Happy List: #357 – A Pretty Happy Home

Hi! Welcome to this week’s Happy List. I’m glad you’re here.

This week on the blog, I shared the drone pictures we received of our home. That was the best. I have an aerial photo of this house from the mid-1990s too. I’d do a side-by-side comparison, but it’s hard to see the house in the older aerial photo due to all of the tree coverage.

I also answered the question no one asked. Why is there so much wood in an old stone wall? As it turns out, there are so many reasons and I have photographic evidence. You can read about that here.

The picture at the top of today’s post is from our yellow pepper plant. That pepper fully ripened and I made fajitas with it on Wednesday. It was the most delicious and expensive pepper we’ve ever eaten! God bless gardening.

As always, thank you for being here today. It makes my day to share things with you that interested me, made me smile, or made me think this week. I hope it makes your day too. If you want to connect, and I hope you do, you can always comment on this blog post or email me here. You can also reach out on Instagram or Facebook.

Here’s the Happy List!

MIND THE STAIRS

Our tricky back staircase has nothing on this gloriously wonky set of stairs. The stairs and the paneling are original to this 18th-century home in England. Also, check out the candlestick in the back corner!

You have to see the kitchen. I’d love flooring like that.

(image: Christopher Horwood for House and Garden UK)

DOORKNOB UPCYCLE

Forgive me for jumping ahead in seasons. I just can’t help it when I get excited!

I read an article in House Digest about how to repurpose cabinet pulls and saw that The Vintage Blue turned a glass doorknob into a Christmas tree holder. Did I immediately rush to my collection of doorknobs to see if this was possible? Yes. Yes, I did.

Do not be surprised if you see me do this at Christmas since I already took a picture. Ha!

Now I’m going to be thinking about other cute things I can shove into doorknobs.

DOLMEN DE MENGA

Have you heard of the Dolmen de Menga? It is an approximately 6,000-year-old stone chamber in Spain that predates Stonehenge by roughly 1,000 years.

An article in the journal Nature describes how the Stone Age builders would have had a good grasp of physics, architecture, geometry, and geology to build something like this. The largest block they transported from a kilometer away weighs 150 tons. By comparison, the largest stone at Stonehenge weighs 30 tons.

The skill, hard work, and precision required to make a stone chamber with 32 stones and keep it standing for 6,000 years in a seismically active area boggles my mind.

Read more about how it is presumed they did it here. It’s fascinating.

(image: Pedro Pacheco via Wikimedia)

HOW MANY DO YOU KNOW?

This was fun! I only knew a few of these.

(image: English in General via Instagram)

P.S. Correction to #20 – it is Brannock.

COZY

If you love books, cats, and autumn, this cute sweatshirt is for you!

(image: Dream Lake Studio AU via Etsy)

However, this is the one I’m ordering for a teen girl. I kind of want it for myself.

FALL DECORATING IDEA

Add black duct tape to your shopping list if you want to recreate this idea I had last year for my porch plants.

PARTY BROWNIES

I made Pinch of Yum’s Party Brownies for the first day of school. I usually bake a giant cookie because that’s our tradition, but my oldest requested a giant brownie.

My family asked me to make these AGAIN this week. Two weeks in a row. That’s how much they enjoyed them. The brownies come from a box, per the recipe. The secret is the homemade frosting made with butter, milk, vanilla, and chocolate chips.

I don’t usually care for brownies, but that frosting pushed them over the top. Also, I did make the brownies with an extra egg for a more cake-like texture.

(image: Pinch of Yum)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

“There are ways in, journeys to the center of life, through time; through air,
matter, dream and thought. The ways are not always mapped or charted, but
sometimes being lost, if there is such a thing, is the sweetest place to be. And
always, in this search, a person might find that she is already there, at the
center of the world. It may be a broken world, but it is glorious nonetheless.” – Linda Hogan

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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