My Hammock!

In the past Michael and I have definitely differed in regards to spending. He's been okay with it and I've been a penny pincher! One thing this whole unexpected home renovation has brought out in me is my inner spender. Not exactly sure if that's a good thing or not. On one hand it's helped me to be more in the moment and fun, but on the other hand I could see myself getting a little out of control. Hahaha! 

My thing with the house is we might as well get it done at the same time. If we are going to have basically a new house we might as well spend a little extra money to just get it all updated. That's why we added the new lights to the front of the house...that's why we decided to get new gutters and so on. 

During this whole process I have been to Lowe's more times than I could count. As it got towards the end of summer I noticed that the summer items were going on sale. There's one thing about me and I would dare to say it's pretty common with a lot of moms...I don't normally get things for myself! This year has definitely been my year though to actually do things for me. I built my outdoor furniture for me and when I saw this hammock on clearance at Lowe's I thought it would be fun for the kids, but honestly I got it for me. It's my hammock! 

I don't know the original price, but I got it for $30! I was a bit surprised when I took it out and there wasn't a base do go with it. The picture shows it on a base. It wasn't until I got into the directions when it's telling you to attach it to the base that I finally in super small print read....base not included! Huh!!! That was a bummer. I actually almost took it back because it was one of those time I felt a little hoodwinked! 

I did do some research and the base on the Lowe's website that went with this hammock was of course not on clearance and it was $60! Twice as much as the hammock, but pretty crucial for the actual functioning of the hammock since we don't have trees we can hang this from. I also researched other websites and the cheapest hammock with a base I could find was $120-$140 so $90 total wasn't too bad after all. 

Once the base was delivered to the house it made laugh that I thought it might be included with the hammock. The box that the base came in was huge and so heavy I couldn't even move it! 

Only took me a little while and it was all set up and ready to enjoy! 

Of course kids came over shortly after and my peaceful oasis turned into screams of...."move over"..."he's touching me"...."that's my spot" and so on! :) 

Silly kids!!! 

Here's the view of the hammock from the deck. Later on I ended up moving the pillow to the other side so I was facing the other way and not staring into the sun when I was trying to read a book. In all honestly though I have only laid in my hammock I believe 3 times. We still had so much work to do with the house that I didn't feel like I had time to lay in it.

I just recently took the Enneagram test and found out I'm a One and it describes me perfectly. After getting the hammock I had suspicions that I was the kind of person that has a hard time relaxing....honestly it hadn't ever dawned on me before. After finding it hard to actually sit down and take time for myself...it became pretty apparent! When I read the description of a One it said it perfectly.

"The relentlessness of their pursuit of the ideal can make Ones tense people who have a hard time relaxing and who unnecessarily deny themselves many of the harmless pleasures of life." 

So one of my personal goals for myself is to try to enjoy relaxing and this is the most important part....not feel guilty about it! That will be way easier said than done for me!