Here are some links I’d like to share with you today.

First, are you on Facebook? I used to have a Facebook page for this blog and then it wasn’t set up how I wanted it so I started it over again. If you’d like, you can like my page.

Second, I wrote a column at Simple Mom this week, which you can find here, Reset A Room: Simplify Your Space With a Fresh Pair of Eyes.

And now, from my reader, links I loved this week:

• A Journey of Self Confidence
• I love this Magnolia Tree Fall Wreath
• Recognition – Kristen is a beautiful writer and this is no exception
• 4 Ways to Get Energy By Expending It

Time for me to pull away from the computer and get laboring on my labor day weekend projects. Can’t wait to share with you soon. Enjoy your long weekend!

I snooped at some beautiful downtown homes. I am too self conscious to stand in front of someone’s home and hold a camera up to my face, adjust settings and snap away. So, all of these pics are taken from the hip, trying to be discreet.

I nearly stepped on this in the middle of the street. So, I picked it up and took it’s picture.

The I proceeded to obsessively snap photos of all of the gorgeous doors and windows I was walking past. Some of the homes along the really really really old streets are truly right there at the street. No front yard, no sidewalk. Just front door, curb, road. I love these homes so much and I imagine how old they are and how many stories they have inside the simple, beautiful doorways.

I also sat on a bench by a lake right downtown and did nothing. It was wonderful.

What do you do when you feel the tug to slow down and notice more?

While going through all of our stuff and figuring out to donate, give away or throw away, I found the valances that I fleetingly had in the kitchen a few months ago above the sink. Simple white sailcloth originally from Target that I nabbed at Goodwill one day. They didn’t last long once I decided I’d rather have bamboo roman shades. They’ve been sitting unloved in a box ever since.

I figured better to use them for something I’ll love and use than to let them continue on in a state of such disgrace.

I cut them up, and concocted something that resembles a tote bag. Between the main fabric and the heavier strips that were on the bottom I had myself fabric for the tote and fabric for straps. I used fabric leftover from curtains I made in my daughter’s room (I’ll have a post on that another day) for the lining. It’s the perfect size for taking to the pool, errands or just throwing in a book and bottle of water for the park. I am calling it my everywhere tote. The all white was a little too plain even for me, a lover of all things bright and white. So, I seriously flailed my way through making some things that maybe resemble flowers to add to the outside.

Of course, this means my 6 year old daughter now wants flowers added to all of her handmade tote bags. That ought to keep me busy… right after I get brave enough to try to sew the straps to the inside of a bag. Wish me luck.

Since I want to show you this anyway, it is the perfect timing.

We just completed this project. When we completed our Master Bedroom , which is off of the living room, we moved the doorway that goes into the bedroom for better flow.

So, the room used to look like this:

then this:

And now this:

My corner moved. But I still have my space.  I blog from there on my laptop but I also blog from my Mac in the spare bedroom/office but it is not at all ready to be shown to the world. As with everything else in this house, it’s in progress.

I am trying to expand my horizons on my blog reading. I have found some new to me blogs recently. It sometimes astounds me how much beauty there is out there on the internet. I am sure I could spend all day looking at beautiful blogs if I let myself.

Here are a few gems from my growing reader for you:

Decorating on a Budget…of Zero
Make a Memory
Boo-Hooing
Trusting Your Unique Voice
Things Are Never Perfect

I hope you have a lovely weekend. Any fun plans?

I have something I am very excited to share with you today. The 8 lovely mugs you see there belong to 8 of us here in blogland that The Nester, inspired by Darren Rowse’s (ProBlogger) series “31 Days to Build a Better Blog“, convinced to do a 31 day series. For the month of October, each of us in our corners of the internet will be posting every single day about what we know and love best.

Sandy Coughlin – Reluctant Entertainer – 31 Days to Stress-Free Entertaining
Darcy – Life with my 3 Boybarians – 31 Days to a Better Photo
Jen – Balancing Beauty and Bedlam – 31 Days to More with Less
Melissa Michaels – The Inspired Room – 31 Days of Autumn Bliss
Emily F – Chatting at the Sky – 31 Days of Grace
Kendra – My First Kitchen – 31 Days to an Inspired Table
The Nester – Nesting Place – 31 Days to a Less Messy Nest
Me – Remodeling this Life – 31 Days of Living Simply

I am really excited (and a little nervous) about this. This group of women is really amazing. I hope you will enjoy this with me.

I borrowed the above collages from Kendra and Darcy.

We have lived in this house in this neighborhood for just over 4 years now. It was and still is very transitional. There are rental properties, run down properties and then a select few of us who are trying to make where we live nicer, better, in hopes of making the whole neighborhood that way. Sometimes it feels like a losing battle. There is one home that has always stood out to me. It’s across the street and two over from us. An older couple lives there. They have been here since 1960 when the neighborhood started. The man built their home with his bare hands, a modest concrete block home that is well maintained and pretty. Nothing grand or gorgeous, just simple and what they need.

The couple themselves are the same way. Nothing grand or gorgeous, just simple and content. They raised 6 kids in their modest 60s ranch. They never upgraded, bought more house than they needed or could afford. And now their grandkids come for vacations and holidays to visit them and they play in the same rooms, the same yard that their parents once did.

They visit us and we visit them. They bring us bread from their church bake sale once a week. I bake things for them and use it as an excuse to visit. My kids love them because they are nice and also because she offers milk and cookies when they come over. Everything about them is simple, comfortable and content.

Last week, I saw them in the grocery store while I was picking up our weekly groceries. Before I walked over to say hello, I only heard them and thought how cute it was this older couple grocery shopping together, checking the buy one get one free sales and matching up coupons. When I realized it was them, I went over to say hello, offered a hug and a smile and we chatted for a few minutes before going our separate ways.

