Reviewing the past year

Another Year Gone By, But A New Year Will Be Amazing!

This past year was an exciting year with many changes, but The New Year will be even more exciting!

First of all, most recently, my daughter and her husband have moved in with us as of November. And that means I get to have my grandson here too!  It is so different with them all living here together. My husband and I both remark that it is never “quiet” anymore.

Noise, noise, and more noise.

Merry Christmas with that game Watch Ya Mouth

But is has been fun and laughter and companionship. Talking old times and project plans for new times. You know that my daughter is selling the home they moved out of, and we are doing that ourselves in a For Sale By Owner situation.

And if you are curious about that, it is really going well. Don’t want to jinx anything but we have been pretty good at playing Amateur Real Estate Agents. We have hosted 3 open houses, made a YouTube movie, and published and distributed her home info on Social Media and have had an overwhelming response.

I must admit that her friends shared the house link very well and helped to get the word out.

What about her garden and her Hypertufa?

Adding all her hypertufa to mine, we are going to have a regular “Botanical Garden”…..well, almost. We will have a lot of bowls, troughs and urns. She had the prettiest dahlia to save. Lots of Wisteria ( which we haven’t decided whether or not to take a cutting to move here or not), and many balloon flowers, hostas, sedum, and creeping phlox.

the past year - such a pretty dahlia

If all of these have survived the move, we are going to be swamped. In a good way! We moved things late in the year and so it is up to those roots surviving in the pots or surviving in their temporary spaces/holes we put them.

But we know where the garden centers are if we lose some of our favorites. ( I can hear the men grinding their teeth.)

My grandson successfully changed over to my house as his bus stop. That was like pulling teeth. He is in the same school but my daughter had to fill out paperwork, then I had to fill out paperwork as the homeowner where he would be living. You would have thought Barron Trump had changed schools!

Past Year of 2017 and changes to come

The Hypertufa Gardener Group

But the year of 2017 was great for me. I started the group over on Facebook ( The Hypertufa Gardener Group) and it has been a lot of fun. So many of you are posting your projects and I think we have all let our imagination soar . You all have some great ideas. and beautiful projects.

We have over 700 members so far and I think that is great. Hop on over and join if you haven’t already.

My You-Tube Channel: Kim’s Gardens

One of the most exciting things this year has been the growth of my YouTube channel. I am almost to reach 3200 subscribers and I am astounded and grateful that so many people all over the world like it enough to subscribe. I will shortly reach 1 million views and, to me, that is so gratifying and I will continue to make more.

Still waiting on that gimbal, Santa! You rat!

I have not put out many new videos lately, but I hope to diversify this year and add more family vlog-type videos. There is so much that I want to show about the family, and I hope to show more videos of me and my daughter making the hypertufa. She loves it as much as I do and makes a prettier spokes-model!

Meanwhile my YouTube channel has been successful enough that I have my own Amazon shopping page. If you visit and buy something, I can get a small commission, but you don’t pay extra for that.

Have you ever shopped at Amazon?

It is so nice to shop from them. This Christmas, I ordered a large item for the house. It cost over $200 and I was very hesitant for that large an item, both in bulk and for the price. But I ordered it anyway and within a week, I had it. It was great and just what I wanted but it was damaged and didn’t fully work. ( A dent on top that, I think, caused it not to work as I needed.)

My Amazon order

Returns? Easy as could be*. I logged on, filled out the return docs from my emailed order confirmation, and they said it would be picked up next business day. Monday the UPS guy pulled up in his little cart, rang my doorbell, handed me a shipping label so I could confirm it was me etc. He pasted in on the box, gave me my copy to track it, and carried it away into his little golf cart thing. I felt bad. It was heavy and he had to unload and reload the cart because it just wouldn’t fit on top of the rest of his load.

*Be sure that your item indicates “Shipped and Sold by Amazon” for it to be easy. I ordered once on a “Third Party” and had to ship back at my expense….$54.00! Ouch!

Next day, I got an email saying my credit card was credited. Yes, it’s is just that easy!

No, this is not a paid endorsement for Amazon, but since I am Old School and hadn’t previously done a lot of “armchair shopping,” I just wanted to let you know how simple and easy it is. The things I list on my page are things I use or mention in my blog, but go ahead and search out what you need.

Thanks for being a loyal reader all year and I hope for many years to come!

Happy New Year! 2018 is going to be a great year.

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