It’s been almost five years since I’ve touched this blog, so long that I forgot how to log into it. I’ve seen such a surge lately of people who used to blog but kind of abandoned it for the ease of social media, or even newsletter platforms like Substack, who are now returning to a space where they themselves own and control their content. I’ve even seen Pinterest is making a comeback! Truly, what a time.
This blog turned 11 back on April 16th! I somehow always miss my blogiversary (does anyone still use that word?), and it’s also been a couple of months since I last posted. The week before this blog’s anniversary, we went back east to NJ to visit my mom for H’s spring break, and I got to spend a couple of nights on my own in NYC. The trip was fantastic for so many reasons. Adam gave me a ticket to finally see Hamilton for Christmas, and I just had the most amazing time. And it was great for H to revisit her hometown. She’d been missing NJ a lot, and lately starting to compare what she missed about NJ to what she had in WA. But she came back home to WA with a new appreciation for this new home we’re making in a way I don’t think she would have without a visit back to NJ. After 10 months away, she has changed so much, and I think she was able to enjoy the place where she was born but then get back to her new life out here.
Read more on April in One Post: This Blog Turned 11, and We Went Back East…
Our girl is 7! Her birthday was last Friday the 15th, and we had two full days of celebrating. Everyone here is still recovering, and I’m getting over a bug that left me with a fever upwards of 103 last night. Friday morning we were at school for her class’s birthday circle, then we left school for a day at Ikea (she asked for a new desk for her birthday) and Emerald City ComicCon. Saturday morning was her Wild Kratts-themed birthday party, and Saturday night we went to Monster Jam.
A mudroom! This space is one of my favorite places in our farmhouse. I’ve always wanted a mudroom. I grew up in a small apartment and never lived in a house until we bought the one in NJ that we left last year. Years of looking at design magazines, and my year as an interior design student in college, just left me with this picture in my head of what domestic living should look like. And one of those pictures is having a happy, functional space for the mess of everyday life. Not to hide it away, but to give it its own room to kind of revel in the mess of family life, without destroying the rest of the house. This is also the height of privilege, having an entire room in a home that’s basically for dirty shoes, but as a kid with limited privacy and space it’s just something I dreamed of. And here’s the before and after for ours.
Here’s a simple, quick, cute project to make with your kids. We made these googly-eyed love bugs for H’s class Valentines this year, but we’ve made them in the past just for fun. H’s party was postponed a week because of a giant snowstorm the night of my birthday that, combined with midwinter break, meant school was closed all of last week. It was the fourth snowstorm we’d had in just over a week, February has been wild around here. So one day while H was home and I was working, I set her up to work on these for school.