HomeLife
How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. - Annie Dillard
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holiday season. not for the faint of heart.
Some nights you complete a puzzle at 1 am with your daughters and you know the price everyone will pay for staying up so late but you also know the moment is necessary and worthwhile, has value and importance. And that’s the horse you are betting on. Some nights you head to your bedroom and a boy and a puppy are cuddled into your space already and you know that it is Gift Enough for the moment. Navigating holidays in divorced families, blended families, step families, broken families, dysfunctional families is like walking across a room strewn full of Legos barefoot at 1 am in…
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weekend ramble (Christmas edition)
Our house is a hodge podge of Christmas lights and furniture shoved in the wrong corners to accommodate an outdoor tree in our indoor space but it’s our first Christmas at The Burrow and we are not complaining. The interior temperature is appropriate and comfortable (even though my dad says he still thinks it’s cold) and we all have had such fun embracing the holiday in our new home and even Otto is known to walk through the house with a happy sigh and to announce to anyone within earshot, “I love our new house.” The tiny dog is balanced on top of a stack…
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five finds friday (long weeks, podcasts, fresh flowers)
It’s been one of the more hectic weeks at our house in recent history. Can’t even recall exactly why. Also, this week we must have set some record with terrible customer service – from the UPS guy who ranted at my fourteen year old daughter and literally said the words, “You order too much” to the Wal-Mart employee who would actually not get off the floor from the sorting task she was doing to help ring up my purchase. Also. My computer charger died. That’s an annoying (and expensive) problem that has to be solved sooner than later. Ugh. But the weekend is practically here and it’s time to…
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Things People Say
People are weird – right? I mean, we love them and we ARE them, but people say crazy things. I do it too. I open my mouth and words spill out and sometimes I do not even know what those words will be until it is very much too late. (I have friends, by the way, who NEVER do that. Maybe it’s personality, enneagram number, more self control – I don’t know.) When I was living with many small children, there were frequent comments and stares. Things like, “Are they all yours?” “Are you running a daycare?” “You’ve got your hands full.” Actually, I still sometimes get a…
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the week(end) ramble — holidays are hard and they’re beautiful
There were no published words last week. So you might imagine I have a lot of stored up words for right now. And that’s kind of true. I used good old pen and paper and hand wrote quite a bit the last week. It was satisfying. Maybe those ramblings will find the light of day. And maybe they won’t. Holidays make me feel all sorts of things and some of that stuff I like to share and some of that stuff it’s better if I don’t. Being divorced has not stopped being hard. That brokenness is never more evident that when a season demands and promotes traditions…
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five finds friday (pickle flavored cotton candy & charcuterie)
All week long the only thing I have thought is – sunshine. I need sunshine. There’s been endless rain. So much endless rain. funny This week two different people sent me a photo of pickle flavored cotton candy. I don’t even really like pickles all that much. Although I do love cotton candy. fashionable Tis the season for beanies and sock hats, toboggans and woolies. Or whatever you call them. Should I try the beanie with a hole cut out for your ponytail? flavorful It’s everywhere. I know it’s not exclusive to any one person or to any one restaurant…
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weekend ramble (why daylight savings time is my enemy and some fireplace advice)
My brain is not engaged in any sort of holiday mode. And yet, Thanksgiving happens NEXT WEEK and we all know it’s just a fast rolling downhill snowball to Christmas and the new year right after that. But that’s alright. Like all things, it’s coming whether we are ready or not. I do love traditions though and Thanksgiving and Christmas sure do hold an awful lot of good ones. What I do not particularly love about this time of year is that blasted time change. You. Guys. When it gets dark before I have even started getting supper ready, I feel the need for hibernation. I loathe…
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five finds friday (not enough photos and a funny tv show and hand art)
Friday is happening, whether we are ready for it or not. I never finished Tuesday’s To-Do list so what does that mean about my week? funny Sometimes I like to watch a silly show that makes me laugh. Remember for a while I was stuck on Kimmie Schmidt? Now it’s a show called Single Parents. It is nothing like any single parenting I have ever actually experienced. But. Every now and again it almost sort of is. Better than that though, it’s just funny. fashionable Last week (I think) I asked if any of you had ever clicked on a Facebook ad and ordered…
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Fishing and Uncles and The Video Proof
They talk about it all the time. Otto wrote a short story about it for his class. Fishing. And, in particular, fishing with Uncle Danny. My two sons have an obsession. And Uncle Danny is like a rockstar. And he lives on a lake too – which wins big bonus points. So when the opportunity arose to get those two young fishermen casting their lines into the water with my brother, we each got in our cars and drove to the TN line and exchanged a couple of wide eyed, big grinning fellas for a couple of days. My heart felt a…
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Bullet Journals. Thoughts & Ideas.
I’m a planner kind of girl. I couldn’t tell you the last year I lived without owning a planner and using a calendar. I’ve researched planners. I’ve purchased one planner in January and bailed on it by March, paying the cash again to buy another, more useful one, before spring. I’ve stood for a literal hour at Barnes & Noble, holding various options, considering page texture and page weight, placement of dates and the layout of weeks. Does it have lines? Are there spots for weekly meal planning? I have so many opinions (and not just about calendars but everyone already knows all that). One of my favorite go-to…
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five finds friday (not five. but a couple.)
It’s Friday. That is all. Wait – there’s more. I don’t have five finds. I have three. I think. I’m all about keeping those expectations low lately. funny Any time my phone tries to transcribe voicemail messages it’s pretty ridiculous what it comes up with. But this attempt was especially bizarre ….. fashionable Well. Facebook has been trying to convince me for years to “SHOP NOW” and to “CLICK HERE” on advertisements for clothing and shoes. I don’t think I ever have. But I can’t say that any longer. This week I clicked through, drawn in like a moth to a flame. It…
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how my kitchen reminds me God sees me.
I’ve been extra sleepy and extra busy this week. Sometimes my brain says crazy things to me like, “Hey, didn’t you have more energy and less mid-afternoon sleepiness when you were on Whole 30?” And you know what I tell my brain when it says nonsense like that? “Pass me that creme brûlée donut, will you?” Kidding. Kind of. Not really. But seriously, it might be true and that’s just annoying. Sugar is delicious. And saying no to it is dumb. But that is not the point of this post at all. Does this post have a point? Eh. That’s debatable. But I do want to share with you…
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the weekend ramble (relaxing and thank you and chipped paint)
This weekend was actually what I wish for so many weekends to be — relaxing. It was decent amounts of productive and pleasurable, some one on one time with Bergen (he and I went to lunch together – he’s such good company), a dinner out celebrating with dear and precious friends, a vintage market, a game night with the kids, two mornings of sleeping in. There’s not another weekend like it on the books for a month or more. (And we’re hightailing it to holiday season so I might as well admit that there’s not another weekend like it scheduled until 2019). Which reminds me of this…