I smiled my way through the rest of my grocery outing, thinking of when I am 77 someday and wondering if I’ll be grocery shopping in my nicest clothes with my husband, huddled over a handful of coupons, choosing which coffee to buy and what treats to stick in the cupboard for when the neighborhood kids come by. When I left the store, I saw the man sitting in his car out in front of the store. He had left ahead of his wife to pull the car up – so it would be cold when she got in out of the Florida heat, and so she wouldn’t have to walk so far – and I smiled again.

A few days later, hubby and I were having one of those days. He was in and out from the front porch, working with tools out front, coming through the house with materials to work on this home he’s built with his own hands. He took a break to play with the kids while I went for my afternoon run. I waved to her as I ran past. When I arrived back home from my run, hubby handed me a water bottle and said she had brought a bunch of them over for us. A small token to show they understand and appreciate who we are and what we are doing over here on this little slice of land in this little home of ours.

Each time I see them – grocery shopping, sitting outside talking in their adirondack chairs, driving up the road past me – I think of how they’ve been here on this street calling this home for 50 years. They brought babies home here. Their kids learned to ride bikes on this same street. They were the first ones outside cheering the day my daughter rode without training wheels for the first time. They sent kids to preschool and first grade just like I did today. They took pictures out front of prom dates. Then they watched as their kids brought grandkids over and they did the same things in their slice of the world.

By all accounts, they are nothing but living simply and contentedly. They take care of what they own, meticulously. Their home is modest and comfortable – nothing fancy, but always pretty. I see them and think that no matter where I am, when I am 77 I want to be that too. I may not live in this home for 50 years. I may not host Thanksgiving here with grandkids running around. I just don’t know. But I hope to have a sliver of that feeling of contentment in all that I do and all that I own. I want to take care of what is mine. Make do with what I have. Be happy with what is right here in front of me today. And encourage others to do the same.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!!

This post first appeared on August 6th of last year. So much has changed but so much has stayed the same in the trip around the sun since then. We have one short weekend left before school starts and this is how I’m feeling. What will be on my mind as we embrace the sliver of time left with no schedule before we all start yet another adventure

I sit here, watching my kids play together – laughing, sharing and learning – and I wonder how it went so fast. Not just the summer, but all of it. I can think back to so many times that I thought the phase would never end – phases full of nights spent nursing instead of sleeping, phases of whining instead of using big kid words, phases of head butting, phases of peeing on the carpet – and now I sit here, in this moment and wonder how all of those moments, all of those phases that seemed endless at the time, slipped away.

How am I sitting here watching two kids play, share, laugh, interact, and enjoy each other?

How is it that 2 weeks from now I’ll be attending open house for Kindergarten for one and preschool for the other?

I can’t even imagine two mornings each week to myself. Yet here it is.

And instead of being happy, thinking of the time I can spend running, talking with friends uninterrupted, walking on the beach, whatever it may be – all I want to do is cry. Have a moment of newborn-ness again. Have a moment of nursing back. Have a moment of falling asleep in mama’s arms back.

Less than two weeks ago, we were still at the cottage spending our early mornings swimming and our evenings spent having meals with extended family and watching the sun set over the lake.

Evenings spent embracing the cold of upstate NY are replaced by accepting the heat of Florida. We’ve settled back in. We’ve headed back to the beach. We’re doing the best we can to simply be and enjoy what we have.

It’s not as easy as I thought it would be. I thought the challenge would be returning home from vacation and tidying and organizing and keeping the house in order, as usual. But that has been relatively easy. When friends call to spend time with us, I remember that soon enough there will be no weekly playdates for my daughter and so we go off to see friends before our time is up. When the kids want to spontaneously go outside to play in the sprinkler and slide down the slide, we go because soon they’ll be restricted to school recess hours.

I don’t know how it happened. How the ease and flexibility of this life so far has come to somewhat of an end. How I went from learning how to hold a tiny newborn to learning how to let go of a kindergartener and a preschooler all in the same day. I don’t know how it went so fast. I just know that if I look back on that day in July 5 years ago that I became mom, it seems like it hasn’t been long enough for this moment to come.  I know I have to continue to do the best I can to make the most of these moments. To make them feel like gold, even as they slip away.

School starts here next week, which means that I have been doing a little back to school shopping. One of the rules at my daughter’s school is that kids in grades K through 3 have to use tote bags instead of backpacks – to save space. We added a tote bag to our list as we headed out over the weekend to pick up supplies. I checked thrift stores and found nothing that would work. And all the big box stores have are backpacks. We found one tote bag at Target that would’ve worked but it was $25 and made cheaply in China. I knew I could do better even though I have never before made anything of the sort. The number of sewing projects I have done is more than one and less than 10.

I raided my stash of fabric that was given to me earlier this year when a relative wasn’t going to do a project she had planned. Went online and found some tutorials to get the basic idea of what I should be doing. I ended up loving this Easy Tote Bag Tutorial and followed that with some modifications for my less than perfectionist self. I also loved this How To Make a Simple Reversible Tote Bag.

I made one for my daughter (the yellow one above) and had so much fun with it and found it simple enough, that I made one for me too (the blue one above). I have all but the straps done on another one for her just because. And I made myself this burlap one as well.

I may or may not have pranced around the house showing off my matching straps and lining to anyone who would listen. The dogs were most interested.

The whole process was so fun for me – to learn something new, enjoy doing it even though I came across a few snags. Thank goodness for the internet to pull me through with tutorials and support when I need it. And my daughter is over the moon excited that I made her a bag for school. There are few better feelings than when she tells me that she loves the things I make her way more than anything she could find at a store.

Total cost for 4 tote bags? $0.