about-me

This about-me page has been a difficult one for me to write. I couldn't figure out what to say about us and then it finally came to me that I have already told you a lot about RL and me on my website, so basically I just have to refer you to those pages plus give you a little background about us both and it's done.

Why didn't I think of that before?

It wasn't hard writing about building our house, because I did it as we built the house. But we did have a life before building our house.

In a nutshell, RL and I have been married for 44 years now and we have 9 children with 21 1/2 grandchildren. I have been a stay at home Mom, “taxi driver,” doctor, lawyer, beggerman, and I've even robbed “Peter to pay Paul” many times, if that makes me a thief. =o)

I have taught piano lessons for nearly all of my 44 years of marriage, including teaching several of our children as students. But I have to agree, parents don't make good music teachers for their own children.

By the time our youngest was born I developed diabetes and have since suffered from eye degeneration as a result of the disease. Thank goodness for modern medicine or I would have lost my eyesight by now. As it is, I have less vision, with some peripheral loss of vision.And then I blow up the font size of things I'm reading on the computer or I put text under my magnisight reader that transmits the text onto a TV screen.

Some of the things I love to do are sewing, quilting, cooking, gardening, and I have tried my hand at entrepreneurial endeavors for over 35 years. I actually earned a car in one off-line marketing business, and that was when I had all 9 children at home. I count that as pretty significant, because, in that small city, I only know of two or three other women who had the ability to get a downline and stay in business for more than 2 or 3 years, and they never earned a car. I lasted over 12 years in that business.

Ultimately, I turned to the internet to try and make money, thinking it would be the end-all moneymaker. I tell my story HERE

Rather than tell the stories again, I'll direct you to some of my website pages and if you are interested, you can read about it there. I will say, we had some very interesting experiences during the building process. (If you want to read more of our story you can press the back button to return to this page)

Suffice it to say, RL and I were advancing in years, and nearing retirement and still did not own our home free and clear. Read about building our retirement home HERE.

Then I read about building our own home acting as the General Contractor.

I purchased an ebook telling how to build a FREE home and the rest is history. See the pix of the home we built HERE.

I wrote about our experience in building a home and learned about making a website to tell our story on to help others not make the same mistakes we had made.

RL thought he could do some of the work himself thus saving us some equity, but his heart gave out on him.

It was not easy developing our house plan but we finally did it.

We had some interesting and costly experience with our excavator

and just when we thought it couldn't get worse here's more on our excavator troubles

Those troubles resulted in a flood in our basement

We have lived in our new home for nearly 2 years now and should be starting our 2nd home if we are to own our home in 3 builds. But the economy has taken a down-turn which by selling our home now, we would lose all the equity we earned by being the general contractor. We have decided to ride it all out and hope for a quick turn around since the bad times always reverse and so we are waiting patiently.

I really dpn't want to move again and I'm enjoying our new home “built for someone else” enough, that if my website should be profitable enough – well, maybe we won't HAVE TO move.

My website has proven to be a “family affair” because RL's brother and several of our children have all started building their own websites. I talk almost daily to one or another of our children, sharing our excitement or information about “this or that.” We discover new ways to do different things and it is a lot of fun as we continue to build our websites.

Each early morning I rush into my office to check the traffic statistics (how many visitors have been to my website) for the previous day. My stats are published at 4 AM MST and so often it's close to that time when I check them out. This website gives me a reason to get up, on days that can be pretty dismal. My numbers continue to rise. At first only 5 – 15 people visited my site daily, and now 150-200 people visit home-built4u.

My advertising earnings have risen from $30-$45 a month to $120-$150 a month in only 3 months. That is more than tripling my income in just 3 months. Show me any honest JOB out there that gives you raises like that. Although it is not a lot of money, it is growing, and based on others' experiences, I know it will continue growing.

I have added a few vegetable garden recipes HERE to my website since they have to do with vegetables grown in the garden and gardening is part of the landscape idea.

Since landscaping is part of the building process, I added a section on landscaping to my site too. Check it out starting HERE

I would love to hear your comments about my site, so if you have comments, post them on the contact-me page HERE. Thanks for visiting.