When I first started devouring (and subsequently writing) blogs in 2008, one of the first I ran across was Simple Mom by Tsh Oxenreider - and I inhaled it. I followed Tsh like some kind of organizing, coffee-drinking, living right Pied Piper right over to the other sites that fell under the Simple Living Media umbrella in 2010 and began imploring everyone I encountered to check them out, ad nauseum. I downloaded her ebook, snapped up her book Organized Simplicity the moment it debuted and felt ... View Post
The Year of the Book
Actually, as it turns out, 2014 is the year of the horse. However, for me it is the year of the book. First up is The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick, as I ruminated about recently. We had watched the 2011 Martin Scorcese film version of Hugo, and it was completely epic - a fantastic family flick. Set in 1930s Paris, an orphan who lives in the walls of a train station is wrapped up in a mystery involving his late father and an automaton. I was elated when I ran across the book ... View Post
To The Moon
The girl is sitting next to me, and we've both taken our favorite (super soft!!) blankets and wrapped ourselves up in them - burrito-style - before carefully inserting ourselves beneath the covers. . It is 3 degrees outside in Arkansas on January 6. My husband reminisces that the last time he recalls such affronting cold was atop Chair 2 at Mission Ridge, before he took his debut run down a threatening ski slope in Wenatchee, Washington some ten or twelve years ago. We search the recesses of our ... View Post
Secrets of a Stalker
Apologies if you came here looking for something a little juicier than I have planned. That should have read bookcase stalker. While I'm not a particularly nosy person (I generally don't care what is in your medicine cabinet, what you paid for your house or who said what about so and so), I'm definitely a curious person. Recently, I realized I'm particularly curious about what other people read. I've long been a fan of Goodreads.com because of that curiosity, but lately I find I want to ... View Post
Digital Justification
A friend and I had an interesting revelation the other day while visiting over coffee. The visiting over coffee part itself has become a really rewarding part of my life lately. I've been taking some breaks from consuming social media - I'll still post "outbound" (i.e. taking a photo on my phone and posting it) but I've been limiting the amount of time I spend actually visiting the sites themselves so that I don't fall into a mindless rut of scrolling the newsfeed. It took some adjusting for ... View Post
Why The Hunger Games Is Appropriate For Small Children (Sort Of)
I was stunned when our oldest daughter, at about the age of five, casually mentioned Hannah Montana. At that time, she was neither spending time at other kids' houses nor watching TV without me knowing. How did she even come across the character? I didn't necessarily have anything against Hannah Montana, although I knew with certainty that she had not been exposed to that highly contagious virus at home. More recently, our youngest daughter donned a pair of my heels and threw a white, gauzy ... View Post
