Taking stock: What's on the agenda

Ahhhh. I'm back and so refreshed. Call it a massive rapid influx of Vitamin D, but sailing the Exuma islands of the Bahamas was certainly just what the doctor ordered. I feel refreshed and ready to jump into some great winter projects. Now that the holidays are over (and I am SO thankful that I put everything away before we left January 9 because it was so nice to come back to a Christmas-free house), we are in prime project time and I'm ready to get going.

As I often do this time of year, here's a rundown of the projects that are on the to-do list. If you know anything about my to-do lists, you know that there has never been a time when everything gets crossed off, but for me, a list is the first step to getting myself in the right frame of mind to prioritize projects.

Gardening related tasks

This is obviously my favorite category because I love knowing that spring is coming, even when the weather tries to tell me differently.

• Plan vegetable garden, take stock of current seeds and order new seeds. (Here's what I ordered last year.)
• Order onion sets and other vegetable garden (non-seed) items (i.e. specialized fertilizers, assorted gizmos, etc.).
• Scope out new perennials and shrubs I might be interested in.
• Possibly re-design the mini garden bed by the garage (below).

House projects

• Clean out the basement. Yuck. Not looking forward to that.
• Sand the wall texture in the hallway.

• Paint walls and trim in the hallway.
• Finish the dresser refinishing I started well over a year ago.

Office projects

I never really finished up the office renovation at work and there are a few finishing touches I'd like to do there.

• Paint the file cabinets.
• Hang art on the wall I look at all day.

Outdoor projects

• Plan the pergola for over the garage doors.
• Order pergola brackets (I feel safer ordering them than building them).
• Cut pergola pieces.
• Stain/paint pergola parts so it is all ready to be installed in spring.
• Add some trim around the garage doors and replace damaged trim.
• Look into new garage doors.
• Find new outdoor lights for the garage.

Blog projects

• A good friend of the blog and I have been cooking up what could be a very cool somewhat regular feature that is gardening related. Now we just have to translate talk into action.
• What do you guys think? Is a redesign in order? I went through so many redesigns, at least two of them paid for, until I settled on this one that I did myself and I've been pretty happy with it, but I wonder if the site couldn't use a little sprucing up. Any thoughts? 

What's on your agenda now that the holidays are over?