Category: Life

The Pitfalls of House Hunting

I’ve discovered that house-hunting is not as exciting and fun as I had hoped. Between being unsure of a house that could be perfect, and losing out to someone who bid on the perfect place first, I write about my experience with buying a home.

When I bought my home in New Hampshire, I had bad credit (thanks to my ex-husband) and had to settle for the least horrible house I could afford. So when I began house-hunting in Florida I was looking forward to being able to choose a nice home. I pictured house-hunting as a fun opportunity. It didn’t really turn out that way.

Here are the problems I’ve run into.

Without a knowledgable friend or partner to lend advice, I am still on my own when it comes to discerning a good house from one that should be passed by. As is the case always, I am alone in my decisions. But not quite. My son and I are buying this house together so his thoughts had to be taken into consideration. He knows nothing about home buying and ownership, whereas I do. He is not looking at the possible problems, just the parts of the house he likes.

One house seemed really great, or should I say the land the house sat on was great. The house itself was not impressive. In fact it seemed a bit neglected. I didn’t want a house with problems, and I could foresee work. We went and looked at the place twice, and we loved the land, and location, but by the second visit, I knew I did not want to live in that house. And it was overpriced. Continue reading “The Pitfalls of House Hunting”

Remembering Life in New England

winter forest photography
My Backyard – Long Ago

This winter photography recently sold in my Zazzle store as a postcard. It seems fitting as a reminder of how far I’ve come. Since I am no longer living in the northeastern U.S., and back down in the humidity of Florida, this scene makes me a bit sad.  I was born in New England, and I love it there.

I took this winter photo back in 2007, and it reminds me of great hope and huge loss. After spending 27 years in the humid, bug-infested south, I was back home in New England and loving every moment of my first winter with snow in years. I took pictures every day I think. This is a scene from my back yard after a nice storm had passed. I say “nice” because it dropped a bunch of that sparkling white stuff I had been longing to play in and witness. I wanted a white Christmas, and New Hampshire nearly always cooperated in the eleven years I lived there.  I love the change of seasons and winter is part of it.  It’s a long season, but we are all in it together, and somehow get through the worst ones.

We had moved together as a family, but ultimately I ended up alone, with a son dependent upon me to provide a decent life. I couldn’t take a little boy away from his father, no matter how much that father lacked the qualities to actually be a father. So I stuck it out until my son graduated and wanted to move away. Then it was his choice. I did my part. But it wasn’t easy getting by alone in a place known for it’s costly living expenses. By the time I left my New Hampshire home, I had moved 5 times, finally settling into a little fixer-upper for my final years there.

The beautiful snow had lost it’s charm after the hellish winter of 2014-15. And my final winter had very little drama – or snow. It was okay with me.

I’ll never live in New England again, short of winning the lottery. I have some pictures left that remind me of the great hope in my heart when I moved there. The opportunity to spend time in such a beautiful place one last time, is what I will be thankful for. And I’ll visit when I can. But I may never see such a beautiful winter scene in person again. Nor will I walk in the deep snow and enjoy the silence of snowy woods. But I did it once. And that was good.

Best of Blogging, Be Yourself

squirrel
Photo credit: Oldiefan @ Pixabay

Since I do a lot of blogging, I thought I’d begin a series of posts about blogging.  If you look around the internet, you will find lots of bad blogs.  And of course there are many great blogs.  Those great blogs are fun to read because they are written by people who write about what interests them.  Being phony online doesn’t work for long.  Be yourself and share (with limits) information about your likes, travels, menu specialties, etc..  You’d be surprised how many people will be interested, even if your life seems mundane and ordinary to you.

Blogging can also be quite a learning experience.  Although I love gardening and sharing how my garden grows with readers, I am still learning as I go.  I recently began a blog about health and wellness related to kidney disease.  A few years ago I found out I had PKD and I want to share my journey as I attempt to get well.

You don’t need to be an experienced writer to start a blog.  I’ve learned a lot since I first began my Seashells by Millhill blog back in 2008.  The first posts I made were pretty horrendous, and I cringe when I re-read them.  Since then I’ve written at a couple of writing sites, Squidoo (now defunct) and Wizzley, where I learned to become a better writer.  I did a little stint with other bloggers on a shared blog site and wrote one day a week.  The bar was raised when I had to write alongside some very good writers.

Continue reading “Best of Blogging, Be Yourself”

Easing Out of a ‘Going Nowhere’ Career

work from home onlineI love what I do for a living working online.  Or at least I used to love it.  Now I like it, but the results of all my hard work is not as satisfying.  For two years I’ve tried to come back from the changes Zazzle made in summer of 2013.  Within a couple of months, my pay dropped by two-thirds because of those changes.

