Happy List: #353
Hey, hey! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. It’s good to see you here.
This week on the blog was a random one. I shared how to fix headphones with misshapen earpads. What I didn’t mention is that when earpads start to wear out, they will leave little black flakes on your skin. I’ll be looking at Handy Husband freaking out that he has skin cancer and then realize, nope, it was his headphones deteriorating. *sigh*
I also shared how I plant the hydroponic lettuce that I buy from the grocery store. This week it was on sale for $2.50 a head. It makes me feel very victorious when I plant the lettuce and it continues to grow. It’s the little things in life!
Here’s the Happy List!
THE HAPPIEST
Check out this converted schoolhouse! Isn’t it the happiest little house to ever grace your eyeballs?
This home is owned by Designers John Loecke and Jason Oliver Nixon of Madcap Cottage and featured over at Country Living. I’m not a subscriber, so I can only see the outside but I loved what I saw. The stair railing! The awnings! The circle window! The shutters in the windows!
(image: Max Kim-Bee for Country Living)
P.S. If you like schoolhouse conversions, this one in Sweden might be the best I’ve ever seen.
TABLET SWEETENERS
If you need a zero-calorie sweetener in tablet form for your coffee, I’ve been using this Hermestas brand from Switzerland for years. You press on the white cap and it dispenses a little tablet, so it’s easy to use.
It reminds me of the Canderel sweetener that’s used all over Europe. I’m not sure if Hermestas actually tastes better than sweeteners in the U.S. or if I just think it does because it’s from Europe. Maybe both.
This is also the best value of any tablet sweetener…it’s around $16 for 2,400 tablets. I use two tablets in my cup of coffee with a hefty glug of light cream.
P.S. It only dissolves in warm drinks, not cold.
GLASS BOTTLES
This collection of glass bottles on the windowsill charmed the heck out of me. I bet the way they catch the light is so lovely.
This is a great example of grouping collections for impact. Additionally, what a neat design idea for the windowsill to extend out like a shelf beyond the window itself.
See more photos of this home here.
(image: Martha’s Vineyard Interior Design via Town and Country Living)
GOOD NEWS
Did you hear that a North Atlantic right whale was recently spotted off the coast of Ireland for the first time in more than 100 years? The North Atlantic right whale is one of the most endangered whales on the planet with less than 400 thought to be alive. Read more about the sighting here.
Whales are so cool. If the video doesn’t load, watch it here directly.
WATERMELON WREATH
Quick! Before summer is over, one of you needs to make this cute watermelon wreath.
The Scrap Shoppe Blog has the most detailed tutorial with the exact amount of ribbon you’ll need. My tutorials are never that thorough! Ha!
(image: The Scrap Shoppe Blog)
3 MILLION BANANAS
The culinary team for the Paris Olympics is sourcing 3 million bananas for the Olympic athletes to eat over 10 days!
They also expect to have 40 tons of coffee grounds, which farmers will reuse to grow mushrooms.
If you want to learn more about the food aspect of the games, go read this article at Eater. It’s fascinating how they plan to feed 15,000 people with different culinary and cultural needs. What a job.
NO-BAKE PEANUT BUTTER BARS
The Pioneer Woman had me at “no bake.” Asking my family if they want to try these No Bake Peanut Butter Bars soon. We don’t do a lot of bars around here…I’m more of a cookie baker.
Get the recipe here.
(image: The Pioneer Woman)
MADE ME LAUGH
The following is an excerpt from a letter Dylan Thomas wrote to Margaret Taylor on August 3, 1947. He describes how a heatwave in Italy feels. My goodness, it applies to this summer.
“And I can hardly hold this pen for the blisters all over my hands, can hardly see for the waterfalls of sweat, and am peeling too like a drenched billboard.
Oh, oh, oh, the heat!
It comes round corners at you like an animal with windmill arms. As I enter my bedroom, it stuns, thuds, throttles, spins me round by my soaking hair, lays me flat as a mat and bat-blind on my boiled and steaming bed. We keep oozing from the ice-cream counters to the chemist’s. Cold beer is bottled God. If ever, for a second, a wind, (but wind’s no word for this snailslow sizzle-puff), protoplasmically crawls from the suffering still sea, it makes a noise like H.D.’s4 poems crackling in a furnace.”
The line with describing the wind as a “snailslow sizzle-puff” cracked me up! If you want to read the full letter, you can check it out at Letters of Note.
Thank you for reading today’s Happy List.
Be good to yourself and others this weekend.
I’ll see you back here on Monday.
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