I LOVE it When a Plan Comes Together

I am learning interesting things about myself as I get older. For example:

• I'm perfectly comfortable with going to the grocery store without make-up.
• I don't care if I'm wearing nice jeans in church while others are in dresses.
• It doesn't matter if everyone likes me, as long as we can work together.
• Work isn't everything to me.
• I'm more stressed by the lack of a plan than I am by several tasks.

Regarding the latter, I have been stressed for weeks about the new Hayley House. The list of to-do's is incredibly long and we really had no idea of what was achievable - or more to the point, affordable.

Last week I interviewed several contractors about various repairs and improvements to the property. Today we accepted a bid in principle and they'll start work on Wednesday.

Kelly and I still need to go through the contractor's quote to determine what we will and won't do at this point. I wish we could get it all done at once, but this is the Hayley family's home, and the Hayleys are a cash-basis family. We have X to spend on repairs and improvements at this point, so X is what we are going to spend.

It's a bit of a bummer having to decide what is a need versus what is a want, but I can say with confidence that having a hard-and-fast budget in hand makes decision-making much less stressful. And it's very cool to know that when I host our house warming parties this summer, everything (except the mortgage) will be paid for!

I have a plan in hand and I'm not feeling stressed any more! In fact, I feel energized about getting done with quite a bit of the task list while Kelly is out of the country. What a welcome home present it will be for him to see what all we (ummm...the contractor, that is) have accomplished!