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…
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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.…
Happy List: #397
Hi! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. I am so glad you are here. This week on the blog I shared the reveal of our Carriage House gym. Someone commented that they admired our tenacity in tackling this project. I love that word – tenacity. What a fantastic compliment. Speaking of persistence, we also celebrated our six year house anniversary! Six years of loving and working on this old house of ours! Time has flown by. I hope this Happy List leaves you feeling inspired and encouraged! In addition, I absolutely welcome the opportunity to connect with you and hear what you are doing and how you’re feeling. That’s a…
Colonial Farmhouse Six Year Anniversary
Time flies when you’re restoring, renovating, and generally making a home! We have been the stewards of this colonial farmhouse for 6 years now. The anniversary was actually in June, but I was ankle deep in mortar dust with the Carriage House renovation. Besides, it’s really a blip, as is our ownership, in the grand scheme of this old gal’s 250(ish) year history. If you’ve read this blog for any length of time, you know I enjoy poetry. It is so relatable because it often captures what we are feeling but don’t know how to express with our own words. There’s a poem called Old Houses by Robert Cording. It…
Stone Carriage House Gym: Part 10, Reveal For Now
It’s the big TADA or, as most refer to it, Reveal Day for our stone Carriage House gym! We have been working on this phase of the Carriage House gym expansion for four months! I have documented almost fifty individual work sessions on social media. Truthfully, it was more than that, but I spared you a bit of the tedium. I have no good or bad value to place on the amount of time this project has taken. It is what it is when you’re DIYing your way through your evenings and weekends. I can’t tell you what tv series is good to watch, but I can tell you my…
