Meant To Be

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Emily Giffin is one of my favorite authors and I loved this book like I have all of her others.

Joe’s family is like American royalty. Everyone knows who they are, they are fabulously wealthy, and they live a privileged life. Cate comes from the wrong side of the tracks who makes it big as a fashion model.

When Joe happens upon a photoshoot Cate is doing on the beach, he falls for her. Cate tries not to fall back. She feels like there’s no way the two of them can possibly work given that they have such different backgrounds.

However, they were meant to be. I loved this book and couldn’t put it down. I highly recommend it!

Beautiful Packaging, Beautiful Scent, Beautiful Skin

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When I was first approached by the folks at Blue Nectar, I was a little wary. I am asked a lot by folks with skincare lines to try their products. I am told a lot how beautiful my skin is so I have never taken anyone up on their offer before.

After receiving the email, I investigated the Blue Nectar products and I was intrigued. Their ingredients are totally natural with no chemicals. I’m working more every day to move to all natural products as all those chemicals that commercial preparations contain are just not good for me.

I was asked to try the Kumkumadi Night Cream with Jasmine. I looked at the product on Amazon and noticed on the label it mentioned Jasmine and Pachouli.

 I LOVE the smell of jasmine. Back when we lived in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, we would pass by a certain house on our daily walk. Jasmine was growing over the fence and I breathed as much of it as I could each time we passed by.

 I do NOT love the smell of Pachouli. I often wonder how people can wear that scent as it smells like mold to me.

Given that some smells, no matter how good they are, can make me nauseated over time (I once had to pull over to the side of the road so I could wipe a new lipstick off because it was making me sick!), I was just a touch nervous at the thought of how the smell would affect me.

I received the cream. The packaging is beautiful! It came in a square blue box with a removable lid. The ingredients are listed on the side of the box. Upon opening the box, you find a beautiful gold jar of cream.

I opened the jar and it smelled SOOOOO pretty. It smelled of jasmine with no hint of pachouli smell at all. But could I made it all night with it on my face or would it bother me? It didn’t bother me! It’s a gorgeous smell that I go to sleep smelling and it hasn’t made me sick once.

 I love the way the cream is absorbed by my skin making it feel moisturized but not oily. This is crazy, but I love how I can still smell the cream when I’m working out and sweating the next morning and it comes out of my pores.

This is just exactly the night cream I was looking for and I didn’t even know it. Thank you, Blue Nectar for letting me try your beautiful night cream. I love it!

75 Hard Challenge, Round 2!

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This is Day 9 of my second round of the #75HardChallenge. I finished the first round last August. If you haven’t heard of it, the challenge was created by @andyfrieslla.

Why I chose to do #75Hard the first time: I had a truly awful week in real estate. 75 Hard is a mental toughness challenge and I decided at that point, I needed some mental toughness. On Day 63 of the first round, I was skewered by a client who also used to be a friend and it devastate me. No mental toughness. But what I did get was radical clarity! The challenge was worth every single minute I devoted to it.

Why I chose to do a second round: I still want mental toughness! LOL! I’m still shooting for the mental toughness aspect the challenge should bring. Additionally, I feel like following the challenge is making me a better person day by day.

Why I love 75 Hard: It’s scalable! That means ANYONE can do it. If you notice in my video, I can’t do push-ups off the floor yet. Yet! So I do them off of the rail and they are tough! But one day, they won’t be tough and I’ll be doing them off the floor. I aspire to this.

At the age of 61,I’m just getting started. There are so many things I still want to do and 75 Hard will be the foundation to those things. Have you done 75 Hard? If not, when are you starting?

Millionaire Real Estate Agent

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https://amzn.to/34XRbT4

This month, in our Arkansas eXp Book club, we are reading The Millionaire Real Estate Agent by Gary Keller. This is a book that’s loaded with information and our broker suggests that we have it taken apart and either have it spiral bound or punch holes and put it in a binder.

I will be doing this because it seems like this book will end up being a great resource for my real estate business. I eagerly look forward to each week’s readings. 🙂

Before Selling Your Home…

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Only 7% of home sales in 2021 were FSBO (for sale by owner). Of that 7%, many of these were sales between family members and people who knew each other. Meaning, even in an extremely low inventory market (aka HOT seller’s market), most sellers hired a real estate agent to do the legwork.

