Knock Knock...

...is anybody home at F2F? Yes, yes we're here...on the couch...writing, writing, writing. Micheal is presenting a section of his dissertation at the Midwest Political Science Association conference in April so he has been working diligently on that project.


This has turned into our annual Team S vacation, just a little fun getaway. Last year we were shopping for Micheal's suit for our wedding! This year our good friend Justin (check out his blog The Bowtie Professor) is joining us.

I have been diligently working on my dissertation with the goal of proposing it this semester. This may or may not still happen, but I'm going to try! Both of these things combined have lead to minimal progress on the house. While this is okay in the short term, I'm afraid we're going to get too "comfortable" with the state of things and not continue to move forward with the renovation. It's a lot easier to come home in the evening and watch TV than to do home projects!

So it's my goal to identify some small projects that we can be working on during academic breaks.

Here are the things we have been talking about lately that are next on our list:

1. Updating the kitchen (one small piece at a time...)
2. Spring lawn care

Two major projects that we definitely don't have the time to tackle all at once. So how do you move forward with so much else on your plate without getting overwhelmed? Break it down to super small projects, then smaller steps of those smaller projects. We need successes people! :)

So what's first?

The Pantry!


However, "The Pantry" is still a pretty big project because I want to clean, paint, and organize. So where do you start? It's always best to start at the beginning...

The Door - At first glance, not so bad. But close up this is what I see:


So I'm going to take down the door, put it on the saw horsies and sand every opportunity I get (those slats are going to be brutal...). It's a nice project because I can start and stop as I need to and it doesn't require a lot of setup/tear-down.