Home & Garden
Reusing Yard Waste is Worth the Effort
By most accounts, the next few weeks mark the end of summer, and autumn is just around the corner. When it comes to the home and family, school will be starting and the focus of life will slowly shift indoors, away from the yard and garden. At this point, it’s clear to many that the … Continue reading
Finding Cinderella in a Bleeding Heart
My first clear memory of my grandparents dates back to the age of 7. I can still hear my mother delivering the news that we would be moving to a new town. I took this in stride but there were two things I wanted to know— would we be closer to my favorite vacation spot (yes) … Continue reading
The Lazy Person’s Potato Garden
Growing potatoes always sounded hard. Dig a deep bed, “fluff up” the soil (especially painful with clay), then go back with the shovel for harvest. I am a lazy gardener. I started my gardening career at roughly the same time as my corporate career, so if it wasn’t easy, it wasn’t going to happen. This … Continue reading
The Natural Easter Egg Dye Off
I have been dying Easter Eggs naturally for years. I’d much rather cut up and boil old vegetables than run to the drug store for a synthetic coloring kit—and it just feels like more fun. At this point I have my standard formulas for the primary colors, which I covered in last year’s Easter post … Continue reading
Seed Starting is Easy! (Weeding is Hard)
I had plans to blog about starting seeds a couple weeks ago when I began the task . But it seemed so ordinary that I simply started the seeds and forgot the blog. I didn’t give it another thought until last night, when my daughter was studying at our house with a classmate. Her friend’s … Continue reading
Month without Spending: Final Report
For those who have not been following my story, here is a synopsis. After a really nice holiday season this past year, I decided to make amends and curtail my spending for the month of January (see original post). Now that January is over (!!), here is a brief summary of how it went and … Continue reading
My Month without Spending: Mid-Month Progress
After a period of relative financial abandon, I recently decided to try a “month without spending.” I framed my exceptions and went out to live life, sans checkbook. Here is how it is going. What Is Going Well? Planned purchases are amazingly speedy. I zipped through the grocery store for milk—bee-lined to the back then … Continue reading
My Month Without Spending
The idea came from a magazine. Last November’s Family Circle mentioned the concept of a cash sabbatical—a day without spending—to help come to terms with the emotions triggered by spending. The concept was interesting but one day didn’t seem like a real challenge, so I toyed casually with the idea of a month. Then a … Continue reading
No Doorknob Left Unadorned (and Other Christmas Images)
If I had tried to predict what I would include in a Christmas blog post, it would have been food. Baked goods with peppermint, soups with rosemary and anything roasted. Perhaps it is the mini-diet I just finished or my malfunctioning oven (stay tuned for my story of cooking for 18 on Christmas Eve without a real oven), but there … Continue reading
Green Tip: Reduce Paper Towels By Using Cloth Rags
Lately (perhaps with the Thanksgiving holiday), I’ve been thinking back to when my oldest, now 20, was a baby. Trying to be as environmentally conscious as possible, we made the decision to use cloth diapers. While I am now long past the life stage of the cloth versus disposable debate, there is one component of … Continue reading
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