What I Learned in May

PODCAST TUESDAY!!!

I know this is the most random conglomeration of stories ever, but I promise it's worth it!!

Listen here

 Yes, I know it is not the last day of the month, but two things caused me to post my "What I learned" a day early. First, I don't plan on learning anything today, so I should be safe. (TOTALLY KIDDING!) Secondly, yesterday was a super busy day, and I didn't get a chance to write  a post just for this day. So without further ado, here are the things I learned in May!

1. My body rebels against a detox/cleanse.

And don't we all, I'm sure, in some way? Isn't that kind of the point of a cleanse or detox? To shock your system back to health and life? But seriously, I learned that my body freaks out in unhealthy ways. Not sleeping at all and feeling like I'm hallucinating? Not worth it to me. I think I'll just be more conscious in my eating choices. It works better for me.

2. Ryan and I still hate being apart.

We were told the longer we were married, the more we would "get over" the need to be together all the time. Hasn't. Happened. Yet. Ryan was gone all day for the Saturday and Sunday of one weekend, and the following weekend, we were apart all evening Friday and most of Sunday afternoon. We decided that's too much. We love being together, and we don't apologize for it!

3. In busy seasons, we rely on color-coded itineraries.

We had a couple of stretches this month that were too busy. TOO busy. The kind of busy where you have to schedule in bathroom breaks if you really want them. So I resorted to creating color coded documents that outlined our every waking hour and told us what we needed to accomplish and who was in charge of it. We couldn't live like that every day, but when we have to, we must have organization.  

4. I love, love, love, having our garage finished for entertaining.

Truly one of the best decisions we made (even though it nearly cost us our sanity when it was in process) was to finish off the garage so it could be used as an additional living space. Hosting Mommapalooza 4.0 out there was so freeing!  Everyone felt a lot more comfortable with the extra space!

5. The Ninja has revolutionized our coffee grinding experience.

Ryan gave me a Ninja system for my birthday, which was THE most perfect gift. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it yet (hello, busy May!) but we used it to grind our coffee right after we opened the box, and my GOODNESS. What used to take 15 minutes to complete took about a minute and a half. No. Way.

6. Ryan and I make a great team at events.

I love being in a partnership with Ryan, and I love having him accompany me to events. It makes me so happy! But my visit to IWU was the first time he stood up front and helped me with a presentation. It went seamlessly. We had rehearsed several times, but I was so excited to see how well it went in real time. I am thankful beyond words for a husband who doesn't just support the work I'm called to do, but he crawls into it with me and takes an active role.

7. I love writing curriculum.

Back in the day, I wanted to be a teacher, but I elected not to pursue it once I saw how the education field was changing (even 20 years ago). This month I wrote some curriculum for a workshop I'm leading this summer, and I adored every moment of that work. Ryan would come home to find me in the same spot I'd been in when he left for work, and I was a TERRIBLE wife on those days, but it fed my soul in amazing ways to write for teaching purposes!

And that's been May in a nutshell! Here's to learning even more in June! 

Trip Planning in Shafferland

The sun has been out for two days now, which means I'm ready for vacation. Never mind that it hasn't been remotely warm...but did you hear the part about the sun?

Shari asked me yesterday how Ryan and I picked our county tours, and her question sparked a little blog post in my mind! Trip planning!! There is, of course, no right or wrong way to plan a trip, but I thought it would be fun to write a post on it. Maybe you can glean a tip or two, and if nothing else, in thirty years, I can look back and laugh at how I did things. (Because you know, if I'd been writing this thirty years ago, we'd be talking about stocking up on Traveler's Checks and buying a new atlas!)

So here's how trip planning goes in Shafferland:

Choosing a Date and Location:
* We start early around here, because Ryan does not have the kind of job that allows him to just decide on a Wednesday that he wants to take a long weekend. We typically choose our vacation dates and locations 3-5 months in advance so he can be sure to get the time off work.

* We choose our locations based on the amount of time we'll be gone. If it's a long weekend kind of thing, we won't go far, because we don't want to spend all our time traveling. We also choose where we land based on the cost for the time of year. We try really hard to avoid peak seasons everywhere because stuff is so much more expensive. I have a road trip board on Pinterest where I try to pin ideas as I see them throughout the year, so when planning time actually arrives, I have some options already waiting.

Research:
* As soon as we have the date and the location, we launch into research mode. Ryan normally takes over research for lodging. He has unending patience for reading pages and pages of reviews, so he usually hunts out the best deal he can find. We have also created standards about the difference between saving a buck and risking a communicable disease. You remember this hotel, right?

* I normally do all the rest of the trip research, because I'm the one with the unending patience for hunting through Pinterest and other forms of social media for fun things to do and see while we're gone. I'm such a nerd that I'll create a Word document with a full itinerary of each day, including all the names and addresses of not just where we'll stay, but also plans for restaurants, excursions, and other fun. (And as needed, ticket prices and websites.)

