That is a fantastic Chinese Proverb I came across tonight that I had to share with all of you tonight because it is a perfect fit for what is on my mind.<\/p>\n
I have spent the last several weeks working on a landscaping design for our new home with our landscaper extraordinaire, Chip Galloway of Utah Landscaping.\u00a0 Chip did the landscaping of my current home and he did a great job on that, so of course he was my first call for landscaping when we started the plans for our new house.\u00a0 This time around Chip convinced me to do a 3D computer mockup of my new yard so we could really visualize our designs.\u00a0 At first I pushed back and said no way, insisting a 3D mockup would be a waste of money (after all I hadn\u2019t done one for my current yard and it turned out just fine, so why did I need it this time?).\u00a0 But Chip was so passionate about how much it would help me that I finally agreed to give it a try – and I have to say that I am SO GLAD that we did!\u00a0 I am visual person to begin with, but having your ideas done in a true 3D layout that you can walk through and spin around from different angles CHANGES YOUR WORLD! \u00a0It\u2019s AMAZING! And seeing the ideas laid out that way is so smart because it lets you make mistakes on a computer image rather than making an expensive mistake on the actual yard that would cost too much money to fix.<\/p>\n
The process was simple \u2013 I drew what I wanted in my yard the old fashioned way, on paper with a pencil (I know\u2026archaic\u2026but it is the best way to do a first pass). Then I found images off Houzz and Google images that I put into an organized PowerPoint presentation where I could display each picture and add text to the slide stating what I liked about it. Then I sent all of that info to Chip.\u00a0 He then took that info and created the first pass of putting it into a 3D layout of my backyard, adding to my ideas with his own great ideas so he could show me ways to improve on what I had started with.\u00a0 He then sent it to me to see and I would give him feedback on what I like and don\u2019t like so he could make those changes and send it back again.\u00a0 Doing this yard in 3D has been the coolest creative process because it allowed me to show it to friends and neighbors and walk through it with my kids as if we are actually in our new yard.\u00a0\u00a0 I then got their feedback and we incorporated those into the design as well.\u00a0 We are now putting the final touches on it and then we are ready to start the actual landscaping in the new yard.\u00a0\u00a0 I have to tell all of you that using technology to do the 3D is my new favorite thing.\u00a0 I even started learning how to use the SketchUp software used to create these 3Ds myself because I am having a blast with it.\u00a0 Once our design is complete I will post images for all of you to see as well.\u00a0 It\u2019s really cool.<\/p>\n
So that was a really long way of saying that planting trees has been on my mind lately.\u00a0 I LOVE trees.\u00a0 I don\u2019t even know what it is about them but they are seriously amazing; so\u00a0beautiful and strong and elegant. \u00a0I love them. But it is a serious bummer that it takes so long for them to grow big and full, because by the time we are thinking we want one, we want it to be full grown right this minute.\u00a0\u00a0 We don\u2019t want to plant it and have to wait 20 years for it to become amazing.\u00a0 So we end up holding off on planting one because we don\u2019t have the patience to wait for it to grow.\u00a0 But the fact is that we shouldn\u2019t hold off planting them because 20 years from now we will be so glad we did.<\/p>\n
And that is where we come to the life analogy.\u00a0 There are a ton of things I wish I had done a long time ago because I want to experience the benefit of having done them right now.\u00a0 Things like starting an exercise routine 20 years ago would have given me a fabulous body today, or things like having good eating habits would have made my body healthier today. Maybe it\u2019s wishing things like starting a journal so you could look back on that now, or taking more photos of important events so you could have them in albums today, or learning to play an instrument so you could be an amazing pianist today.\u00a0 The point is that we can\u2019t go back and plant a tree in the past \u2013 it\u2019s already passed.\u00a0 But we can always plant a new one today.\u00a0 Sure it isn\u2019t going to give us the instant gratification that we want, but 20 years from now we will be so incredibly happy that we did it today!\u00a0 So today\u2019s challenge is to plant a tree, either a real one or a metaphorical one \u2013 just plant it!<\/p>\n
Have a great day!
\n~Amy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That is a fantastic Chinese Proverb I came across tonight that I had to share with all of you tonight because it is a perfect fit for what is on my mind. I have spent the last several weeks working on a landscaping design for our new home with our landscaper extraordinaire, Chip Galloway of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":69,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1944,1021,46,60,1939,1941,163,1834,1957,1947,1959,1952,1949,1951,83,51,189,7,30,364,76,1954,1955,1477,325,1953,378,629,66,1940,1946,630,53,1031,169,406,1938,1950,1956,112,1958,1945,1437,149,1384,1948,1942,1960,369,1943],"class_list":["post-3702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-3d","tag-amazing","tag-attitude","tag-beautiful","tag-chinese-proverb","tag-chip-galloway","tag-courage","tag-creative","tag-creative-process","tag-design","tag-draw","tag-eat-right","tag-elegant","tag-exercise","tag-experience","tag-family","tag-friends","tag-future","tag-gift","tag-goal","tag-goals","tag-google","tag-google-images","tag-grow","tag-healthy","tag-houzz","tag-improve","tag-inspiration","tag-journal","tag-landscaper","tag-landscaping","tag-motivate","tag-motivation","tag-past","tag-patience","tag-photos","tag-plant-a-tree","tag-planting","tag-powerpoint","tag-self-improvement","tag-sketch","tag-sketchup","tag-strong","tag-success","tag-tree","tag-trees","tag-utah-landscaping","tag-visual","tag-visualize","tag-yard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3702"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3708,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3702\/revisions\/3708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}