Instead of listing out all of the reasons why you *should not* sell your house without an agent. I’m going to educate you as to how the RIGHT fit agent can help you when it comes time to sell your home.

First, a great LOCAL agent knows the market. They’ve been inside many of the homes that have sold and are for sale. That gives them a leg up when it comes to the current market values of homes in your area so they can help you to price strategically and attract the most buyers. They know what buyers are looking for and what turns them off, therefore knowing what you can do as a seller, to create the most demand.

A lot of the “work” you’ll do when selling your home happens before it’s ever for sale. This is the “pre-market prep”. I guide my sellers through this process whether it’s staging recommendations, furniture placement, paint updates or small repairs that should be done prior to the home hitting the market. This takes the guess work out of it for sellers, because like I said, I’m familiar with what buyers want (as well as what would be considered red flags that we should fix).

I’ll also leave you with an important stat to keep in mind. According to NAR (National Association of REALTORS):

  • FSBOs (for sale by owners) typically sell for less than the selling price of other homes;
  • FSBO homes sold at a median of $260,000 last year, significantly lower than the median of agent-assisted homes at $318,000.

The moral of the story is this: A great agent will help you maximize the sale price of your home, putting more money in YOUR POCKET. That is done through their extensive market knowledge, pricing strategies, pre-market prep guidance and out of the box marketing tactics – all while navigating every step of the process for you so you don’t have to figure it out yourself.

Book Review: The Showgirl

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I’m a couple days late here but one of my favorite books this year, The Showgirl by Nicola Harrison, went on sale Tuesday. If you love historical women’s fiction, this is a book for you.

It’s 1927 and all Olive McCormick, a gifted singer and dancer from Minnesota, wants to do is become a showgirl in the Ziegfield Follies in New York. Her parents expect her to get married and become a housewife and they think her desire to be in the Follies is cheap and unacceptable. This doesn’t stop her, though. She boldly goes to NYC to meet Ziegfield where he tells her she’s not exactly what they’re looking for. This doesn’t stop her either and she works in another review show until she’s finally brought into the Ziegfield Follies.

All Olive wants is to sing and dance and be adored by the audiences. She doesn’t understand her family’s attitude towards what she is doing and she doesn’t understand the attitude of the other girls who see the show as a means to find a husband so they can get married and settle down with families.

When she meets the good looking and wealthy Archie Carmichael, she thinks she’s found the perfect man who loves her for who she is. Then she learns that he wants to ultimately have a family and she doesn’t want to tell him a secret she’s been keeping from him that she thinks will destroy their relationship.

This story is full of drama, thrills, excitement, glamour and secrets. It also gives a nice inside look at the Ziegfield Follies, a showgirl’s life, and life in the roaring twenties in New York City. This is a great book. Congratualaitons, Nicole Harrison on another excellent book. Montauk, also by this author, is another favorite of mine.

#bookstagram #newrelease #author #roaringtwenties #ziegfieldfollies #showgirl #lovetoread #bookreview #awesomebook

Lies Like Wildfire – Book Review

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In honor of National Book Lovers Day, I’m bringing you a review of the last, most awesome, book I read. It’s called “Lies Like Wildfire” by Jennifer Lynn Alvarez.

It’s no secret I like to read YA (young adult) fiction. I like the stories that are bubbly and fun and end up in a happy ending. They are quick reads, a nice diversion from every day life. But this book is not that. I started reading it and I was all, oh holy cow, I don’t want to read about a wildfire but, y’all, this is an awesome book! I was on the edge of my chair the whole time I was reading it and I finished it in a day.

The story is about five kids who have grown up together. When they were young, they all volunteered to be monsters in a local production and, over the years, the group becomes known as The Monsters. They are all seniors in high school when they go into the forest where there is a deep, deep lake called The Gap. They are horsing around on their last summer before they all go their separate ways in college when one of the boys, Luke, decides to smoke some weed. Hannah, who is the daughter of the local sheriff, slaps the pipe out of his hand and that’s how the fire starts. It becomes bigger than anything they could have ever imagined and with one lie, you see the friendship and their loyalty put to the test.

