYARD PLAY SET…
·    Make sure your backyard is large enough for playground equipment. The site must also provide good visibility and security. Before setting up equipment, look out for obstacles, such as the garage, tree branches, utility poles and wires.
·    Read and follow the manufacturer’s directions when setting up play set equipment. Be sure your child’s weight and age fall within the manufacturer’s recommended limits for the equipment.
·    Install protective surfacing, such as rubber tiles or mulch under the play set, at least six feed in all directions, to prevent serious injuries should a child fall.

BEFORE HEADING OUT TO PLAY…
·    Carefully inspect backyard playground equipment. Make sure equipment is anchored safely in the ground, all equipment pieces are in good working order, S-hooks are entirely closed and bolts are not protruding.
·    Check for spaces that could trap children, such as openings in guardrails or between ladder rungs. These spaces should measure less than 3.5 inches or more than 9 inches.
·    Always supervise children on play set equipment to make sure they are playing safely.
·    Never attach ropes, jump ropes, clotheslines, pet leashes or cords of any kind to play set equipment. If used improperly, they can be potential strangulation hazards.
·    Watch for potential trip hazards, such as rocks, tree stumps and concrete footings. Make sure you’re children are aware of them as well.
·    Do a sandbox check. Before letting your child dig in, rake through the sand to check for debris or sharp objects. Also, inspect for any animal contamination or insect problems.

I wrote this review while participating in a blog campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Underwriters Laboratories. Mom Central sent me a gift card to thank me for taking the time to participate.

We’ve been in our house almost 16 years. Still have not painted the master bedroom, one bathroom, living room, and dining room. Builder’s white…I loathe you.

The rest of the house has been painted. In fact all three children’s bedrooms have been painted 2 or 3 times!

My teen’s bedroom has gone from Winnie the Pooh to Princess to Tie Dye.

My preteen’s bedroom has changed from Winnie the Pooh to Marie the Cat from the Aristocats to purple with wall stickers.

My kid’s room was Winnie the Pooh and is now white with red trim featuring Fatheads from Maryland Terps and the Washington Redskins with a few Manchester United stickers thrown in to recognize our English heritage.

I have had 2 cans of blue paint outside my bathroom door for over a year…waiting for a time when I will have time to paint.

The master bedroom is in need of painting too. Don’t get me started on the hallway and landing with all the scratch marks from baby gates. There are also a hug number of scuffs from kids’ feet while in time out. Who decided to use the bottom of the stairs as the time out spot, anyway??

Stay tunes to see if I paint this summer…or not…

What question perplexes me most on forms and questionnaires? The question I find most difficult to answer is what major city do I live closest to?

As a child through my pre-children years, I would have had several answers:

• 0-4 years — Manchester, England
• 5-8 — New York City
• 9-10 — Manchester, England
• 11 — New York City
• 12-15 — Manchester, England
• 16-18 — Milan, Italy
• 19-22 — Philadelphia
• 23-29 — Washington, D.C.

Yes, my childhood was madness personified!

In 1994, my husband and I realized that our tiny townhouse in Montgomery Village was not big enough to accommodate all our stuff let alone a child! I was happily working in Gaithersburg while my husband commuted to Damascus. We were a stone’s throw from the Shady Grove Metro. I had commuted to DC for work each day before finding a job closer to home. I still took the Metro once or twice a week to George Washington University for graduate classes. Occasionally we would visit an art gallery or museum in D.C. In short, we were D.C. people.

In late 1993, we began our search for a new place to grow roots and hopefully start a family. We quickly realized that Montgomery County, MD, was out of the question. House prices were through the roof. We wanted to build our own home. My husband had this crazy notion that he wanted to buy land. He grew up on 3/4 of an acre, which meant he found our townhouse neighbors too close for comfort.

The quest for land took us to Frederick and Carroll counties. The drive out to both was daunting. We drove in nonrush hour times and on weekends. House after house failed to appeal to us. Some were too small…too expensive…too weird (we stumbled in to a community of senior citizen bungalow townhomes with roll-in showers and extra wide doorways)…too near to massive power lines (seriously, the powerline was where I envisioned having a play structure).

Our search was stalled. We were about to give up when my FIL showed us a listing for a new development in Howard county. The drive out to Howard sold us before we even go to the house. We saw not one car as we drove over the Montgomery county line. It was a ghost town — in a good way — that Sunday afternoon.

The neighborhood — a former farm that my FIL recalled playing at — was almost completely developed with only 5 or 6 lots left. Most of the lots had steep, treacherous driveways that would be nightmarish to mow. The last lot we looked at was perfect. Too close to the road for some, but flat enough for us to visualize our “kids” riding bikes down the completely flat driveway. Welcome to Baltimore, hon!

Through some finagling of finances we were able to swing the much higher home price and lot price. In June 1994 we were the proud owners of 3 acres and 1 new home…thankfully no mule…in Woodbine, MD!

Woodbine has changed over the years, but remains a safe place to live. Thanks to some draconian county laws, many of the farms are in historic preservation. I can’t tell you how relieved we were to find that the farm we can see through our kitchen window would remain a farm. Our neighborhood is bordered on 3 sides by county parkland and 1 side by a semi-working farm.

Which brings me back to the question of what city I live closest to. Howard County is in a no-man’s land. Not a part of the DC Metro Area and not a suburb of Baltimore City and County. I have done what anyone would do — I call both cities my own.

When I am in a DC frame of mind I recall visits to the International Spy Museum, reading the Washington Post, and almost meeting Guy Fieri. As a DC Mommy I go here to find out about events, things to do, and places to shop.

But, let’s not forget my Baltimore side. As a pseudo-Baltimorean, I recall fun times at Port Discovery, flying out of BWI, and inflating our Christmas decorations.

Sometimes I think about what it is like to live in Woodbine with my clutter woes and new-to-us holiday traditions.

Woodbine is not famous for anything. It is a cluster of homes and farms with parkland thrown in for good measure. Woodbine is split between two counties. We’re south of the railroad tracks in Howard County, while those north of the tracks are Carroll County.

Searching the brief entry on Wikipedia I know that…

• Woodbine is named after a plant that grows in fields and on riverbanks.
• Lisbon our neighboring town is home to the first traffic circle in Maryland. Lisbon now has two, woohoo!
• During the Civil War, Rebel cavalry crossed the Patapsco River at Woodbine scouting the Union Army that was on its way to the Battle of Gettysburg.

If you are passing through Woodbine, you might want to stop at Larriland Farms to pick some of the best fruit out there or go on a fall hayride, visit the horses that are nursed back to health at the Days End Horse Rescue Farm, or check out the Woodbine Facebook page.

I wrote this post as part of Blogtrotting. For more information about Blogtrotting, go here.