A few good gems

Annnnnd suddenly we're in April, folks, and a quarter of the way through 2016 (!)   Happy April Fools Day!  I miss the rocks-in-the-shoes pranks my kids used to concoct; now I think I get most of my April Fooling from Facebook. (Speaking of which have you already run across these two clever fooling attempts from Trader Joe's and Virgin Australia?  Any other good ones you liked?)

No tricks here, though! Just a few gems to enjoy as you ease into the weekend:

I love Trevor Wheatley's typographic installations in nature:

Trevor Wheatley installation via Frankie Magazine

Trevor Wheatley installation via Frankie Magazine

You guys! A new West Wing podcast that takes you behind the scenes of each episode, one a week. I feel another WW marathon coming on... (Thanks, Jen J, for the heads up.)

Tim Urban's TED talk on the mind of a master procrastinator is hilarious. Let's just say I've gotten better over the years but I can relate.

The Arbinger Institute has produced some of my favorite books on human motivation and relationships, including The Anatomy of Peace and Leadership and Self-Deception. Their new book is coming out in June and this article excerpt describes a great mindset strategy for difficult moments, difficult people.

What happens when you let teenagers participate in the city's budgeting process, allocating $1 million for improvements and programs they select? Transformative magic and invested young citizens. (Hooray, Boston's Youth Lead the Change!)

I love to work surrounded by the happy sounds of a cafe. These two new-to-me apps have rocked my world! I can stay at home but fool my ears! Hipster Sound is a good, straightforward noise app and Cafe Restaurant by mynoise.net lets you customize the blend of sounds (chatter, kitchen noise, buzz, etc.). Hat tip to Tona--thanks!

This Australian road incident from last week is too adorable to keep to myself. (Spoiler alert: KOALA.)

A strap-on spiral staircase that works on any tree?! Yes, please:

Have a lovely weekend, friends and internet neighbors! See you back here on Monday. x 


  • Watching: The sci-fi drama Colony with G. Inspired by Nazi-occupied France in the 40s but takes place in the future with occupying (but unseen) aliens. Feels a little Lost-like, especially with Sawyer
  • Eating: cottage cheese, avocado & tomato & lime with multigrain crackers. Pretty much my lunch every single day. If it ain't broke, don't fix it!
  • Listening to: Leon Bridges's Coming Home album. So good.

Throwback Thursday: On letting go

Every time I think I have this "letting go" thing down, it bounces right up and smacks me in the face. I've had plenty of occasions to write about my girls moving out and moving on (See here and here). In fact, daughter #3 has, just in the past week, signed up for her dorm room -- meaning we are on the official move-out-countdown. "It's okay," I tell myself. "It's good." "It's normal."

Yesterday, I was anxiously awaiting the Postwoman because I was expecting Jordan's wedding invitations. (Yes! I'm invited to my own daughter's wedding!) Actually, she's handled the ordering and addressing and stamping all from Utah, so while we have talked about these invitations ad infinitum, I had yet to see them in real life (IRL). Finally, at about 5:30, the post arrived. And it was there! A shimmering, dark green envelope just sitting in my mailbox. I grabbed it and raced inside. I opened it carefully, pulled the cards out and read each line carefully.

At the same time the television was on in the background. After reading through the invitation I swung around to see Cookie Monster, advertising the new Siri On-Demand feature. Instantly, I was reminded of an incident involving a two-year-old Jordan and Cookie Monster:

When Jordan and Madison were wee babes they were obsessed with the Sesame Street characters. They watched the show, played pretend Sesame Street, talked about Elmo endlessly. So, when I saw an advertisement that the Sesame Street characters were coming to Sea World, I decided we would put what little vacation money we could scrape together towards a trip to San Antonio. My babies needed to see Big Bird. Once in the park, we attended the scheduled Sesame Street show, wherein the larger-than-life characters danced and sang. When the show ended, I just knew Jordan would want to see the characters up close and personal. She seemed reticent about actually approaching them, so I swung her up on my hip and marched to the front of the theater. Jordan was mesmerized. I was mentally patting myself on the back for making my baby's dreams come true.

As I held her, I pointed out Big Bird. And Ernie. And Elmo. And then Cookie Monster started moving right towards us! "How lucky!" I thought. Cookie Monster approached Jordan and reached out to pat her little tummy. As those furry blue fingers met her little strawberry romper, Jordan let out a primal scream. She arched her back and almost seemed to convulse for a moment. I did my best to keep her from flailing to the ground and quickly retreated.

