Coming Clean about 2010 and Aspirations and Plans for 2011

OWN is the new Oprah Winfrey Network that is launching on January 1, 2011! While that is exciting, I must admit I will miss the old Oprah show that I have faithfully watched for years now. Having learned about the OWN programming to come, with specials focused on informing and inspiring people to live their best lives, I have a feeling this will be a case of one door closing but another door opening!

When I received the email that TwitterMoms (now known as SocialMoms) and OWN were joining together in honor of the new year, new year’s resolutions and living the best lives we can, and calling for blogger’s submissions in which we share a blog post about our dreams and plans for new possibilities in our lives for 2011, I promised myself I would take the time to participate.

Before I dive in and tell you about plans for 2011, I want to begin by coming clean about what happened to us in 2010. I started to tell my story on this blog, but just stopped.  I couldn’t write about it at the time, having just lived through it.

The truth is, this past year was stressful for our family. We “sold” our house, moved out for the entire summer waiting to close on the sale and it never happened. After excitedly waiting the whole summer to close, we found out in August that the buyers were denied financing. How does this happen? We thought our real estate agent was there to protect our interests. We had to move every piece of furniture, every dish, every box, every bin all-back-in to this house.

We started this project in 2004 – that’s just about seven years ago. Regarding the piece of land that we planned to build a new house on, we lost a building permit, and nearly lost a septic permit, not to mention a lot of time and money. It was a horrible, yet, humbling experience that united us more as a family. I will never forget the day we started to move our things back in, my husband looked at me and said “I’m sorry.” We stood in our empty living room hugging each other, in tears.

Here were are, on the verge of 2011 and I am happy to write that I do have a lot of aspirations and different plans in the works. This will be the year to spend more time with my family. Now that the house is off the market (We have had it on the market for the past three summers!) the task of keeping the house and yard in show ready condition will be gone. This will mean less work, less stress and more time to spend together.

I look forward to the camping trips that we will take this summer. We have a pop-up camper (very similar to the one that Oprah and Gail used on their trip, except no bathroom).  I am hoping to get the opportunity to review some New England campgrounds and post about them here on Moms Own Words!

My aspirations for 2011 include some home improvements that we make for us, not to entice some other home buyer to buy our house.  We have a room over our garage that needs some work. We need to replace some glass doors that we can no longer see out of because the inner seals have been broken creating a frosted look. We also plan on closing up a wall that consists of three sliding doors, to make the room more energy efficient. Our upstairs living area is all carpeted. Raising two boys has taken its toll on these carpets. We plan on tearing up all the carpet and replacing it with a bamboo floor. Lowe’s will be seeing a lot more of us in the months to come! Speaking of Lowe’s, I would love to take a workshop or two in 2011 to learn how to do some of these things myself – or at least help .

We also plan to save some money in 2011. We will start the new year with a refinanced mortgage of 3.8% with a plot of land that we will own free and clear. Who knows what will become of the lot, maybe in a few years it will be worth something again! The refinance will give us some breathing room and enable us to start saving some money. We would like to take the kids to Disney World someday and plan to start saving for that trip this year.

Could this be a case of one door closing and another door opening?  A few months ago, I would never look at our situation like that, but on New Year’s Eve, and looking hopefully toward 2011, I can see it.

Happy New Year to all of my readers!  May many doors be opened for you!

I wrote this blog post while participating in the TwitterMoms and OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network blogging program, for a $50 gift card. For more information on how you can participate, click here.