Operation Fortify

(one of the Neighborhood Watch pamphlets that our neighbor Ben gave us)

So, HOME SECURITY (not to be confused with Homeland Security) has been on our minds lately. Over the past couple of months, five houses on our street have been broken into. All the houses are up the street from us, on the opposite side. Behind these houses is a little trailer home park...the burgler has been entering the homes from the back. You do the math. The perpetrator is obviously someone from the trailer park - obvious to everyone on our street except the authorities who haven't been of much help. Needless to say, the rash of burglaries has the neighborhood on edge. On top of that, we found out the other night that someone broke into Missy's brother's house. The worse part is that the person broke in while he and his wife were asleep upstairs! Scary.

In response to all the craziness, we've launched OPERATION FORTIFY, in an effort to make our own home a little more "robbery proof"...our backyard is pretty much impenetrable - the fence surrounding our backyard is basically a barbwire fence, minus the sharp barbs on the wires ringing the top of the fence. The previous owners were dog owners and I think the fence was meant to keep the dog from jumping it. When we first bought the house we thought that it was ugly...but boy, are we ever counting our blessings now!

We've been working on our home security, making some improvements inside the house. Yesterday, we ran out to the local LOWE'S and picked up a solar-powered motion-activated floodlight for only $79:



Missy dreams big:



We stopped at TARGET and priced fire-proof safes:



This morning, I installed the solar-powered flood light above one of the craft room windows, which sits in a dark corner of the house:





The light doesn't really fit in with our OPERATION CUTIFY plans, but in this case, we'll take function over form...