Happy List: #367

Hello and welcome! I’m so happy you are here for this week’s Happy List. Can you believe we’ve made it to the middle of November already?

This week I shared my adventure in reading old legal documents in cursive. You can check that out here. I also wrote about a fix for a very specific problem – broken concrete by a garage door. It’s a good thing probably none of you will need this knowledge.

As always, thank you for being here. The Happy List is my way of balancing my media diet. We all need more balance in our lives and connection too! If you want to reach out, and I hope you do, you can always comment on this blog post or email me here. You can also reach out on Instagram or Facebook.

Here’s the Happy List!

LAYERING

Country Living has a story about the neatest Wisconsin cabin with knotty pine paneling. What caught my eye in this photo though was the layered rugs. It’s not something I would normally think to do, but it looks so good here!

Go treat yourself to more photos of this cabin. I’m not even sure I could pick a favorite.

(image: Josh Grubbs, styling by Lisa Evidon, for Country Living)

CLEAR TREES

I’ve never made Christmas trees with clear cones. Oh, the possibilities for glam, modern, or even whimsical trees.

Get the tutorial from Sugar and Cloth.

(image: Sugar and Cloth)

GOPHERS

I now feel a little guilty for all the bad things I’ve said about gophers over the years.

I learned this week that scientists dropped gophers on Mt. St. Helens for 24 hours two years after the 1980 eruption. Scientists had a hypothesis that gophers could dig up beneficial bacteria and fungi and might be able to help regenerate lost plant and animal life on the mountain.

They were right! The evidence of this 24-hour experiment can still be seen today. Learn more about it over at Phys.org.

LONG CARDIGAN

For you long cardigan ladies, I spotted this one. It has 4,500 positive reviews. Safe to say, people like it and it comes in 28 colors. I liked this caramel color.

Put it on your Christmas list! Or, if you’re like me and Handy Husband, put it in the cart and let your spouse push the order button. Handy Husband takes this sort of hint very well. Hahaha!

(image: Amazon)

MOST INTERESTING THING I LISTENED TO THIS WEEK

The most interesting podcast I listened to this week was an interview with David Eagleman, a Stanford neuroscientist, on People I Mostly Admire with Steve Levitt.

Did you know there is a wristband that helps deaf people hear by sending vibrations to their skin? The wristband can help if you have hearing loss or tinnitus too. You can check out the wristband here. (Not affiliate linked. I was just curious about it.)

Did you know there is a theory being researched that because our brain is so plastic (flexible and adaptive) we dream so that our visual cortex doesn’t get taken over by other parts of our brain while we sleep? Use it or lose it, people.

This was all in the first 15 minutes of the podcast! I’m so grateful for the curiosity of humans and scientists continued efforts to learn about the human brain. What a great time to be alive!

Listen to the podcast or read the transcript here.

P.S. I also appreciated the optimism about my children’s generation and their capacity for learning in this blog post.

QUILT INDEX

Did you know Michigan State University keeps a Quilt Index? It is a digital depository that catalogues thousands of quilts from public and private collections around the world.

You can submit quilts to the index too! This is a neat way to digitally preserve the history of a quilt in your possession. You don’t have to send them your actual quilt.

(image: Screenshot Quilt Index)

SNICKERDOODLE COOKIE BARS

I haven’t made snickerdoodles in ages. I’m making these Snickerdoodle Cookie Bars from TidyMom today.

Seems easier than cookies but just as delicious! There’s a frosted version, but I am going to exercise self control and do the cinnamon sugar topping instead. I promise no self control when consuming these bars.

P.S. We celebrate Fridays with after-school treats and it’s something we all look forward to.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

Sonder: The awareness that everyone has a story.

You are the main character. The protagonist. The star at the center of your own unfolding story. You’re surrounded by your supporting cast: friends and family hanging in your immediate orbit. Scattered a little further out, a network of acquaintances who drift in and out of contact over the years.

But there in the background, faint and out of focus, are the extras. The random passersby. Each living a life as vivid and complex as your own. They carry on invisibly around you, bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs, and inherited craziness.

When your life moves on to the next scene, theirs flickers in place, wrapped in a cloud of backstory and inside jokes and characters strung together with countless other stories you’ll never be able to see. That you’ll never know exist. In which you might appear only once. As an extra sipping coffee in the background. As a blur of traffic passing on the highway. As a lighted window at dusk.

-From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig

Thank you for reading today’s Happy List.

Be good to yourself and others this week.

I’ll see you back here on Monday.

*affiliate links in this blog post*