This is a post about my experience with working online at the print-on-demand company, Zazzle. It is not intended to put the company down in any way. I still believe that Zazzle is a good place to earn income online, for many reasons. I would encourage anyone interested to give it a shot. Their products are high quality, and they offer nice sales year round. I’ve received many reviews from happy customers. This post is about my own personal experience as I’ve made Zazzle my career for the past eight years.

It may seem like a fabulous opportunity to be able to work from home.  And it is!  I have loved working the hours I choose, usually getting up at 5 or 6AM and working all morning, with my afternoons left for gardening, cooking or other things.  I work 7 days a week, putting in about 50 or 60 hours and can still be home for my son. But there are downsides as well, which mainly have to do with lack of control. It’s nothing like having a regular job, where seniority counts, dedicated employees get ahead, and the pay is stable and usually increases over time.

learning When I began working online at the Zazzle site I had to spend a lot of time learning.  I didn’t have the advantage of youth and computer knowledge.  Everything was new for me.  From uploading and re-sizing photos and art, to learning about using social media, this old gal was in school all day long.

But the money began to come in.  And for about 5 years the income steadily increased.  Eventually I was making enough to support myself and my young son, while saving up for a house of my own.  I even wrote a page about My Zazzle Success Story.  Back then, working hard brought in more money.  It encouraged me to expand and do more.  For years my income continually increased, and I looked forward to ‘going to work’.  Then suddenly, things changed.

It’s something we get used to, those of us who earn money online.  We are at the mercy of the online platforms themselves.  I had many articles at the writing site Squidoo when it ended, but not as many as others.  My small monthly deposit to PayPal went away, and I missed it.  But that was nothing compared to my dip in pay at Zazzle. Continue reading “Easing Out of a ‘Going Nowhere’ Career”

More to do at Work, Making Banners for the Store

green hydrangeaMaking banners for the store is not difficult, just time consuming. As with all online work I do, there is an element of learning attached. Often I do something that turns out perfect after I’ve spent time reading tutorials, that pops right out of my head as soon as I finish the project. Often I feel like my brain is stuffed so full that I can’t possibly keep any more info in there.

At Zazzle, where my online stores are based, we have the new option to create collections of products. It’s a great idea, and I’m totally onboard. I’ve been working on gathering similarly themed items from my twelve stores to add to collection pages. The thing is, each collection page needs a banner at the top that matches the theme of the collection.

I’ve been using Pixabay almost exclusively to find those banner images. Once I find the perfect photo, it must be downloaded, resized, cropped, and uploaded to the banner template. It must be done for every collection, and that is time-consuming.

Here is a link to My Collections. I plan to make more, but already I have 34 pages made. Some do not yet have a banner image, but most do. The hydrangea banner I’ve included at the beginning of this post was used for my Pale Green Hydrangea collection.

I’m keeping an eye on my sales as I’d like to know if the collections will be a good way to get my newer products before the eyes of customers.  It always takes time to see if new things help sales.

I work online in my Zazzle shops until 3:00 PM each day, and then stop to work in the yard, if the weather is nice. After that, I work inside, usually in the kitchen making supper and doing dishes. I start my day at 5:30am and there is never enough time to get it all done.

Spring on the Calendar Means Nothing in NH

winter snow spring
Winter is not Gone Yet
Winter is not gone yet here in New Hampshire. Spring on the calendar means nothing really. On the first day of Spring it snowed and was very cold. My outdoor thermometer broke a long time ago, so I don’t keep track of the temps, but this week it will be close to 50 and that is the warmest it’s been in many months here. It will come with rain, so we’ll still be stuck indoors, but to open my cupboards and have them not feel like a refrigerator will be a nice change.

In your neck of the woods, it may feel like time to get the gardens cleaned up and the seeds started. All this still seems a long way off to me. And that’s fine. Because of the ice dams that were created with the non-stop February snow storms, I have damage to get fixed inside my house. I need a new roof, but can’t afford that, so I’ll do what I can. Home fixes and improvements are what I have on my mind after surviving the bad winter we just had. I try to ignore all the clean up that will be needed once this icy snow melts. It will not all be gone for a long while. What you see in the picture of my backyard (above) has gone down to about half. I had to have the roof shoveled in February, and that made big piles of snow all around the house.

So I have no hydrangea news to report. The only hydrangea flowers I’ve seen are the ones on the paper I make for the BlueHyd store. I’m hoping the ones in the yard will look fine once the snow goes away. At least the sun is stronger and having bright days is a wonderful gift!