Happy List: #394

Hello! Happy Friday and welcome to this week’s Happy List. It’s makes me feel so good to have you here.

This week on the blog I shared the American flag I made for the 4th of July. This was another one of my upcycled craft projects and they bring me so much fulfillment.

I also wrote about the floor situation in the Carriage House. We’re glad that part of the project is finished, but it did cut into our restoration budget. These things happen, so we’ll probably end up pushing off some “nice to have” improvements until later.

I hope this Happy List leaves you feeling inspired, encouraged, and maybe you will even learn a thing or two. I know I did this week! I absolutely welcome the opportunity to connect with you and hear what you are doing and how you’re feeling. If you want to reach out, please comment on this blog post or email me here. You can also reach out on Instagram or Facebook.

Now, here’s the main event, the Happy List!

NEVER SEEN THIS

The coat closet in this house with tall ceilings has an arched cutout in the wall. I presume this cutout provides natural light to the closet and keeps fresh air flowing into the closet where shoes are kept.

How smart is that?

You have to go see the inside of the closet or “cloak room” as it is called. It’s the most beautiful closet I’ve ever seen. I could make this style work in our house.

(image: via The Nordroom)

MARIE CURIE’S PHD THESIS

Science YouTuber Toby Hendy has the neatest series. She gets copies of famous PhD theses and explains them in language lay people, like myself, can understand. Also, her voice is so soothing to listen to, which I appreciate.

It didn’t even dawn on me that the theses of Marie Curie, Richard Feynman, or Albert Einstein would be public information. How amazing is that? It’s better that you can only get copies though. Curie’s original thesis is likely contaminated with radiation.

You can read more about this and find links to her YouTube videos in this Open Culture article.

If this video about Marie Curie’s PhD thesis doesn’t load, watch it here on YouTube.

CREATIVE

Set aside whether or not this is your style, and let’s appreciate this DIY bolo tie from Merry Thought for the creativity! Never ever would I have thought to repurpose a bottle cap in this way. There are other items in this tutorial that she turned into pendants for a bolo tie, and I loved it because this sort of creativity triggers a cascade of ideas.

Get the tutorial here.

(image: Merry Thought)

CLEANABLE SHOWER HEAD

I don’t know how worried I should be about this (probably not that much), but now that I’ve seen mold growing in a shower head, I can’t unsee it. We all know I don’t clean my shower head as often as I should. I do shower often though, so that’s something.

There’s a company called Shower Clear that invented a shower head that flips open so that the inside of the shower head can dry out between uses. How smart is that? You can check it out here. It might be particularly helpful for someone with lung issues.

(image: Shower Clear)

Whether or not this is a “need to have” product, what I admire about this is that someone took a second look at a product that we all took for granted was pretty well developed. A done deal. They said, “But is it really? Can I still improve it?” That’s the spirit of innovation that we should always want to encourage and foster.

That said, could someone please invent a toaster that doesn’t drop crumbs everywhere? Thank you in advance.

ROASTING STICKS

Speaking of innovation, we upgraded from wood marshmallow roasting sticks to these telescoping roasting sticks earlier this month. We should have done that a long time ago!

The wood ones are fine until your kids catch them on fire. “But not on purpose, Mom.” Uh, huh. Suuure.

The set we got has over 17,000 reviews. I like that they come with a little bag so that I can collapse them to their smallest size and easily store them with our picnic supplies.

(image: Amazon)

GIANT PENCIL

How about a good story from Minnesota? A few years ago, a homeowner in Minneapolis commissioned an artist to carve a giant pencil out of a wind-damaged bur oak snag.

Why a pencil? To quote their website, “In these times of great bombast and hubris, the pencil is an enduring symbol of humility and epistemic rigor. Something penciled is something we are unsure of – something that requires further pondering, illumination, and exploration.”

Now, every year, the community holds a pencil sharpening event where they sharpen the tip of the pencil sculpture. How fun is that? I want to go! The videos of the community coming together to watch the pencil being sharpened are amazing. It’s the bit of happiness you might need in your day. You can watch one of them on Instagram here.

Learn more about the pencil here.

(image: Audrey Kennedy/Axios)

MEDIEVAL RIDDLE

Can you solve this medieval riddle?

“Who is not stunned by my amazing fate when with great strength I prop up countless trees? Soon, though, a slender spike relieves great weight. Birds in the sky and fish that swim in seas began their life from me in yesteryear; my hold on one third of the world is clear.”

The answer is at the end of the Happy List.

Or, you can go check out a bunch of medieval riddles and the answers at Medievalists.

ROSA’S MUD CAKE

I made this cake recipe from Dinner A Love Story for Father’s Day. It’s super sponge-y and moist. A cup of coffee is one of the ingredients. The frosting was the real showstopper though. I was skeptical, but holy heck was it tasty. My kids asked if they could have cake for breakfast and I’m pretty sure someone was eating a forkful here and there throughout the day because it was that delicious.

You should know that I rarely bake cakes and never from scratch because cake isn’t my preferred go-to dessert. Therefore and unsurprisingly, I did have a situation when I baked this. I didn’t put a pan under the cake rounds and the batter bubbled over the edge of the pan and ALL OVER my oven. The smoke. Dear heavens, the smoke. Getting rid of the smell took some time. I don’t know if my cake round pans were an inch smaller than they were supposed to be or if I did something wrong. It didn’t harm the cake batter left in the pans, thank goodness. Next time I might just bake it in a 9×13 pan. Seems safer for me.

Get the delicious recipe here.

(image: Dinner A Love Story)

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

“Perhaps the most perilous consequence of uncertain times, times that hurl us into helplessness and disorientation, is that they turn human beings into opinion machines. We dope our pain and confusion with false certainties that stifle the willingness to understand (the nuances of the situation, the complexity of the wider context, what it’s like to be the other person) with the will to be right. Our duels of self-righteousness can be fought over whose turn it is to take out the trash or who should govern the country, they can take place on the scale of the planet in the language of nuclear weapons or on the scale of the kitchen table in the code language of lovers, but they are always a betrayal of our deepest humanity — the capacity to understand, the longing to be understood, the knowledge that everyone is doing the best they can with the tools they’ve got and the cards they’ve been dealt.

…arguing is counterfeit problem-solving, an argument is a barricade against understanding, and self-righteousness is a fist you open to find your kindness crushed.”

– Maria Popova, read the full piece here

*bold emphasis is mine*

Thank you for reading today’s Happy List.

The answer to the medieval riddle is water. Did you guess correctly?

Be good to yourself and others this weekend!

I’ll see you back here on Monday.

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