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It seems no matter where you turn these days, the topic of discussion revolves around doom and gloom. I must admit, it is easy to get caught up in all of the negativity we are faced with; however, it sure feels good to put all of the crap behind you and do something you love doing with little, if any, distractions. For my wife and I, riding motorcycles, drinking good wine and yep, you guessed it, creating decorative concrete are just a few activities we enjoy. Although I would love to bore you with motorcycle tales, we will keep this article focused on decorative concrete.

Recently we spent a week installing a small floor in my office that came out crazy cool. It is rare that we can dedicate an entire week uninterrupted like this, which was unfortunately due to a cancelled class because of our mucked up economy. Sorry, no more doom and gloom.

It was great to plug in the iPod, set it to the shuffle mode and have fun creating. Roughly half way through our installation we had a curious customer peak their head in to find out what was going on. His comment was "cool" with his next comment being, "Where the heck did you get an idea like this?"

I had to chuckle because just the night before I sent my friend Dom a picture of a very distressed wall in Venice, Italy, which was the inspiration for my office floor. The e-mail also included a few pictures of some of our progress shots which looked nothing like the wall. Dom's comment was, "I can't believe this floor started from the distressed wall picture" and then he said "Only you, Bob." I guess that's a good thing.

The point I'm making is that inspiration comes in many shapes and forms if you just take the time to look around and absorb for a moment. We'll get back to the floor in a minute.