One of the perks of living near Washington, DC is that there are a plethora of options for taking in amazing homes, museums and art. And sometimes, you can do all three at once! Yesterday I went with a group of people from my church to visit Hillwood Estate, Museum and Gardens in Washington, DC. It’sRead more
The temperature was 45 degrees this morning when Chester and I walked Doug to the train station. I had to put on a sweater! I think autumn is officially here. And with autumn comes pumpkin recipes! It’s a little hard for me to want pumpkin in the middle of summer. With the cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves andRead more
It’s time for the second installment of Operation Upcycle! I’m in the process of taking a few things here and there that I have laying around and spiffing them up. It’s a fun way to learn new skills and push myself to try new things! The first project I did was adding some green andRead more
I think most kids are familiar with the concept of musical chairs. There’s a ring of chairs, with one more kid than there are chairs. When the music starts, everyone walks around in a circle. When the music stops, everyone tries to sit in a chair, resulting in one kid being left standing. That childRead more
Sometimes you just need a year or two (or three) to admit when something isn’t working. I thought that when we put in the chandelier back in June, it would bother me less that the dining table seemed kind of cramped because it would look more like a real dining room. And it did feelRead more
Yay for kitchen progress! Doug just finished painting the ceiling in our kitchen, which luckily involved taking down the existing light fixture, which was an awful 1980s brass ceiling fan. And rather than put it back up, we agreed that maybe it would just be better if we just replaced it. So we spent mostRead more
You know how sometimes you know you want to do something, but you’re not sure how so you know you’ll have to do some research and you think it’s going to take forever and it’s going to be complicated and it might break your blog? Yeah? And then you spend five seconds on Google usingRead more
When I talk to people about how they got into antiques, most mention a family member. Usually it’s mom or dad or an aunt or an uncle. They remember combing antique stores, thrift stores, yard sales and barns as children when everything seemed like such an adventure. And even though we’re all adults now, weRead more
For the past three years, there has been a woman at our local farmer’s market who made these bar cookies called “Carmelitas”. Unfortunately this year she didn’t return to the market so I have been missing what I have often described to friends as the best cookie I’ve ever had. I resisted looking for aRead more
A few weeks ago, I had some tremendous luck at the outlets. Nordstrom Rack had a bunch of new clearance stuff and while flipping through the sale rack, I found this Trina Turk top. I loved the color, it was my size and guess what? $5! Yep, the tag said it was something like 98%Read more