It’s a really great book and I can’t recommend it more. I always hate finishing a book I love this much because I’m afraid the next one won’t measure up. Are you a book lover? What are you reading today?

Finding Hidden Potential in Real Estate

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My house hunting super power ⚡️
Spotting the hidden potential

You’ve seen the shows on HGTV where they buy the ugliest house ever and 30 minutes later it’s straight out of West Elm and you’re like “I think I could do this!”

What happens is, sometimes that potential is hard to spot.

When you’re looking at multiple homes, you start comparing the ones filled with oak cabinets, funky kitchen layouts and overgrown backyards to the ones that are updated and decorated with furniture from Crate & Barrel.

That can make it difficult to favor the ones that need the elbow grease and paint jobs, you know?

But the ones that look like they’re straight out of Instagram might have a higher price tag and cause you to sacrifice some of the features that were initially most important to you.

This is where I come in! I want to help you keep your top priorities in mind when looking at homes and work around what you might not love about a house!

So maybe you find a house in the perfect location. It has a great layout and the yard you’ve dreamed about, but inside you’re already making a list of all the changes you’d have to make.

What we can do is sit down and make a good ol’ pros and cons list of the changes vs the positive features and see what makes most sense.

Maybe just a few simple updates could give the space a makeover that you’d be really happy with.

A fresh coat of white paint, new rugs, swapping out the pendant lights and adding new cabinet hardware in the kitchen could make the space look entirely different and wouldn’t require taking the kitchen down to its studs or starting from scratch!

What is one home feature or design style you could not look past? I want to try and spot the hidden potential.

Do Not Agent Hop During Your Home Search

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Agent Hopping Scenarios you need to know:

The home buying process will be so much smoother if you hire an agent who you trust to work alongside you rather than randomly contacting agents via signs, real estate websites and open houses you pop by.

Here are 3 ways you could be agent hopping without knowing it:

1. If you happen to be checking out houses online in your free time and come across a house that didn’t come through your home search – email YOUR AGENT. Ask them to find out information on this home or if it’s still available.

What you need to know: There is likely an agent listed next to that house online. That isn’t necessarily the listing agent of that home, but rather someone who is paying to have their contact information pop up there.

2. You just went to the farmer’s market on a Saturday morning, have a fresh cup of coffee in hand, driving with the windows down and pass an Open House Sign pointing right. You put your blinker on and follow the signs until you find the house that’s for sale.

There is an agent holding that house open for the day and you introduce yourself and start talking.

What you need to know: They aren’t necessarily the listing agent of this house. If they are, they are representing the sellers. Make sure you let them know you’re already working with an agent if they offer to send you another listing or show you a home. Give them your agent’s business card if you have it on hand and thank them for any information they shared.

If you’re interested in that house you walked through, call and let your agent know.

3. You get a postcard in the mail and OMG IT’S YOUR DREAM HOUSE!

There’s an agent’s picture and phone number on the postcard for you to call to get more information – YAY!

What you need to know: If you’ve been working with an agent already, make sure you contact them. The person’s information on the postcard is the listing agent’s but your agent can show you any house on the market.

YOU’RE NOT BOTHERING YOUR AGENT!

Why Do You Want to Buy A House?

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Have you ever asked yourself this?

Why do you want to buy a house? Or maybe for you, it’s a new house..

I want all of my home buyers to answer this question at the start of their journey because it’s something you can continuously come back to throughout the process to make sure you’re buying the house that’s right for your needs.

Here are a few examples that might help spark your why:

👨‍👦‍👦 👩‍👩‍👧‍👧 👨‍👨‍👧‍👦 👩‍👧‍👦👨‍👩‍👦

To raise your family

🖼 To have a space to make your Pinterest boards come to life and paint the walls whatever color you want

🐶 To have a yard for your dog to run around in

💵 To make a good financial investment

💰 To invest in a rental property that will provide you with some extra income

🌅 To buy a home for retirement

🌊 To have a place to get away and hear the ocean waves as you sip your coffee every morning

🛋 To finally design your space to look like it’s straight out of Studio McGee’s Dream Home Makeover and have those dreamy parties around the massive kitchen island

There are so many reasons for owning a home, but what is YOUR reason? Ready to buy? Give me a call!