Happy List: #300 – A Pretty Happy Home

Hello! Welcome to this week’s Happy List.

I hope you’ve had a great week and are ready for my weekly dose of ideas and inspiration.

This week on the blog I shared our recently wallpapered kitchen alcove. I hope ‘alcove’ sounds fancier than ‘weird hallway’ because I spend a lot of time workshopping that name. Ha!

I also shared a post from the archives about Mother’s Day and my own experience being a mom after my mom died having never met my children. I didn’t share it to be a downer. I think it ends on a hopeful note. I shared my story so that anyone else experiencing what I felt knows they aren’t alone.

As always, I love hearing from you! If you read something today that makes you smile or think, you can always comment on this blog post or send an email here. You can also connect with us on Instagram or Facebook.

Now, here’s the Happy List!

UPCYCLED DOOR

Liz from Love Grows Wild turned a solid wood door into a bench. I might have shed a little tear when I noticed she left the keyhole detail. It’s perfection!

Go read the blog post because she details which part of the door went where to form the bench.

(image: Love Grows Wild)

RUN ANGEL

I don’t have personal experience with this but I thought this personal alarm from Run Angel was a good idea for people walking alone or kids on a college campus. An extra layer of protection for peace of mind is always a good idea.

Run Angel is a personal alarm that you can wear on your wrist or clip to your clothes. If you activate the alarm, it sets off a loud noise to scare away an attacker or animal. It also sends your GPS location to the people on your designated list of emergency contacts, which can be helpful if you injure yourself while out on a run.

(image: Run Angel)

PAPER BASKET

I have no idea what I’d do with a basket weaved out of paper but you can bet I want to try to make one!

Directions over at The Craftaholic Witch.

(image: The Craftaholic Witch)

GLIMMERS

What a wonderful perspective.

(image: @h.e.l.e.n.m.a.r.i.e. via Swiss Miss)

BARN QUILT CLASSES

Heather Blokzyl of Flying Fox Barn Quilts makes and sells the most amazing barn quilts but also teaches barn quilt classes. How cool is that? At the end of a 3-hour class, you’ll take home your own freshly painted barn quilt! This is a class I’d attend.

Blokzyl recently taught a class at the Lancaster Quilt Show in Pennsylvania. I love that this was an option offered to the non-sewers attending the show. Read more about it in this Lancaster Online article. Maybe she would come to your area!

(image: Flying Fox Barn Quilts)

P.S. If you’re not familiar with barn quilts, here’s a brief history.

P.P.S. Thanks to Diane at In My Own Style for clueing me into this story. Diane has an awesome website with tons of amazing home and DIY ideas.

SUPERPOWER

The Juan Fernández fur seal has a superpower. It can ingest cadmium and other metals without harming itself. Humans can’t do this.

This could be huge for other mammals (like us!) if scientists can figure out how the fur seal manages to do this. Learn more about this story and the fur seals’ presumed extinction in t his story in The Guardian.

(image: Wikimedia)

P.S. Huge shoutout to scientists who are curious enough to test poo from animals to see what they are ingesting. I wouldn’t ever think to do this. I probably wouldn’t want to do it. (Gross!) But something amazing might come from their curiosity.

I’M NOT PERKY

Are any of you fans of the Netflix show Wednesday? Our whole family loved that show, so this cross stitch pattern with a Wednesday Addams quote caught my eye and made me laugh.

You can download it for around $6 on Etsy.