Happy List: #400
Welcome to the 400th edition of the Happy List! Should we celebrate with cake? Perhaps cake is not needed when you’re surrounded by sweet friends who stop by weekly to check in and read the Happy List. Thank you for being here and for giving me a reason to keep compiling the list for 400 weeks. Something that didn’t take me quite 400 weeks to install, but close to it, was curtains in the Carriage House. I shared pictures of those on the blog this week. Also, and this is big, IÂ shared the new project we are starting on. We haven’t tackled anything that really affects curb appeal in over…
Curved Fieldstone Wall: Part 1, The Plan
Drumroll, please! Our next masonry project will be to rebuild a curved fieldstone wall in our front yard. Who’s excited for this one? *raises my own hand* I am excited for this project mainly because this fieldstone wall has become a major curb appeal issue, and not in a good way. Remember the children’s rhyme about Humpty Dumpty? Now imagine Humpty Dumpty sitting on the wall, and the reason he fell off was because the wall collapsed under him. That’s the sketchy situation with the wall in front of our house. Most of it is a low, curved fieldstone wall that is only a couple of feet high. There is,…
Carriage House Curtains For a Long Narrow Space
I recently added new curtains in our Carriage House to break up the long narrow space, and I’m going to have to file this under “things I should have done a long time ago.” Talk about a change for the better! Our Carriage House is roughly 9-feet wide by 30-feet long. Have you ever decorated a tunnel? That’s the situation with our Carriage House, and we have to fit a bathroom, kitchen, bedroom, and an office into the space. I have received many well-meaning suggestions to add wallpaper or wainscoting to this space to give the walls interest. However, because it is such a long space, those options will cost…
First Week of August 2025 Break
Heads up that I’m taking a blog break this first week of August. My kids start school in about three weeks, which is wild to me. I swear I just gave birth to them, and now one of them is heading off to college and the other will be a sophomore in high school. It doesn’t seem like it has been that long, but the additional grey hairs on my head suggest otherwise. Rude, those grey hairs. Anyway, if you’d like a little something to read this week while I’m away, check out one of these blog posts. You can also follow along on Instagram to see what we’re up…
Happy List: #399
Hi! At the risk of stating the obvious, it’s August already. I’m going to need summer to slow the heck down. My kids start school this month, and one of them is leaving for college for the first time! Big changes ahead for us. A smaller change that happened is we built new outdoor stairs. I shared that reveal on Monday. I hope you had a chance to check them out. I also shared my recent media diet with you, including the books I’ve read, the websites I frequent, and my favorite podcasts. As always, thank you for being here. I hope the Happy List is a bright spot in…
My Summer 2025 Reading List
Some of you wonder if I ever relax. I can assure you, it happens. The last time was just last week. Or was it last month? I’m kidding. It was last year. Joking aside, one of my favorite things to do is read. I almost always have my Kindle on me if I leave the house, unless it’s my once-a-week trip to the grocery store. Anyway, I thought I’d share my summer 2025 reading list with you. As an added treat, I’ve also included some of my favorite websites and podcasts on this list. However, I have zero recommendations for things to watch unless you want a list of shows…
Building Fieldstone Stairs: Part 3, The Reveal
Here’s the “tada” moment you’ve been waiting for, the reveal of our fieldstone stairs. If you’re just joining us, you can catch up on Part 1 and Part 2 of this series. It’s a rockin’ good time. The short story is we thought we’d see how hard it would be to build stairs out of natural fieldstone. This means using stones dug out of our backyard and used in their natural state. No clean edges. No uniform sizes. No idea how it will look when you’re done. Well, we had a vague idea. But it turned out even better than we imagined and, believe it or not, it wasn’t the…
Happy List: #398
Hello, hello! This is the last Happy List of July. Can you believe how fast summer is flying by? It was Stairway to Heaven the Carriage House week on the blog. The blog is a snapshot in time of our lives, and this week we have been consumed with the building of stairs. You can catch up on Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed it. I’m crossing my fingers I will have the reveal ready for you on Monday! I’m so glad you are here. I hope the Happy List is a bright spot if your day and leaves you feeling inspired and encouraged! I absolutely enjoy connecting…
Building Fieldstone Stairs: Part 2
Welcome back! We are building fieldstone stairs. This is a DIY project we’ve never attempted before and may never attempt again. We have just enough confidence, competence, and delusions to approach new projects with an “everything is figure-out-able” attitude. Today I’m going to overshare our process for building fieldstone stairs. Please note when I say fieldstone I mean actual stone taken out of the ground (my backyard) and used in its natural form. This is not stone purchased on a pallet from the stone quarry that has even, predictable dimensions. That would make this project infinitely easier – a concept with which we are wholly unfamiliar. Let’s get into the…
Building Fieldstone Stairs: Part 1
My friends, it is time for our next project, building fieldstone stairs! Have we done this before? Nope. Is that going to get in the way of a good time? Maybe. This project needs a little context, so let’s step on up and get to it. Where will we be building fieldstone stairs? Outside, of course. There is a set of wood stairs in our backyard (4 steps) that we walk down to get to the first floor of the Carriage House. The stairs are set in the middle of a loosely stacked fieldstone wall and below a slightly out-of-level flagstone. Why we are replacing the old steps? For kicks.…
