My BOLD experience

Yesterday, I road tripped down to Eugene with most of the Corvallis Keller Williams office to attend the first session of the BOLD: A Life by Design, an 8 week training course to get your real estate business and goals back on track. 

This course came at just the right time for me.  When I started real estate in mid July after just passing my exams,  I was feeling pumped and totally motivated to jump start my business.  For most of July and August my high of a new career was still there and I was doing all the work  I should be as a new agent; making my calls, sending out letters to all my neighbors and contacting all the people I could think of in my sphere.

Then September hit and I lost track of my business goals.  I was feeling less excited and motivated from having less than successful open houses and not having any real business yet.  While I was working and being productive and gathered 2 clients (1 I'm working with now and 1 in about 6 months hopefully), it was easy for me to forget the positive things I was doing and easier to concentrate on not having a transaction yet.

So by the end of September I was in a slump, not working on my real estate and concentrating on other areas of my life (also important, but not money making activities).  And now that I have taken the first BOLD class I feel refreshed and excited to work hard again at real estate.  And in the last few days I have reevaluated what I like and would like to add to my current real estate skills and services.

I have decided I would like to incorporate into selling real estate being a home stager for people selling their homes as well as being a home organizer/consultant for home owners who don't know what to do with their spaces.  So for the next few weeks I am going to make new long and short term goals so that I can do the activities I love doing and bring my services to others.

I will not be attending the other 7 sessions of BOLD but I will be working hard on my own time getting my life and business in order.  My other goal is to start writing frequent accountability entries like this one so that I will remember all the positive activities I am doing and focus on the positive not the negative.  I hope that this blog also helps other new agents learn from my experience and grow their business to suite their own lifestyle and goals.

Dreaming of a New Craft Room

Ok, so if you follow my craft blog at all you may be familiar with my on going desire to have a functioning craft room. If you have already read this post on my craft FB page, forgive me, it seemed like a design post too so I am adding it to both sites.  I am sloooowly achieving my craft room dream. Last summer I bought/painted a sewing desk, found a giant bookcase from IKEA and made a rack to hold all of my ribbon and thread. Sounds like I have it all figured out right? Well....

Currently the bunnies and their pen are being housed in my room (the only one with a/c) so its a pretty tight squeeze for everything in there. At least all of my craft supplies have a home. But, the other problem is I have run out of storage for my packaging supplies. I am creating bigger pieces such as dog beds and skateboard dishes and don't have any room to store the boxes I've been collecting to ship them.

So this weekend I got super excited to start designing my very own craft room for next year if we hopefully find a larger place. And while I'm waiting for that day to come I have been keeping myself busy designing my dream craft space. Here is a recap in photos of what I've done so far and my plans for my new room in the future:

This is what I started with at the beginning of last year. It was far from ideal. I did not have enough storage for anything and it all ended up on the floor.

So then I bought this monster shelf from IKEA to house all of my crafts and books. Which is an amazing feat since I have a ridiculous amount of stuff.

I then got this great desk from Brandy and painted it red and added new hardware to match the black shelf. While I was at it I also painted my dresser pictured in the previous photo to match the desk.

Here is the shelf in the room with my ribbon rack above. As you can see, it is in the way of the closet which makes finding my shoes in the mornings really difficult. But it works for the time being.

So now I am at the point of picking out new colors for my future craft area. I know I want to continue with red and black since I already have those items. I think I also want to throw in a bit of turquoise accents and maybe an off white or beige color for the walls.

Here is a sketch I put together yesterday of my ideal craft room. My red dresser would be the focal point with a couch and my sewing desk positioned where I can also watch tv while I work or when friends come over. To the side I have my large bookcase with all of my craft supplies. I would use the closet space for storage of my larger projects and packing materials. I also thought it would be fun to frame the tv with fabric behind it and a large turquoise picture frame in front. On pinterest I saw this great idea to have your walls painted one color and then put white molding near the top of the wall and then paint the remainder of the walls and ceiling a sky blue. It looked really pretty, I would like to try it out.

Here is my proposed floor plan. Hopefully I can find a bedroom large enough to squeeze in a love seat or small couch! And obviously this is a loose plan since I don't even have a room to make an actual layout for.

I also grabbed some material samples to maybe use for some curtains, pillows or for the tv frame.

I hope you enjoyed my little craft room blog. It will be a while before I get to set it up so hopefully I won't get too antsy!

Some End of Summer Cleaning

 As you can see I had a lot of junk piled up in our entry way closet and office area from the past year or so. This area has become the dumping ground for all the odd ball items around the house neither of us know what to do with.  So this weekend I spent some time organizing and throwing out junk no one really plans on using again. 

Whether you are selling your home soon or just ready to declutter your life, having organized closets and drawers will make a huge difference in your home life.  It clears your mind knowing you know right where an item is and that it is easy to get to.  If you are putting your house up for sale, buyers will most likely look through storage areas, so the tidier they are the better chance you have of snagging a buyer quickly.

I took out quite a bit of bags and boxes worth of goodwill donations just from this small area of the house.

 I even organized this overflowing drawer.

Yay!  Clean drawers look so much more appealing to me (and to buyers) than messy ones.  All I did was take out the items we never use, insert this organizer I bought at IKEA for a few bucks and put the essentials back in the drawer.

There you go, all done in less than an hour.  Much better and much cuter.

My leap into real estate

So,  for those of you who do not know me, I am a brand new real estate agent.  I have been licensed for about 5 whole weeks now.  And this blog will serve as my journal on documenting my experiences of being a new real estate agent.  I hope you enjoy!