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Showing posts from October, 2019

Sundays in October

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As much as I miss summer days, I love Sundays in October. Normally, we stay home. Dave turns on football ALL DAY. And the girls and I putter around the house, watching a few snippets of the games, sorting, cleaning, playing. Lately, Dave and I have been doing our weekly food shop on Sunday mornings. Just the two of us. It's kind of a date. Then, we'll make something BIG for lunch to eat with the girls in a very casual way at the island. Maybe in the crockpot? Dave has been prepping food for lunch and dinners on weekends, as well, in an effort to eat more balanced meals. So he also spends much of Sunday in the kitchen, where he can watch the football games while cutting up veggies and making rice. Last weekend, Leah decided to film him to make a cooking show. As a self-proclaimed, proud HOMEBODY, Sundays in October are just about perfect to me. And they make saying goodbye to summer temperatures and looking down six months of cold, winter weather almost doable.

Hot Dog!

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You know it's Halloween when a Target run includes some costume try-ons. They're so goofy! Related links: More Halloween posts 

Curly Willow to Pearly Cotton in the Master Bedroom

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I'm not saying the willow color on the walls of my master bedroom was a mistake, it just didn't go the way I thought I would. So this week, I'm fixing it. Let's rewind. In 2015, we had professional painters come and paint the two-story walls from awful beige to "polar bear" (by Behr) white ( see that post )! While here, I got a quote for the master bedroom and a year later they came back to change the original dirty, mint green to blue. Here's the post and a very dark picture of the walls . Yup, I love painting walls but I was working a lot and the room is huge, so I didn't think I could get it done in a weekend. I hired it out. Go me! The walls in the master have an angled part , so I used this dark beige-y brown color called "curly willow" to match with the duvet cover and wheat-color headboard. But when I saw it, I knew I went the wrong direction. So, for the past three years, I've been looking at it and kinda liking it. But

The Evolution of Alice's Room

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Alice's bedroom in our house is a work in progress. Mainly due to her growing up so much in the last eight years of living here. She was a preschooler when we moved in, to now being almost a preteen. And her bedroom has grown up along with her. When we first moved in, I painted Alice's walls yellow and pink. ( 2012 post here .) Two colors she helped me pick out, though it was mostly me. She had two dressers, a play table and there were toys everywhere. We even had bunk beds in here for a while. At 3-years-old through 6, she spent a lot of time in there. She still does. Then, we decided to "grow up" a little and paint her room a lovely lavender. A color she wanted nothing to do with -- but I insisted because the walls looked dirty and needed a more tranquil palette. ( Here's that 2016 post. ) We found her a pretty white daybed on Wayfair ( similar bed ) and I DIY'ed a little canopy to hang above it. Her play table changed into a normal-sized Ikea desk fo

Sunday Dinners OUT

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I know what I said in 2013. I was committing to making a nice Sunday dinner for my family every week and getting everyone around the table with me. I wrote it all down here . But things change. And lately I love going out to dinner on a Sunday night as a family. I love that I don't have pressure to create a meal on a Sunday. And I get the family all together after we've been running around all weekend. We dish about the week ahead, what we need and anything else coming up.  And no dishes! Dinner at Our Favorite Taco Place But don't worry, we do get around the kitchen table a few days a week to eat together and talk about how our day. So that study about family traditions around the dinner table is still being observed. Related links: More Cooking posts All my Family Time posts

Brandi Carlile and Me

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I'm not saying I'm in any way responsible for Brandi Carlile's growing fame, but I will say I called it years ago. See, in my 20s and early 30s I worked for AOL Music (I know, I'm a dinosaur) and we worked with artists and record labels and it was fun -- but not the party I'm sure you're imagining right now. Occasionally, along with the BIG NAMES we needed to keep the website viable, the record labels would send over emerging artists they wanted us to meet and get behind. Sometimes we did and sometimes we didn't. I remember the day Brandi Carlile came into our conference room. The label guys would all meet then the emerging artist would trail behind and introduce themselves. They usually had a box of CDs for us. I remember about a half-dozen artists we met this way. Brandi stood against the wall of our conference room with twins Phil and Tim who play guitar and introduced herself. I remember being mesmerized by her voice and the shy way she held hers

So Long "Traveling" Furniture

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This week, I looked around my house and decided two things. For Example: The Changing Table/Desk We Bought When Leah Was Born 1) We have a lot of furniture that was bought for our previous house in New Jersey, making it a decade or older. And, because it was bought for a smaller house, it's never really fit in this new house. 2) Also, we probably have too much furniture and could absolutely get rid of some "traveling" furniture that's been moved around from room to room as it's never really found a home or a purpose here. For example, we still have the changing table/desk combo we bought for Leah's nursery. And the Crate & Barrel desk hutch that turned the corner of our previous master bedroom into an office. So, I've been busy identifying these pieces and putting them up on Facebook Marketplace and LetGo to find new homes. I also sent a few smaller things (e.g. a tiny file cabinet) out with a donation pickup. This leaves me with rearrangi