* I always ask the locals, if I know any locals. Internet research is great, but the best recommendations come from those who live there or have been there. So I'll post to Facebook while I'm in the research phase to see if anyone has ideas on what to definitely miss or not miss. I compile all that research into my nerdy Word document, too. And in the event that our vacation includes staying with locals, I just let the locals do all the planning. Such was the case when we went to visit Mark and Lynnette a couple of years ago. They took us all kinds of great places, and it was extra fun for me, since I didn't have to plan any of it!

* I try to find as many free things to do as possible. Gas/lodging/food take up most of our trip budget, so we try to find fun, free things to do, and we usually unearth some treasures! On the vacation pictured above, we spent one whole day exploring a state park that was completely free because it was not peak season!

Prep Time!
* I work really hard in the days leading up to the trip so I can fully enjoy the time away. I make sure the house is clean (no one wants to come home to a disaster), the laundry is caught up (so we have all available clothing options when packing time comes), the dishwasher and trash are emptied (so stink doesn't fester), someone is lined up to watch the house and Braeya, and the car is fully serviced. Ryan is actually in charge of the car, but I'm usually the one who takes it in.

* I also make snacks for the road so we don't end up eating a bunch of junk while we drive. Fruit, protein snacks, bottled water - I make sure we're stocked up! I also pack things like paper towel and disposable plates/cups/silverware in case we need them along the way.

* I stalk the weather app and figure out what clothes I need to take, and I'm such a nerd, I usually lay out each complete outfit and take a picture of it on my phone, so I know what I want to do each day. I know. It's ridiculous. I also throw in a couple of extra options in case I'm not feeling what I planned or in case the weather turns or I drop ketchup on my shirt. (That has literally never happened, but the first time I don't have a backup, I imagine it will.)

* Ryan picks out his own stuff, but I actually pack all the suitcases and pack the car, too. (Because I'm the one with the time to do it.) I also keep a nerdy Word document for this, and I start working on it days in advance, so I can add to it as I think of the things I'm afraid I'll forget. (Sunscreen, medicine bag, phone chargers, our chalkboards etc.)

* If the road trip is long, I'll also scour Pinterest for road trip ideas (games, scavenger hunts, quizzes, etc.) so we can stay entertained on the road. (Ideas here, here, and here if you need some!) We don't play games constantly on the road, but it's nice to have options when we get tired.

HAVE FUN! AND DOCUMENT IT!
* When it's time to actually go on vacation, our favorite part is just being together. We always have a great time, no matter where we go, and we take a billion pictures so we can come home and put it all in a scrapbook to enjoy forever!

* Things don't always go as planned on our vacations, but we just laugh at the mishaps and have fun anyway. Some of our favorite disasters include:

The tulip-less Tulip Time Festival

The beach visits in hats and gloves. In May.

Getting caught in a rainstorm on a bike ride - right before family pictures.

* But mostly, we have a blast. Grateful for these memories! Every bit of prep work that goes into these trips is totally worth it!

Sunset dinner cruise in Sarasota. (Suggestion from a local!)

Stumbling upon an empty beach in Nassau.

Christmas lights in Lincoln Park Zoo.

Hiking to Abrams Falls.

So many more great memories  - in all seasons!

And now...can we take a vacation, please?

Linking up with Tamar!

Letting Go of Routine

Ryan and I are very structured people, and we don't apologize for that. People ask us how we "do it all," and, well, first of all, we don't, but secondly, we do as much as we can because we're organized. We plan way ahead, we keep a color-coded calendar, we tend not to waste time, and we work hard.

Sometimes I envy those who fly through life by the seat of their pants, because organized living is work. It's getting up every day and staring at all that needs to be done and sliding tasks into time slots so by day's end, the balance of work and fun has been accomplished. Ahhhh, to get up at will and lay on the couch and read a book all day...right?

I don't think there's anything wrong with being organized, just like I don't think there's anything wrong with being a go-with-the-flow sort of soul. I believe the Lord made us with a beautiful array of personalities, and if we all approached life with the same plan, we wouldn't end up with nearly as many good stories, now would we?

But I do think it's wrong of us (organized and laid back alike) to hold so tightly to "our way" that we can't try life any other way, even for a minute. It's been an area of conviction for me lately.

Yesterday one of my friends texted me early in the morning and asked if I would pray for her son, because his class had a substitute teacher, and the change in routine created anxiety for him. And as I stared at that request on my phone, God nudged me and reminded me I knew a measure of how that little guy felt. My own week, which had been carefully scripted in full color code, had been changed multiple times. Extra appointments. New responsibilities. Canceled events. Filling in, helping out, meeting needs: all good things, but all things that changed the plans for the days and caused me to push aside my own work. And some of that work really needed to be done.

