Happy Birthday to The Road to Domestication! (And a GIVEAWAY!)

Yes indeed, it is the birthday of my sweet little blog!

Three years ago today, I published the first post on this blog. I had no idea what I was doing. (Let’s face it – I still don’t! HA!) I didn’t know what would happen with it. All I knew was that I needed to have a creative writing outlet, and I hoped that would be what the blog would become. And it did! It became all that and more!

And you know what? I learned a few things along the way! (These things I’ve learned are mainly about blogging…but when I went back and looked at them, I realized they could apply to any part of life!)

1. Do what works for you

I came to the point when I realized that, unfortunately, I could not blog seven days a week. It just wasn’t happening. I mean, there are still only 24 hours in a day, right? Sometimes that seems like such a short period! So I had to modify things and do what worked best for me.

2. Blog about what you LOVE

I could easily get carried away on a variety of topics, but I make it a point to blog about things I love and nothing else. Kind of like I make it a point to only purchase clothing, or household decor, or anything else optional unless I LOVE it.

3. Create guidelines as you go

When you’re doing something new to you, there’s a lot of trial and error! So when you find something that works, and works well, make it standard practice!

And over on Pinterest…

Pinterest has been keeping me very busy these days! And no, I’m not at all complaining! I try to pin for about 15 minutes each day, and of course, I pin things from blogging friends and from my blog, too! But I wonder if my technique is similar to anyone else’s? (In case you want to see for yourself, you can find me by CLICKING HERE!)

Here are my first 9 boards…

Pinterest Project Presented!

You all know I’m a huge fan of Pinterest! I like to share what works and what doesn’t from the various things I find there! Check out these previous posts HERE, HERE and HERE, if you want to see all the fun!

But I tried something new over the weekend, so, of course, I wanted to share! Have you seen this pin?

(You can find it over on my “Clean as a Whistle” Board on Pinterest!)

I mean, WOW! That’s pretty impressive, right?! (By the way, the above pin actually came from the lovely Lilly over at Listotic. If you’d like to see her original post, CLICK HERE!)

We have a tan microfiber couch and love seat just like this one…and the funny thing is that when my hubby spills something, he tries to clean it up with carpet stain remover. Which might actually work…except THEN you have a stain from the stain remover!

So we had a few actual stains…and then the “tried to clean this up before you saw it” stain…and then there was the stain from our Year’s Eve Party when one of our guests dumped an entire serving of grape soda on the couch…and then there was the stain from when Taffy the dog caught a beetle and played it to death on the love seat…you get the idea.

Although I would LOVE some new furniture (hint hint to my hubby if he’s reading this) to be honest, this set is only about 4 years old, so it’s still got some use left in it. I decided to try the above pin and see if it really worked or not.

The Patriotic Holiday Shelf

First of all, Happy Memorial Day, all! For those who gave their lives, we are forever grateful. There is no way we could ever repay your sacrifice – so we do our best to live to make you proud. Thank you.

Second of all, fitting for today, it’s time for this year’s Patriotic Holiday Shelf!

I normally decorate the holiday shelf in a patriotic theme in time for Memorial Day, and leave it up through July 4. (That still leaves a little bit of a gap in between my Easter shelf and Memorial Day…but I haven’t quite figured out what to do with that yet!) So this year I kinda did an Easter/Spring shelf and it worked a little better. (Check it out HERE in case you missed it!)

But for now, here’s last year’s Patriotic Holiday Shelf (CLICK HERE!) and now…

This year’s!

Patio Dreamin’

From time to time I like to dream with all of you, and these days, I’ve been dreaming about our back patio.

We had the back yard fenced in a few months ago, so we’re working on getting all the grass growing pretty and vanquishing those durn fire ants (who can ruin any backyard gathering pretty quickly, for sure!) I’m also in the midst of “prettying up” the screened-in back porch, and you’ll get to see that soon, but we also have a stone/paver patio that’s uncovered. THAT’S what I’ve been dreamin’ about…

I’ve had a lot of ideas for that patio.

I thought…ooo, fire pit and lots of seating!

(But then there was a little incident with our grill and I realized that it was no fun to have lots of smoke in the house, and I worried about that with a fire pit being so close.)

Then I thought…hot tub! How nice it would be to come home from a long day and get in that hot tub!