Happy List: #445 – A Pretty Happy Home

Hi! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. If it’s your first time here or if you’re a regular reader, I’m glad to see you!

This week on the blog, we got stuff done! We replaced some rotten trim on our Carriage House and installed a new mailbox. That much productivity means I’m taking next week off from the blog to sleep in and laze around.

However, I didn’t laze around when it comes to this week’s Happy List. It is meant to be a good time for all and is filled with things that inspired me or piqued my curiosity this week. As always, 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 limit the time I spend on Facebook, so it may take me some time to respond to any DMs there.)

Here’s the Happy List!

HAPPY STORAGE

Well, look at this happy bookshelf! Love this idea of making a quirk of the home’s design into a feature.

As a side benefit, it prevents the child from using the angled wall as a slide. That’s how my kids would have used that wall if the bookcase wasn’t there!

(image: interior design by Alex Dauley via The English Home)

SWIM TO WORK

Here’s another reason why I want to visit Switzerland: people swim to work!

According to this My Modern Met article, the Aare River in Switzerland is pristine partly because the water comes from a glacier and partly due to strict environmental regulations. Some people commute to work by swimming because it is faster than walking. How cool is that? Literally and figuratively.

I’m assuming they walk home instead of swimming upstream. Read more about it here.

(image: OlyaSolodenko/Depositphotos)

P.S. I’m probably too high-maintenance to adopt this sort of commute.

THE BEST THING I READ ALL WEEK

The best thing I read all week was the story of 80-year-old Ruth Pittard, who stands on a street corner in her town every Wednesday with a ‘LOVE’ sign hanging around her neck.

Her reason for doing this and the wisdom in her life lessons definitely enriched my life. You can read the story, in her words, here. What an inspiration.

(image: via The Daily Good)

EMBROIDERED TENNIS RACKET

Oh. My. Goodness. I love how this embroidered tennis racket by The Handmade Home turned out! It’s so happy!

Get the directions here.

(image: The Handmade Home)

TELESCOPING MAGNET TOOL

Hopefully, you missed the fiasco on our social media stories about dropping a crowbar in our septic tank while cleaning the tank’s filter, and then our attempts to retrieve the crowbar.

One of the tools we used to try to extract the crowbar was this telescoping magnet. It says it can lift 40 pounds! FORTY! I don’t have anything metal that weighs that much to test that claim, but here I am lifting a 5-pound weight. You can also use it to open your refrigerator door. Perhaps we are easily amused, but the fun we’ve had with this magnet is no small thing!

It comes in a two-pack for around $8. It would be a fun little gift or stocking stuffer.

P.S. We never found the crowbar in the septic tank, so we couldn’t use the magnet to get it out.

CURRENT STATE OF THE RAINJACKET INDUSTRY

I learned a lot about the challenge of making a rain jacket without PFAS, forever chemicals, by reading this Carryology article. It was a good reminder that things are often more complicated than I realize as a casual consumer, observer, or armchair quarterback. It gave me more respect for the material scientists working behind the scenes to solve a tricky problem and make consumers happy.

“The honest design challenge is messier than any single number — it’s the simultaneous management of hydrostatic resistance, vapour transport, exterior repellency, durability, abrasion tolerance, packability, maintenance burden, and now chemical responsibility. These constraints pull against each other.”

Read the article here.

RED BEANS AND RICE

I made this red beans and rice recipe last week, and it was a hit! As a plus, it was better the next day. I’ll definitely make this again.

A note: I served it on yellow rice and topped it with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese, hot sauce, and a dollop of sour cream. Those toppings might seem odd, but they tasted delicious. If you’re on a time crunch like I was and are using canned beans, then reduce the amount of liquid.

(image: Dotdash Meredith Food Studios via All Recipes)

POETRY MOMENT

Among Strangers by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

I sat for hours in concourse A,
the plane delayed, delayed again,
surrounded by a young mother
with three hungry children and two
elderly couples who played endless
rounds of go fish and men in dark suits
on their cell phones and girls filming
dances for TikTok, when I looked up
and saw out the window a double rainbow,
ridiculously pretty against the slate sky,
and not wanting to be alone in my joy,
I touched the arm of the boy beside me
and he leaped up and ran to the window,
and all of us stopped to point or smile
or make jokes about pots of gold.
We will never see each other again,
but for a moment, we stood together
at the edge of delight, and the rainbows,
they just kept getting brighter, and I thought
it couldn’t possibly get any more lovely.
And the boy smiled at me. And then it did.