Ready for My First AirBnB Guests!
It’s been a challenge to try to move into new space, unpack, get an office and inventory set up and organized AND try to run a business during the busiest time of the year…Q4. But here I am in the middle of it all and ready for my very first AirBnB Guests. The house isn’t perfect but I feel like the guest space is and will be more than comfortable for them. I made a quick video to show you all where I’m at in this crazy adventure! I’m going to use this blog to post updates on how the whole AirBnB thing is working and I’m committed to doing more videos in the future. If you want to following along, be sure to subscribe to my blog here, via my blog Facebook page link or my You Tube.
This is my very first video that I did anything more than shooting it and uploading to You Tube. It will be interesting to see how (or if) my video recording and editing skills get any better. I shot this video using my iPhone 6. I used Open Shot, a free video editing software program to edit it by watching you tube tutorials. You can learn how to do just about anything these days with Google and You Tube! Yeah me and my old self!
Click here to watch the house tour video.
UPDATE 12-27-17: My listing went active about 7pm on 12/21. Less than one week later I’ve already got 34 nights booked…HOW CRAZY IS THAT!?
If you haven’t given the AirBnB experience a try, use this link to create an account and get a $40 credit to use on your first trip.
And if you want to start your own AirBnB, use this link to get started as a host.
And because I’ve had several requests for the link to my listing, click here to check out my listing and book your next trip to Phoenix with me!
It upset me so much that I rarely spoke about it, but I always thought about it. Every day for months I’d pray I’d find someone was trying to sell them. I’d search eBay, Craigslist, all the local trading sites; OfferUp, Close5, Facebook Marketplace, etc. in hopes that by chance I’d recognize at least one of my rings and could buy it back. I would often think of how I’d lose other pieces of jewelry for long periods of time and I’d always find them. But it was always one earring…not 10 rings! I often thought of the story a friend told me of how she lost a pair of pearl earrings that were very sentimental to her. She searched and searched for them and prayed she’d find them, and she did! Laying on a piece of patio furniture the day after a wind storm had passed through. I remembered these things and I continued to pray that I’d somehow find my rings. After many months my prayer changed from hope of finding them to asking for relief from the grief I felt over losing them.
When I moved to Williams my jewelry box sat in the corner of my bedroom. The sight of it was a daily reminder of my loss and I stopped wearing jewelry all together…no earrings, bracelets or necklaces. I’d look at the jewelry box and I’d get a sick feeling in my stomach. I was surprised at how sentimental these rings were to me…I don’t think I appreciated that fact until they were gone. Here I am at a point in my life where I’m trying to downsize and minimize and one of the few things I was going to keep were stolen from me. I often thought about just getting rid of the jewelry box. I wondered if I should take the time to sell it on eBay or just donate it and be done with it. Then I wondered about the jewelry that remained. What would I do with my watches, earrings, bracelets? I would always return to the fact that while I could take the time to sort through everything, my time was better focused on selling off larger items and that would be the end of my thought process….until the next time it started all over again.
It was when I was traveling to San Francisco in July that I decided I should probably pack some earrings to go with an outfit I planned on wearing to a gala I was attending. I really had to go through the jewelry box to find a set of earrings. I pulled out a bracelet and decided that was enough. When I got home I started picking through the mess to find earrings to wear to church each week. Nothing more. I have some fun, bright, cheerful summer dresses and I had fun jewelry to go with most of them. I was getting back into wearing this jewelry to church each week, but I still hadn’t taken the time to organize the mess that was my jewelry box.
Last Sunday I was dressed and nearly ready for church. I was wearing a dress I hadn’t worn in a long time and knew I had a specific necklace, some earrings and maybe even a bracelet to go with it. I found the necklace easily and was sifting through the jumbled mess looking for the earrings. I couldn’t find them so I looked for the matching bracelet. At this point I was questioning if I had earrings…”Was it a necklace and bracelet set?” I pulled out the bracelet drawer of the jewelry box 
and grabbed a tangled glob of metal. When I did this something caught my eye…a pearl and the tiniest bit of gold. A lump quickly formed in my throat as I picked up the remaining bracelets from that compartment and uncovered all ten of my “stolen” rings! I was in shock, happy, confused and a thousand different emotions. My mom was just leaving for church and I ran to catch her. I couldn’t believe it and I think I just needed for someone else to confirm for me that this was real.
I’ve spent the last week thinking about this. Going over how these rings could get buried at the bottom of a drawer, trying to remember if I was the one that put them there. Nothing. A week later and I have no logical explanation. I lived alone. I have no recollection of moving the rings and if I did decide to move them, why did I leave that one pink pearl ring there to be stolen? A few people have suggested perhaps a realtor moved them, but why would they leave the one? Or the other two? I know the diamond one is the fake ring my niece gave me when she was about 6, but nobody else would know that. I spent the week wondering and thinking and finally just appreciating that I have them back. And being thankful for my very own personal miracle.