Saturday December 6, 2008
Well today has been a super productive day, right from the start. I came in and checked emails, and downloaded a few ads for the January Horizons that I am in the middle of final layout of. I created a couple of ads, did some bookkeeping, worked on a friend’s website, then headed out to the farmer’s market.

It was a beautiful 59 degrees and it felt good to be outside walking in it. High today will be 76. A typical winter’s day in Florida; I live in Paradise!

I picked up ripe tomatoes, fresh ginger, red peppers and cubanelles. I found a butternut squash and an acorn squash as well. More fresh romaine and radishes, and I was on my way.

I began thinking about my window blinds again on the way home. I did not want to pay Home Depot $600 to install a houseful of vertical blinds for me that were not room darkening blinds. I didn’t necessarily want new blinds, I just wanted to be able to dark out my space when I sleep.

The window coverings I have right now aren’t bad, but they don’t blackout the room. My brother Jerry reminded me about blackout curtain liners and showed me some on eBay and I checked them out. I wanted to see some in person, so on the way home from the farmer’s market, I stopped in to WalMart and they had 4 packages at $19.97 each, which was exactly what I needed. I also bought a 48×48 white miniblind for the office.

Then I came back and began trying out the blackout liners. Each package contained two panels, each 27×80. I began sewing the panels together, 3 across for the 72″ wide window and the sliding glass doors. The window is 72 wide and 48 long so I cut the excess off of 3 panels, then sewed them together to make another entire panel measuring 27×80.

I hung them on a rod inside the sliding glass door frames. For my office window, I hung my navy polyester darkening curtains *I made myself* on a rod and hung the rod above and wider than the window. Then I pinned the blackout liner to the navy curtains. Instant darkness!

For my 48×48 window, I have a double layer of my navy polyester darkening curtains gathered on a rod placed inside the window, and over it is the new white minibind, which is a room darkening blind. The result? An office as dark as I want it to be when I need to catch those quick catnaps that keep me going.

So, instead of me paying Home Depot $600 for verticals that may or may not have darkened my rooms, I paid $100.55, did an hours’ worth of sewing, 15 minutes worth of miniblind installation and the job was done.

And now, time to celebrate with a giant salad of romaine, tomato, red onion and radish, into which I will dump a pan of sautéed onions and peppers and fresh garlic.

And it’s just about time to go outside to begin gathering kindling for the sundown fire that will cook my butternut squash and an ear of yellow corn for my dinner.

As for today,
I worked, I played
What more can I say.
Life is good.