Travel: Paterson Great Falls National Historic Park
I love travel. I love exploring. I love finding FREE things to do while out and about on our adventures. Oh, yes I do! If you are on the East Coast and want to see the birthplace of the American Industrial Revolution, then I recommend a stop in an unlikely spot – Paterson, New Jersey. Paterson is considered America’s first planned industrial city and the idea for it came from Alexander Hamilton. Yes, THE Alexander Hamilton. Paterson has a pretty important feature for an industrial city – particularly one back in the 1800s – water. The Passaic River runs through Paterson and the energy from the 77-foot high Great Falls…
Out Exploring This Week
This week I will be out and about exploring. Handy Husband is taking some time off work, so I am too! I’m not sure what we are going to do yet. I’m currently baking bread and listening to a thunderstorm, but if the weather cooperates I might do more of this… Or maybe we’ll hit up a museum or a hiking trail. I’ve got a big playground, figuratively-speaking, to explore! On a housekeeping note, did you know I have a shop page where I keep a round-up of favorite items I’ve either mentioned on the blog, am currently loving/using, and/or will be mentioning on the blog. These shop pages are…
Happy List: #79
Folks. This is the first time I’ve ever said this and I’m sure I’ll be over it in a flash, but I am SICK of Amazon this week. The internet madness would not stop. In fairness, I might have been more into Prime Day if the things I’d actually wanted went on sale. Therefore, this week I wrote about going to the DMV and eating fake pasta. It seemed like the right thing to do to maintain balance. After all, this blog is my happy place and nothing makes me happier than…staying on the right side of the law and eating good food. Here are some other things making me…
Would I Make It Again: Pasta from Chickpeas
The perk and curse of grocery shopping in the U.S. is there is always a new product to try. It is a seemingly revolving door of new product barrages introductions! It didn’t phase me much until I lived in Europe. Being back now and grocery shopping in the U.S. feels like I’ve been dropped into the middle of a carnival funhouse with a bunch of clowns jumping out every three seconds to show me the latest and greatest product. Then the funhouse mirrors show me what my hips will look like if I eat that product. Unfortunately, it’s never the mirror that shows me getting taller and skinnier. However,…
Adventures at the DMV
The one thing I really dread about moving is not the hard work. It’s not the mess. It’s not the purging. It’s not the cost. It’s not the mountain of cardboard boxes. It’s GETTING A NEW DRIVER’S LICENSE or really anything associated with the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). My recent adventure at the DMV was quite a doozy. I’ll spoil the ending of the story by saying I got my new driver’s license! WOOHOO!! Imagine when I typed that sentence I was saying it in my most EXCITED voice and there was confetti sprinkling down!!! The one time I don’t mind confetti is in my imagination. This story has…
Happy List: #78
Summer feels like it is flying by, doesn’t it? Admittedly, my perception of how fast or slow summer is progressing changes based on how my kids are behaving at any given moment. Just keeping the emotional whiplash it real for you! Speaking of real, did you catch my latest makeover? It’s so cutting edge, I’m sure the home decor magazines will be pounding down my door. I think I wrote my last post about Ireland on Wednesday. Maybe. Probably. Don’t hold me to that. It was about all the random, practical tips for expats that I’d picked up during our time there. And continuing the randomness that defines this blog,…
Living in Ireland: Practical Advice for Americans
I realize most of my readers are not expats, but I have to get this information out of my head before I forget! If it saves just one person a tiny bit of anxiety about their move to Ireland, it is worth it. On with the show… We spent two years living in Ireland. I don’t say this lightly. It was the opportunity of a lifetime! People say about our experience, “That must have been amazing. Ireland is so beautiful.” Yes, it was. Yes, it is. However, this is real life and real life under normal circumstances can be freaking hard at times. Throw in a foreign country and you’ve upped…
Cat-tastic Chair Makeover
If there’s ever any doubt that I love my kids, let’s all remember this blog post, shall we? On a recent trip to the Habitat Restore where I found THE couch, my daughter found a chair for her desk. It’s actually less of a desk and more of a vanity table (from IKEA), but let’s not mince words. She draws her cat pictures there, so I’m calling it a desk. Plus, we’re a little too early for the vanity stage of growing up. Draw cat pictures as long as you want, kid. Now, back to the chair. My daughter tested out a lot of potential chairs and finally after I…
Happy List: #77
Hello, hello! How was your 4th of July? Did you BBQ and watch fireworks? We had a good day celebrating the 4th by going to a parade. If you’ve been reading this blog for very long then you know that my crowd-avoiding self actually LOVES a parade. Go figure. If you missed it and haven’t already moved onto pumpkin spice everything, then I did share a burlap flag craft on Monday. On Wednesday I shared a different sort of flag – a memorial flag that I discovered on a hike. Now, I don’t usually start the Happy List with a warning, but Handy Husband’s opinion makes an appearance somewhere on…
Happy 4th of July
One of the things I enjoy most about moving is the opportunity to explore a new area. It’s the unexpected details of an area that delight and inspire me the most. For instance, we hiked a new-to-us trail last week at Tourne County Park, a 565-acre park with an extensive trail system. I expected to feel the burn up that long hill. I expected to see wildlife and get bitten by mosquitoes. I expected to have a discussion about which plants were poison ivy – seemingly all of them. I expected my kids to ask for a snack before we’d even left the trailhead. I expected someone to parkour their way…