Yes. I definitely could feel a bit of the kiddo's pain. I decided to use the changes in my schedule as a great reminder to pray for this little guy while I prayed for improvement in my own attitude. I prayed that we both would learn to let go of our needs for routine and learn to accept the missions and lessons God had for us throughout our day. Missions and lessons that perhaps could only come through a change in plans.

 Chances are good, I'll always be a scheduled soul. Ryan probably will be too, and the fact that we are like-minded in that approach to life is one of the reasons we work together so well. (In full representation, Ryan handles changes to the day with a bit more grace than I do.) But I'm learning to loosen my grip a little, and I'm trying to embrace the beauty God has hidden in those unexpected changes.

Freezer Meal Palooza

I had a lot of paloozas this weekend. Phoebe AND freezer meals in the same day. But before I tell you about the freezer meal adventures, here's a little bundle of laughs for you. Wait til you hear the new word Ryan has concocted for his Shafferland dictionary. Cracked me UP!

Take a listen here!

Now. Back to freezer meals.

So my mom is getting ready to have surgery soon, and she is the resident chef at their house. And when I say that, I mean my dad couldn't cook if he had to. Toast...maybe. Apparently he has recently learned to make oatmeal. And possibly he could pour milk on cold cereal. After that? It's burgers and buffets all the way, because he just simply cannot cook. {No judgment, Dad. You have many other gifts. LOL!!}

So with Mom down for the count, I thought it would be helpful if she had some meals she could warm up as needed. I know some of her friends and neighbors will probably stop by in the weeks following with random meals and food gifts, so I have no idea when she'll come upon a day when she needs something and doesn't have it. Enter the freezer meals.

Also, Mom had expressed to me that because there are just the two of them, she didn't need big 9x13 servings of things. Totally understandable! So I took that concern into consideration when preparing the meal palooza.

One other little twist in this story is that my dad is a very picky eater. I promise I'm not trying to be mean to him in this post. It's just true and he'd admit it! So I was challenged to think of things that made good, healthy, balanced meals, in individual portions, that my dad MIGHT eat. {And if not? No worries. More for Mom!}

This past Saturday, whilst I had Miss Pheebs all day, I also cooked all day. Ryan had to work, so I just organized the kitchen in the best way I could think to do it and created thirty single-serving meals to freeze and transport to their house. Thought I'd tell you what I did and how I did it, in case you never need to know for yourself!

* First, I created three menus and did all the shopping for ingredients I didn't already have on hand. (I just used spices and such that I had here, but I shopped for all the main ingredients.) Ryan and I did that the night before, so everything was good and fresh.

* I also went to GFS (Gordon Food Service) and purchased containers that had individual wells so I could portion out the servings. and freeze them.

* The first meal was the sloppy joe meal. I made Mom's sloppy joe recipe, with three pounds of ground beef, and when I portioned out the cooked meat, I ended up with eleven servings of sloppy joe meat. I put them in sandwich zip bags and flattened them for easier storage. Then I took a package of regular buns and pulled them all apart, put each bun in a separate sandwich bag, and paired the buns with the bags of meat. I put both sandwich bags down inside a quart bag to make the meal. I also bought an assortment pack of individual servings of chips to pair with the sandwiches.

* The second meal was the meat loaf meal. I made two meat loaves and while they were baking, I whipped up some macaroni and cheese that I baked when the meat loaves were done. I also got 3 cans of green beans to portion out. I was able to get five servings out of each meat loaf for a total of ten, and I had enough macaroni to get ten servings plus two taste-tester size portions for Ryan and yours truly. The three cans of green beans were enough for the ten meals, too. I took my containers and spooned servings of all three things into the wells and called it done!

* The last meal was the chicken nugget meal. I used 9 large chicken tenders, added cheesy potatoes (no recipe on the old blogaroo for this one yet) and made cooked carrots for the first time in my life, and that made the last meal. The chicken nuggets took the longest because I had to cut the tenders into pieces and coat them and turn them all individually. The cheesy potato recipe made plenty for me to have enough for my 9 meals and leftovers for Ryan. I used 2 pounds of carrots to cook, and I used them all in the meals.

* And then for dessert, I made chocolate chip cookies and snickerdoodles, and after reserving some out for us, I bagged the rest, four cookies to a bag, and froze those as well.

* I found this site from Pinterest, and if you download the label the lady made, you can actually edit the label and put it right on your meal. That's what I did!

So last night we drove all the meals over {stuffed into various boxes, bags, and coolers} and surprised her! And boy was she ever surprised!

The freezer meal palooza was a little gift from all three of her girls, actually. I was just the self-designated cooker. Ha! Glad we were able to do it for her and hope it makes recovery a bit on the easier side! I hear those physical therapists can really work you hard and I can only imagine that can make you hungry!

