Category Archives: summer

She walks!

Posted on by
Reply

Yes, the little birdie walks! And with gusto. It’s joyful (with a hint of terror!) to hear the pitter-patter of her steps ’round and ’round the house. And she’s awfully proud of herself. Truth be told, her Mamma is tearfully proud too. Sniffle sniffle. Wasn’t she just a tiny little lady who smelled like sugar cookies, fresh from the safety and warmth of Mamma’s womb? Sigh.

Needless to say (err, write), we’ve been a bit busy to be spending too much time in good ole Cyberspace. Little Miss Go Big or Go Home has been a hoot lately. 13 months was a tough time with a lot of frustrations and changes, but 14, almost 15 months? A riot! Wren has been settling in well to her two mornings at school. She still cries a bit when I leave her, but within a few minutes she’s fine. Whew.

So what’s my other excuse for ignoring you lovelies lately? Summer! We’ve been spending a lot of time in the water, trying to escape the high heat and humidity. I love Mother Nature’s air conditioning, don’t you? Although I am happily wearing long sleeves today, I wouldn’t mind another month or so of playing at the water’s edge with the little birdie. Aah, the simple things.

How’s your summer been going? Have you found some means of escaping the oppressive heat and humidity? Chris likes to remind me to store it up for the long winter ahead, but I haven’t figured out exactly how to do that yet… you? Any tips?

Happy Monday, dear readers! I have a lot to catch up on with you. I have literally started four other posts, but haven’t completed them yet. In time.

Best!

purging, part 1

Posted on by
Reply

Purging our house of all the excess stuff and hosting “The North’s Best Tag Sale” seemed like a great idea about a month ago. But (you saw that coming, did you, smarty pants?) now I can’t wait until it’s over and the junk wonderful items that everyone in the neighborhood is going to be elbowing their way in for are going-going-gone from our nest. Forever. This month-long process has been a tremendous amount of work and I only have a fraction of items tagged and everything for the sale is still sitting in boxes in the basement. The next 36 hours? Oof.

Will it be worth it? Financially, probably not. Are tag (garage, yard, what do you call them?) sales ever really worth the time once you’ve figured out the finances? No, but I knew that going into it. I decided to do it for a few other reasons.

  • Get rid of stuff and help friends and family get rid of stuff too
  • Have a more clean and organized basement and not grumble and sigh every time I go down the stairs
  • Control clutter throughout the house
  • Feel lighter
  • Meet a few neighbors (we’ve lived here a little over a year and there are still people in our neighborhood we haven’t met yet)
  • Relish in organizing a mini retail store for a day (this could be a whole post by itself)
  • Host a live sociological study – the interactions with the people will be priceless, no? Part of the reason I go to garage sales in the first place… and yes, I realize I’m part of the study so come on over and observe!
  • Make a few bucks toward a DSLR camera (!)

I will post later this weekend with the results and insights. In the meantime, I’m off to make more signs and tag some more items. Aren’t you just on the edge of your seat? Ha!

Have a great weekend, lovelies. Any fun summer plans? Enjoy.

dog days already?

Posted on by
Reply
With the national heat wave even reaching northern Michigan and a punchy orange nasturtium blooming in the garden, it feels like the middle of summer already. So I decided to check in with my summer list and see how I was doing so far.
  • pick lots of strawberries and blueberries to enjoy and put up for a long winter
  • enjoy a huge, fresh sandwich from the Village Cheese Shanty in Leland
  • feel good after running the National Cherry Festival 15K – this is coming up more quickly than I thought so we’ll see how good I feel… This Saturday!
  • I know I said (err, wrote) at some point about how I WAS NOT going to make marshmallows from scratch (so utterly Martha), but with it being s’mores season and all, I’m inspired to make some marshmallows, roast them (a bit burnt is my style), then sandwich them with some really good chocolate between a couple graham cracker pieces. Wondering if I will notice a difference. What do you think? I haven’t done this yet, but Chris made me an amazing s’more last weekend with the most gigantic marshmallow on the planet. Have you seen those in the stores? Crazy.
  • spend lots of evenings on the porch with dear Chris. Ongoing. More to come!
  • wear a pretty sundress while playing bocce and sipping a fancy cocktail
  • swim, swim, swim, swim. A lot. I’ve been swimming, but certainly not A LOT. More to come.
  • eat lots of salads and grilled meat. Yes!
  • enjoy my annual corn dog and maybe even an elephant ear or funnel cake… oof. We took in our fair share of the National Cherry Festival last night and I enjoyed my annual corn dog, a few fries and four of us shared an elephant ear. Delish!
  • make progress on my Dairy Lodge Diet. I’ve been slacking lately and I need to get back at it!
  • take Wren to her first Northwest Michigan Fair. “Goin’ to the fair, goin’ to the fair, goin’ to the Northwest Michigan Fair!”
  • frequent our local farmer’s markets and art fairs
  • have a big garage sale and get rid of some stuff (err, junk). Saturday, July 24! The word is out.
  • visit Werner’s vineyard. He makes my favorite local wine: Left Foot Charley’s Pinot Blanc. Lovely!
  • pickle something from my garden. Chris spotted a cucumber the other day so maybe soon?
  • make some kind of jam. Strawberry?
  • be overwhelmed with harvesting all the veggies from my garden. This would be a good problem to have. We’ll see… so far, so good. With this heat the spinach is going to seed and the lettuce is going crazy. The tomato plants are almost as tall as I am, which isn’t saying much, but it’s a little scary.
  • enjoy the summer sunrises as much as the sunsets
  • stay up late to be awed by the Perseid meteor showers in August
  • picnic, picnic, picnic. Doesn’t everything taste better when you’re eating it outside?
  • erect our hammock and enjoy a few lazy moments
  • read a book. The whole book. Wow, what an idea! Got any suggestions?
  • run through the sprinkler
  • chase the ice cream truck
  • be barefoot most of the time. My feet are dirty…
  • make Wren’s play kitchen – similar to this one
  • create bouquets from our zinnias and bells of ireland
  • dance with the little birdie at the Cedar Polka Fest. She is going to LOVE it! MISS! 🙁
  • get on the water in someone else’s boat… anyone?
  • take Chris out to eat at Siren Hall for a date night. It was absolutely lovely. The food was amazing and the company even better!

  • take in a few films at the Traverse City Film Festival. Schedule comes out this Friday. Looking forward to it. I love the TCFF.
  • do a weekend camping trip and eat hot dogs, plain potato chips, a bottle of Faygo rock & rye and german potato salad from a can
  • sleep outside
  • enjoy a campfire and cheesy camp songs

How’s your summer so far, lovelies? Are you beating the heat? Is this expected to break soon? Please say it is because I don’t want to run ten miles in this on Saturday. Yuck. Here’s hoping for 70s again… Cheers!