Hello, hello! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. It brightens my day to see you here.
This week on the blog, I shared how I upcycled tissue box cardboard. I hope that blog post inspired you to not necessarily make what I make, but to think twice about the items you might usually recycle. However, if you do make something, I’d love to see what it is.
I also shared the demo we did on our stone walls out front. Even the newly constructed wall had to be taken down 16 inches or so to adjust to our new plan for the shape of the wall. You can read about that here.
I hope the Happy List is a bright spot in your day. It’s a reminder to myself to learn and be curious about the world around me. If you’d like to reach out, and I hope you do, please comment on this blog post or email me here. You can also direct message me on Instagram or Facebook. (P.S. I am much better at answering emails and Instagram DMs than I am at anything on Facebook.)
Here’s the Happy List!
TEAPOT LIGHTS
Someone (I’m actually thinking of a specific person) needs to use this tutorial from The Navage Patch to make solar spilling teapot lights for their flowerbeds. When this task is completed, please send me pictures!
It looks like a fairytale come to life!
(image: The Navage Patch)
NOT HUNGRY WHEN IT’S HOT?
If you are less hungry when it is super hot outside or when you’ve been spending time in the sun, there’s a likely reason for that.
Digesting food takes energy. A calorie is a measure of heat. Your body may not want to further heat up to digest food when it is hot outside. It’s like “No, no. Skip the burger. Have a popsicle!”
The American Heart Association has a much more detailed and scientific explanation without the popsicle commentary of the various reasons why your appetite might go down in the summer. Read about it here.
P.S. The above photo is a “baby photo” of my red geranium from 2023. It was so tiny and cute. They sure grow up fast. You blink and all of a sudden, you can’t pick them up anymore, as they’ve gotten so big.
We’re still talking about geraniums, right?
OUTDOOR BATHTUB
I’d like to think that Vacation Me would be into an outdoor bathtub if it were really clean. According to the article, the homeowners installed this as a place for their grandkids to rinse off after playing on the beach. I guess I can see the logic.
If you’d like to live vicariously, check out the rest of the photos of this Cape Cod home here.
(image: for Domino)
P.S. Regular Me definitely wants and would use an outdoor shower in the summer. I even know where I would put it and have a rough idea of the design. We all have our hobbies…daydreaming up house projects is mine. Ha!
I SPY
You have to check out the detailed still life paintings by Blaise-Alexandre Desgoffe painted in the late 1800s. They are so detailed and realistic-looking that they remind me of the search-and-find pictures in the I Spy books. Did your kids like those? I loved them.
The more you look at his paintings, the more items you will notice.
See more of Desgoffe’s paintings here.
(image: via Gods and Foolish Grandeur)
OLDEST NAMES IN U.S.
A curious and smart person calculated the oldest names in the U.S. In this context, oldest refers to the age of the people with that name. Myrtle, my grandma’s name, is the oldest. This info is fascinating!
If you have a more common name, you can also check to see the average age of people with your name and whether or not it is on the decline. You must go check it out. My name is not on the list.
(image: Data Stuff)
SAVORY S’MORES
Summer starts today for us, and we will be making savory s’mores and regular s’mores this summer. Savory s’mores use melted cheese and bread or crackers instead of graham crackers and marshmallows. You can read about them here.
Anyway, these telescoping roasting sticks make the whole process, even clean up, a breeze. If you are going camping or making s’mores this summer, this is ten bucks well spent.
Plus, the roasting sticks come in a handy little zippered bag, so they aren’t getting lost or poking holes in things when not in use. Below is the length they are when not pulled out to their full roasting length.
Gosh. Now I’m hungry. Guess the hot weather hasn’t curbed my appetite. Ha! This leads me to…
SHEET PAN BREAKFAST BURRITOS
The ingredients for this Sheet Pan Breakfast Burrito recipe from Pinch of Yum are on my shopping list.
What surprised me about this recipe is that there isn’t any meat in it, but it still looks so hearty, flavorful, and filling. Definitely read the comments for oven timing concerns.
(image: Pinch of Yum)
POETRY MOMENT
Watching My Mother Pull Bindweed by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
With a white plastic five-gallon bucket
as a stool, she sits in the middle
of my garden’s gravel path and wrestles
the long notched rod through the stones.
She moves her arm slowly,
her back hunched over her task.
I see in her body her father’s body,
how he, too, would toil in the gardens
of others for hours, tool in hand, patient
and thorough. I watch as mom dangles
a slender white root in the air
to marvel at its twisted length.
I hear her triumphant ha!
as she adds it to the small but
growing pile of roots and leaves.
The bindweed will grow back
with admirable speed, but she makes
an enduring mark—not in the rows,
but in the heart of this daughter,
teaching me again how it is we find joy
offering ourselves in service to each other.
Thank you for reading this week’s Happy List.
Be good to yourself and others this weekend.
I’ll see you back here on Monday.
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