She was inconsolable. She cried. And sobbed. And after a good five minutes, she finally looked me in the eye and screamed out, "Cookie Monster touched me!" Her rage was part fear and part blame. How could I have allowed such a travesty to occur? For the next hour or so she inhaled raggedly, muttering to herself, "Cookie Monster touched me." Honestly, I'm surprised she didn't require some type of trauma counseling. We did hug on her a lot and promised a Cookie Monster restraining order. Over time, the "Cookie Monster touched me" mantra became somewhat of a catch phrase, reminding us of those moments when our kids needed an extra hug and some added protection.

It's difficult for me to convey here how this memory tore me open inside. Maybe it's the realization that I'm no longer in charge of making her dreams come true. Maybe it's a mourning for the loss of that sweet little baby girl. Maybe it's an understanding that I'm not her sole protector, that my role in her life is moving further and further to the periphery. I'm sure it's a combination of these factors. But it hurts.  And there's nothing for me to do about it, except to feel this uncomfortable pit in my stomach and to write about that glorious, spunky baby of mine.

Bullet journal

I have a problem with planners. I'm addicted to the researching and purchasing of planners of all varieties. However, I have a tendency to fall off the planner bandwagon after approximately 2.3 months, wherein the new, shiny planner begins to gather dust. And cobwebs.

You see, I love, love, LUV planners -- the design, the organization, the eternal hope that I will get my stuff together and manage my days seamlessly and with a touch of panache. But the particular, organized parts of me have an ongoing battle with a free-spirited side that wants to run with wild abandon, to be UNENCUMBERED, to suck the marrow out of life. You know, the part of me that wants to watch Netflix for the better part of the day.

At the beginning of 2016, I decided to try the bullet journal because it speaks to organization and precision AND to creativity and free-thinking. Also, it encourages doodling, writing, and using really cool pens.

Here are the main ideas of bullet journaling:

  1. It's customizable. It's essentially a notebook organized by what you WANT to record. It might be a calendar, a journal, or a compilation of to-do lists. Mine is all of those things at once.
  2. The typical bullet journal contains a table of contents, numbered pages, and daily logs. But the possibilities are limitless. I've seen habit trackers, exercise trackers, budgeting pages, wish lists, and so much more.
  3. It's all done in a simple, blank (or lined) notebook. The most often recommended notebook for bullet journaling is the Leuchtturn 1917. It has a dotted grid that's helpful for headers and bulleted lists. I'm currently using the Midori MD notebook because I happened to have one on hand. It also has a grid pattern, and it's worked exceptionally well. For pens, I'm using the Staedler Triplus Fineliner.

I started with a long perusal of Boho Berry's website. She's a bullet journal guru. Start here for a quick overview. (Or try this post for more ideas.)

There are thousands of bullet journal modules -- meaning lists and pages you could include. Type "bullet journal" into the search bar of Pinterest and you'll see what I'm talking about. Here are the pages that I'm loving at the moment:

1. Monthly calendar and goals.

2. Monthly gratitude log. I write two things each day that I'm grateful for.

3. Daily task log: In my daily log I write what I want to accomplish that day as well as appointments or other necessary tasks. At the end of the day, I review the daily log and try to write at least a few sentences about how the day went, special happenings, funny moments. In this way, the log becomes more of a journal. (And sometimes I don't journal. AND THAT'S OKAY TOO.)

I really like the flexibility of the journal. If I miss a few days or a week, I don't have blank days in my planner -- I just start up on the page I left off. In the front of my journal I have a running list of books I want to read, yearly goals, and a table of contents. Essentially, any time you want to include a list or special module, just plug it in and indicate the number in your table of contents. The journal can expand and shrink based on your planning needs of the moment.

Have any of you done a bullet journal? Any special pages that work well for you?

One second, every day

I'm probably late to the party on this one but one of my favorite apps lately is 1 Second Everyday*, a phone app that helps you take little video snippets of your life and stitch them together chronologically to make a movie. (If you saw the movie Chef, the son used this app in making the movie of his dad's food truck.) 

You might be thinking that the last thing you need is another app or reason to take more photos/movies but I promise this one is easy peasy. No need to think up cleverly worded posts, no fiddling with things at the time you're filming, no need to pose or think about likes or followers. Just take a few frames of video now and then (the more candid and random the better) and later (you don't even have to do it that day) you choose which clip to represent the day and upload it to the app. There's something magical about capturing the lovely, mundane everyday moments as they fly by--and then seeing them in one cohesive movie.

