One Year Without Throw Pillows
Slap on your party hats because today is an important anniversary. I am celebrating one year without throw pillows! Yes, I know it’s a weird thing to celebrate. I am a little weird though, so just roll with it! I have been a card-carrying member of Team Throw Pillow my entire adult life. I love how throw pillows look. I love how they can quickly change the vibe of your space. I love that they aren’t super expensive. I love the cushiony effect throw pillows provide. But guess what? I’ve also been harboring a grudge against throw pillows for the entire time that I’ve been on Team Throw Pillow. See,…
Happy List: #118
Hello! I hope you all had a great week. Mine has felt very full, so I am happy the weekend is almost here. If anything about my website has been wonky (or wonkier than usual) this week, I apologize. Please bear with us. Handy Husband has been working behind-the-scenes on the site in the last 8 days to improve a variety of technical things that search engines care about. One “improvement” can inadvertently cause another feature to completely stop working. It is a good thing I did not get my blood pressure checked this week! On Monday I shared the trash my son found in the forest. I do love…
Books My Kids Are Reading Part 11
It has been longer than usual since my last “Books My Kids Are Reading” post. We’re still consuming stacks and stacks of books, but not as many that I’m reading out loud to the kids. In fact, there are only three in this list that I read aloud to the kids and there’s a reason for that. My 3rd grader needed to work on reading comprehension. Since I am a sucker for reading “just one more page” when the kids ask, it was cutting into his nightly independent reading time. We did a nighttime reset so that he has a solid 25 – 30 minutes of independent reading time. When…
Picking Up Trash in the Forest and Turning it Into Art
If you’ve ever doubted that kids are a product of their environment, let me share this story. Last week on a sunny spring day, I forced my kids to play outside. I’m a mean mom that way. Thankfully, we live in a neighborhood where I feel okay with our kids riding bikes and going out exploring. On this particular day, the kids took their bikes and rode around the corner to their “ninja camp.” It’s what they call the patch of forest next to a municipal building on a dead end street. They were gone for about an hour and they rode home when they got hungry. In my mind,…
Happy List: #117
I’m baaackk! Did you miss me while I was on Spring Break? I missed all of you and it has been good to be back to my regular posting schedule this week. This week I shared my tips for hiring a piano moving or storage company. These are things I have learned over the years and sometimes the hard way! Then I shared my favorite granola recipe. What is life without a little crunchy topping from time to time? Here’s the Happy List! FREE GREETING CARD PRINTABLE If you like goats, you’ll love these cute greeting cards from Boxwood Avenue. Chloe has a free PDF you can download to print…
The Granola I Make Once a Week
Ready yourself. I’m about to ask a presumptuous question. Have you ever wondered how I decide what to write about? See? Presumptuous of me to think you might wonder. I’m cringing too, but I needed a jumping off point for this post. Today I decided to write about the granola I make once a week because of sunlight. Yep, sunlight. As I was cleaning the table up after lunch I realized the outside light was streaming in on my jar of granola so beautifully. Pretty light on a jar of granola sitting on a messy table. The lens through which I view my surroundings might be a little…unconventional. Then I…
11 Things to Know Before Hiring a Piano Moving and Storage Company
I started playing piano in second grade on a second-hand upright piano bought for me by my grandma. I played that piano for 20 years. Later, with my first big work bonus, I bought myself a baby grand piano. It really is my ‘baby.’ It’s also my ball and chain. I can’t tell you how many of our housing decisions have rested on one key factor: Is there room for the piano? Scratch that. I CAN tell you. It has been ALL of our housing decisions. *sigh* My upright piano lived in five different homes. My baby grand piano has lived in six different homes and two different storage places. Needless…
Taking The Week Off For Spring Break!
It’s Spring Break in our house! Finally. Does it feel like a late Spring Break to you? It feels like one to me. Our kids won’t finish the school year until the end of the third week in June, so maybe it make sense. We do not have any Spring Break travel plans. Handy Husband has to work and the kids start spring sports this week. It doesn’t mean we won’t have plenty of fun on our staycation though. Although, I am not going to cross over a river on a pipe! I’ve done that once and don’t need to do it again. I hope you have a happy week…
Happy List: #116
Happy Good Friday and early Easter to you! Do you celebrate Easter? We do, but we will be by ourselves this year. On the plus side, more ham for me! Speaking of Easter Dinner, the folks who work at our local grocery store are so, so nice and helpful. They pointed me in the direction of the best ham (flavor and price-wise) to buy for a small family dinner. I felt like I was getting the insider’s scoop on what the employees buy because they were giving me all their tips for glazes and how to cook the ham. It just goes to show that it doesn’t really matter what your job…
An Original Poem for Poem In Your Pocket Day
Tomorrow is Poem in Your Pocket Day. I think more of us are into poetry than we might realize. Many of those short sayings that get passed around on social media are actually poems or portions of poems. A perfect example of this is one of my favorite poems by William Butler Yeats. Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven by W.B. Yeats Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread…
