Inspiration vs. Motivation

Inspiration
In the world of RSS Feeders, decorating magazines, home television channels, and furniture catalogs sent straight to my mailbox I seem to find inspiration everywhere I look.  Inspiration is a beautiful thing.  I have even discovered a new way to organize all that inspiration.  I mean, other than hoarding Pottery Barn catalogs in my closet.  I stumbled across a website called Pinterest.  Really, click the link and browse around, then put yourself on the invite list.  It only took a day before I was online.

I currently hoard magazines with ideas I like and now when I see an idea that I would like to one day put in my dream house (or any house that we one day own) I can go to the website and just pin it.  Then I have the picture there and everything. It also saves the link so that if I ever do get to the point that I will actually buy the item, I don't have to go searching again.

When I see something on a blog post I've starred it in my Google Reader and add a tag (ie. 4th of July, food, home).  In Pinterest I have different boards that I can categorizes the fun finds that I come across.  I will just have to go back and scan through stuff and pin the things I really love.  It would be a while before I move everything.

The only drawback is that I can't pin items while using the iPad.  Where I do most of my blog reading and internet browsing these days.  In fact, I spend very little time on the computer these days, hence the hiatus in blogging.  This may be the thing that gets me on the computer again, but I'm going to have to find a time that is best every week and that is hard to do during the summer.

Motivation
Having all these fun ideas is, well FUN.  But the follow through is very hard to come by.

I always seem to have an excuse:

• I hate spending money even when I'm saving money doing it myself.
• Shopping is a scary going out into the world experience.
• We're renting so why spend all the time and money on a house that isn't even mine.
• That is way too messy.
• And my most common excuse, I'm a lazy procrastinator. I really need to work on self-discipline.

Every now and then I find the motivation to actually get some project that I've been thinking about done.  A lot of the times it includes a deadline like an upcoming birthday or guest coming to town.

My latest inspiration and motivation involves my backyard.  My patio to be more specific.  Here is what it currently looks like:

Yeah, not that pretty.  It's incredibly cluttered looking and leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I don't like looking at all this stuff when I sit in the backyard and try to relax.  Plus there is the added fact that our yard is visible from the nature trail that runs behind our house.  I'm waiting for someone to say, "Oh, that's your backyard."

I played a little on Photobucket to give you a more detailed idea of everything that is going on that you can't see in the picture.  Since there is so much stuff that there is stuff behind stuff. (Click to enlarge).

Our patio didn't always look like this.  It started with just the grill, the table and chairs, and the satellite dish.  The kid toys popped up over time, but the big clutterness came when the playhouse showed up.  The table and chairs were moved into the corner against one wall so that the playhouse could sit on the opposite corner as far from the satellite dish as possible.  We can't risk the kids losing readjusting our signal on accident.

Now I know you are thinking, why don't I move some stuff onto the grass?  Normally the picnic table, the slide and the water table get moved out onto the grass.  But this is a problem all in itself.  First, we rent and can't kill the grass so I'm constantly moving them around.  Second, when the gardeners come everything gets shoved back onto the patio.

This is not acceptable if I plan on sitting in my backyard in the evenings sipping wine with my best friend when she comes to visit me this summer.  HA!!  You knew there had to be some motivation in there somewhere since it can be assumed I've been living with this backyard since the playhouse showed up at Christmas time.

Yes, there are things going on in my backyard, though they are moving very slowly.  There are deadlines that must be met and space that must be made. 

I'm not going to share them with you just yet.  You are going to have to wait for my next post.  Stinky me but you see, this post isn't about what I am doing to my backyard, but that I'm finally motivated to do something with it.  Until next time...