You can also create other projects not based on the one-a-day format. When we went away this long Easter weekend (Australia takes a four-day holiday), I decided to do one to remember our time together:


*not a sponsored post, I just love to spread the joy

Marriage questions

Yesterday's New York Times article "13 Questions to Ask Before Getting Married" poses some terrific questions for couples to ask each other--either before marriage or in the midst of one. (As Robert Scuka reminds us in the article, "If you don't deal with an issue before marriage, you deal with it while you're married.") They're all great questions but here's a sampling:

  • Did your family throw plates, calmly discuss issues or silently shut down when disagreements arose?
  • What's the most you would be willing to spend on a car, a couch, shoes?
  • Can you deal with my doing things without you?
  • Do you know all the ways I say "I love you"?
  • How do you see us 10 years from now?

I would add a few more:

  • How important are holidays and gestures (gifts, birthdays, etc.) to you?
  • Are you an upholder, a questioner, or an obliger? 
  • How did your parents/family divide the household/family work? Do you expect it will be the same with us or different?
  • Will you love me like Calvin loves Alice?

Which brings me to my Throwback Thursday selection: If you're a long-time reader, you'll remember that one of my lodestar couples is Calvin and Alice Trillin, whose 35-year marriage was the subject of his love letter/elegy of a book About Alice as well as the topic of many of Calvin Trillin's essays through the years.  I'm not the only one who has a Trillin marriage crush. Calvin writes of the many condolence letters he received from readers after Alice's death:

"[I]n the weeks after she died I was touched by their letters. They might not have known her but they knew how I felt about her...I got a lot of letters like the one from a young woman in New York who wrote that she sometimes looked at her boyfriend and thought, 'But will he love me like Calvin loves Alice?'"

Original post: Like Calvin and Alice

Edited to add some more great questions suggested by readers:

How willing are you to make sacrifices for each other? How messy/tidy are you and what degree of tolerance do you have for a change in your style? How will you divide the chores, tasks, etc.? What percentage of your time do you want to be in solitude? with one other person? with groups? What activities are really important for you to do with me and which ones can we do on our own/don't need (or have to have) our spouse to do with us? How much emotion do you each attach to money and its management?  "What is money for?" 


Okay, friends, what questions would you add to the list? (And who are your lodestar couples?)

Wedding Wednesday

photo via swportraits

photo via swportraits

Annie and I, in all of our wedding excitement, have decided to institute a 'Wedding Wednesday' post for the next little bit as we share our our decisions, wants, needs, successes, and travails on the road to planning weddings for our eldest daughters. We both have all of the key players in place: venue, invites, caterer, florist, photographer, and so forth. For myself, I'm a little jittery about it all coming together day of. I'll let you know how that works out!

My first piece of advice? Use a google doc as a planner!

Jordan downloaded a pre-made, wedding planner template and then personalized it for her specific needs. It's been invaluable for gathering addresses and estimating numbers -- how many invites to order, how many people to feed, how big the venue should be. I probably didn't use the google doc quite as effectively as I could have, but the vision is to enter possible vendors (with websites and phone numbers) so everyone involved can have access to the pertinent information. Obviously, you can share the doc with as many people as you'd like.

Here's a list of wedding planner templates. We used the first one: "Wedding - All in One Wedding Planner." Jordan set up the particulars and named the document "Blush and Bashful," which, of course, made my Steel Magnolia heart so very happy.

I made a bed!

A few months ago I posted about our preparations for Thanksgiving week, which included moving out Parker's bunkbeds and fashioning a good old DIY bed frame. But I clean forgot to post any after pictures. And I'm just positive that some of you have been waiting with baited breath to see how this DIY bed turned out. Am I right?

I neglected to take any before photos, but here's one I snapped with my phone back in August when we were cleaning out PJ's drawers and closet in preparation for the new school year. Also, I offer this picture because I want to be authentic and show you how we really live. Yes, there is a parka and santa hat on the floor in August. In Texas. The end.

Out went the old (except for the carpet, which I would really, really like to see leave the premises) and in came the new. Behold.

We built the queen-sized bed frame for right around $50 -- just builder grade pine and stain and polyurethane (plans found here). Honestly, you really only need a drill, some clamps, and possibly a sander. Sterling cut our boards to length at home, but you could easily have Home Depot cut them for you. We opted not to build the headboard the same weekend because of time constraints, and I'm not certain I even want it. We will live with the platform bed for a while and see how we like it.

I started a small collection of Parker's race numbers. Next season we can continue to add on. Instant (and free) art. Holla!

Everything is fresh and clean and feeling much more age appropriate. One other note -- Parker had been asking for a Tempurpedic mattress for some time prior to the room redo. We settled on a more budget-friendly mattress (of the memory foam variety), and it's been a huge hit. We bought ours from a local mattress store, but they are available all over the Internet.

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