My home is my heaven.

I watched "Designed to Sell" on HGTV tonight. For $2000, a featured house is spruced up in order to markedly increase its selling price, as is the case in each episode. And wow! what a transformation it was in tonight's show. The house sold for $45,000 above the original asking price! -- (humma humma humma...can you say, 'BMW 5 series?!')

I always think about our little suburban abode every time I watch any of those 'home and garden' programs. I think about how my wife and I have come a long way with our improvements since we moved in almost five years ago. It was several months later after working on some project that I realized that my dream house could never be bought. It had to be built. From the immediate paint job just days after our closing to our never-ending garden work each spring, I smile more and more knowing I'm hammering away that much closer to a cozier oasis.

This year, our list of projects is tremendous: paint all the interior doors and replace the knobs, put in an attic vent, stain the deck and fence, clean up the basement, etc ad nauseocity. For me, I think I'd be happy if we could just finalize our garden and make it totally killer looking, and redo our small kitchen to look more up to date and feel less cramp.

Today, I mowed the lawn for its first cut of the season.* Tomorrow morning, I'll spread Scotts fertilizer and then it's off to Lowes or Home Depot for some inspiration.

Home sweet home.

*What's that expression? Oh yeah, "Good fences make good neighbors." Well, I feel that way with lawns: I judge a man by how well his grass grows. :-)