The Dyson blog: Adjusting our ambition

I thought you might enjoy remembering this with me.We’re planning on starting a garden next Spring, so we had to dig up the grass in a section of the property because there wasn’t any garden from when the last owners lived here.. We decided to tackle the huuuuuge task this fall so that we’ll have a nice level area to make a skating rink for this Winter and then in the Spring, we can get right to work planting.. It’s really just a dirt rectangle right now, but we have plans for a white picket fence around it with gates on either end and berries planted all around.

We need a before and after.Let’s dig a picture out from a year ago.. Well, you can see the floor and the walls in this one.

So that was the before.. …and after!… or rather, during!.I feel better now, don’t you?Whether it’s taken a whole year or not, that’s progress!We have a whole collection of old saws in our garage.

Actually we had more last year, but I think Chris may have “de-cluttered” some of them.. I’ve been eyeing them up for the last year, secretly thinking I could steal them and use them inside in some kind of rustic, tool-inspired decorating extravaganza.Never did though.. Then.

I saw an image, which I now can’t find, in the last issue of the Pottery Barn catalogue.

I’m a visionary..Big mortgages, big child-care costs to cover those long hours you have to work, and expensive fuel costs so you can get to the job to work the long hours, all that.

It all adds up and you can really feel like the only way to get ahead is to stay put in your tiny townhouse, put budgeting ahead of everything else, and just work work work until hopefully you move up the corporate ladder and maybe get a bit of a raise.Those were exciting and character-building years for us for sure, but when I reached the ripe old age of 27 and our daughter Kennedy was about 5, I was done with it.

I remember the exact moment when we realized there might be a loophole in “the system” and we might be able to actually get that big house on that big property that we wanted our kids to remember growing up in AND actually lower our cost-of-living.As soon as that idea hit, we were ON it!