Welcome to the Happy List! I hope your October is off to a good start!
This week on the blog I shared some plans for the backyard. Do I know what will happen back there? No, but a girl can dream.
I also shared my recent obsession with pressed flower art. There are so many cool possibilities!
On a housekeeping note, I *think* I fixed two blog things this week.
First, if you are signed up on my email list to receive reminders when I publish a new blog post, those should be back in your inbox now. Check your spam folder. If you’d like to sign up to receive these email notifications, there’s a spot on the homepage to add your email address. If you are on a computer, it should be on the right sidebar. You can always email or message me on social media and I will add you manually.
Second, I believe the comments on the blog posts are working correctly again. They were as of yesterday, so I will continue to cross my fingers. If you received an error while trying to publish a comment in the past, I apologize.
If you don’t follow along with us on Instagram or Facebook stories, please join us there! That’s where all the stuff in between the blog posts happens.
Also, here’s your weekly reminder if you create something I should see, please tag me! I really do love to see what you are making. Instead of the circle of life, it is the circle of creativity.
Now, here’s the Happy List!
ROOM WITH A VIEW
Wouldn’t you love to sleep in this room? That door is incredible.
Why aren’t cool-shaped doors and windows a thing anymore? It seems like it would be easier to make them now with all of our technological advancements, not harder.
(image: Tria Glovan for Cottages and Gardens)
For more pictures of this Victorian home, visit Cottages and Gardens.
APPLE MUFFINS
I made Add a Pinch’s Cinnamon Apple Muffin recipe last week and both of my children separately said, “It tastes just like those cinnamon sugar pretzels at the mall.”
In case it isn’t clear, that means these muffins were DELICIOUS. I’d say they were denser than regular muffins, more like a coffee cake.
I did end up peeling and grating my apple, but that’s just because I can’t read a recipe thoroughly and talk on the phone at the same time. Hahahaha!
Get the recipe here.
(image: Add a Pinch)
WINE CORK TRICK
Have you tried the trick of using a wine cork to help fruit last longer on your counter?
It has to be a natural cork, not synthetic. Cut it in half and put it in your fruit basket. Apparently, the natural cork absorbs humidity and slows the fruit ripening process.
I read about this trick on The Kitchn, but haven’t tried it yet. If you don’t know how to tell if your wine cork is natural or synthetic, the article gives tips on that.
Let me know if it works! What do you have to lose? Drink some wine. Save the cork. See if fruit basket magic happens.
(image: WidgetCo via Amazon)
STAIRSTEPS
These are the coolest stairsteps I’ve ever seen.
Also, I devoured the entirety of April Tomlin Interiors’ design portfolio and found so many great ideas!
(image: April Tomlin Interiors)
CONTINUOUS SIDEWALKS
Have you been to The Netherlands and experienced their continuous sidewalks?
I have not, but now I have another reason to want to go.
Their sidewalks are designed to keep pedestrians safer and it is such a neat idea. In addition to safety, it seems like it would just be easier for people of all abilities to not have to worry about stepping up and down from a road to a sidewalk.
If the video doesn’t load, here’s the direct link.
MUSIC THERAPY FOR EPILEPSY
According to a team of mostly Dartmouth researchers, Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major (K448) can help reduce seizures in epilepsy patients.
Say what?!?!
It works by reducing the number of abnormal brainwaves in-between seizures. Why this particular song and not others is still being researched.
Read more about the findings here. I wonder what Mozart would think about this?
(image: Wikicommons | public domain | credited to Giambettino Cignaroli)
GAZEBO
Now, THIS is a gazebo.
(image: CJ&L Real Estate)
This gazebo is on a property listed for sale by CJ&L Real Estate and it is already pending.
I first learned about it on one of my favorite Instagram accounts, @circahouses. If you like old house architecture, you’ll love this account. No drama. Just cool houses.
POETRY MOMENT
Lover
Ada Limón – 1976-
Easy light storms in through the window, soft
edges of the world, smudged by mist, a squirrel’s
nest rigged high in the maple. I’ve got a bone
to pick with whomever is in charge. All year,
I’ve said, You know what’s funny? and then,
Nothing, nothing is funny. Which makes me laugh
in an oblivion-is-coming sort of way. A friend
writes the word lover in a note and I am strangely
excited for the word lover to come back. Come back
lover, come back to the five and dime. I could
squeal with the idea of blissful release, oh lover,
what a word, what a world, this gray waiting. In me,
a need to nestle deep into the safe-keeping of sky.
I am too used to nostalgia now, a sweet escape
of age. Centuries of pleasure before us and after
us, still right now, a softness like the worn fabric of a nightshirt
and what I do not say is, I trust the world to come back.
Return like a word, long forgotten and maligned
for all its gross tenderness, a joke told in a sun beam,
the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business.
(Ada wrote this poem in response to the pandemic. If you want to read her explanation of its meaning, click here.)
Thanks for reading today’s Happy List!
Be good to yourself and others this weekend.
I’ll see you back here on Monday.
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