My GREEN Life & Real Estate

It's kind of hard to believe, but this is my 21st year in real estate.  I actually referred to myself as an "old-timer" yesterday to an attorney I met outside of his office, and it felt weird the second it came out of my mouth. I don't feel like it's been that long...it's just that I don't know that many Realtors in my market who are still practicing who started before I did. We've had 2 "exodus" events in Connecticut real estate since I started in 2000 that took quite a few agents out of circulation. One was the market crash in 2008, where we saw our sales and commissions tank, while the price of oil and everything else went up. The other was Covid. For some agents it was too hard to stay afloat, they did not want to risk getting Covid, they needed to be home with their families, and/or they heeded the siren call to retire from real estate. I judge NO ONE. We all have to do what's best for us. Open house selfies between visitors. I am so

Every year, after Christmas is all put away, I welcome January by taking inventory of my seed stock and pouring through seed catalogs and then planning out my garden!  Gardening is in my blood. Both of my parents grew up on farms, and even now my Uncle Leopold's farm,  Ferme Couture , is still run by his grandson (6th generation to farm this land!) up in my dad's hometown in Quebec, Canada. Growing up in Canada we had a HUGE garden, with my brother and I each having our our section to plant and tend whatever we chose. Any weekend visit to a nearby uncle's massive garden meant we were out helping to harvest the freshest veggies and sweet strawberries, or collecting eggs from the hen house, or playing in the barn with our cousins. Our pantry was filled with preserved fruit jams and it was wonderful. When we moved back to the states we had a much smaller, extremely tidy suburban garden for tomatoes, cucumbers and greens, and somehow weeds dared not grow there. My own garden ha

  In September of 2016 I wrote the first pages of my bullet journal after reading Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod. It was a quick read that I read with some of my real estate team and I got a lot of out of the book. I tend to value productivity, which is something I learned from my parents, so this book with its ideas like "own your morning and you will own your day" resonated with me.    My bullet journal is a living, breathing book that I use mostly for real estate, and does not replace my agenda (yes, that’s on paper too) or my travel planning book (also paper and holds the drafts of every trip I’ve created and/or taken plus future trips.)  It started with a Miracle Morning-inspired habit tracker based on my own version of S.A.V.E.R.S. and quickly evolved into notes and task lists…then kept evolving! I have a creative side, so this fulfills that need with some colorful pages, some creative lettering, and a failed scrapbook-style page at the beginning (it really does n