Keeping the Goals Visible

Last year, in January, before I knew we were going to pack up our house and move to a new town, I became the queen of the webinar. I cannot tell you how many webinars I had to be part of during my years in Financial Aid and radio, but I can tell you they were one of my least favorite things. I hated sitting still and quiet for an hour or two, usually right after lunch, with my mind juggling all the things that really needed to be done back at my desk. But self-employment will lead you to view things a bit differently, and suddenly webinars were my training ground.

I found all kinds of free ones and not only printed out the presentations, but took pages upon pages of handwritten notes. Some were helpful. Some were not. But one piece of advice I remember from one webinar early on was that people who keep their goals documented in a visible location are more likely to actually accomplish those goals.

Hmm.

I intended to do a magnificent job of that very thing, post-webinar-watching. But then we bought a house and I had to pack us up and move us and unpack us, and by that point, the main goal was to be done with house projects. DONE. And let me just tell you: a mountain of boxes is a visible goal. :)

I've slacked off on webinar-watching this year, but I circled around to employ that bit of advice, and I have to say, there just might be something to it! {And perhaps that is why the gentleman who said it is as wildly successful in the business world as he is!}

So I thought I'd pass along some of the things that have been working for me so far this year, just in case you need new ideas to motivate your own goals into reality.

First of all, I finally found the perfect day planner for me. {Yes. I still use a paper planner. And I love it.} And of course, I had to make it myself. I pieced together fragments of printables from around the web of Pinterest, and it's working out really well!

Scattered Squirrel is one of my favorite sites for printables, and I found this set of monthly planner printables that I just loved. I'm grabbing a picture of the March sheet since I've not yet written on it.

In the last few days of each month, I sit down with the next month's paper and pray about what I should focus on that month. For example, in January, it was establish a new routine. We had just come away from the holidays and I am not even sure I can claim I had a routine. So for the entire month of January, that was my main focus. In every area {time with God, eating, working out, working, our home, etc.}, I wanted to create a sense of routine.

Then in the other sections of this sheet, I write down any special dates I need to remember throughout month {big birthdays, holidays etc.} And then I make goals in three specific areas of my life. So again, in January, my three areas of focus were work, health, and me. In my work life, in January, I wanted to record 3 Conversation Cafe podcasts, tweak my book proposal, and work on launching my website. And because I wrote those things down and looked at them every day, I was able to check them off by the end of the month!

I picked three things from the three lists and made those my top three goals for the month. (In January I completed 2 of the 3 and only missed the 3rd one because of all the time that ended up devoted to Ryan's surgery instead.)

I also make a list of things I want to do around the house that month, which in January, involved decorating for winter.

Because I'm highly motivated by checking things off a list, this works really well for me!

Similarly, I found a printable here that gives me a two-page-spread weekly plan that helps me keep track of my everyday tasks.

Cards to mail. My workout. Home chores. Writing work. Appointments. You name it. I can't tell you how many times I've finished my tasks only because they were written down and I wanted the joy of crossing them off!

And my newest thing is this really cool gift my sister gave me for Christmas.

It's a board that says at the top, "Things that Inspire." There are six clips beneath it, and I use it to keep track of my six next pressing items. So for example, right now the first clip holds notes for what I need to do for my next Conversation Cafe interview, the second clip holds tasks for my book proposal, the third holds notes for a luncheon where I'm speaking next month, and the fourth holds notes for a bridal shower where I'll be speaking in a few weeks. {Currently these are the most pressing things.} This is a good way for me to remember that just because something may be a few weeks down the road doesn't mean I can overlook it right now! This sits right beside my chair in the office, so I'm very aware of the work ahead of me and it keeps me on task when I'd rather nap or Pinterest or something along those lines.

I have to say, I'm doing a much better job about staying organized and pursuing goals when I can see them right in front of me every single day. It brings accountability and encouragement in equal doses!

Maybe you're not driven by the visual as much as I am, but if your current system isn't working for you, perhaps one of these ideas can inspire you!! :)

Scrapbooking in Shafferland

Yesterday, Maria asked if I could do a post sometime on how I go about scrapbooking. Well, Maria, you hit a passionate topic nerve, so today is "sometime!" {PS - I meant that in a wonderful way!}

Sometimes people ask me how I got into scrapbooking, because it wasn't something my mom particularly loved to do. Don't get me wrong: she took pictures and we had photo albums of life and vacations, but "scrapbooking" wasn't trendy back in the late 70's and 80's when I was a kid. I got my first taste of it as a senior in high school, when I bought the Senior Memories book from the Herff Jones representative and proceeded to glue every single thing that happened that year into the pages. By graduation day, my book was deliciously fat and the cover sat at an impressive 90 degree angle. And I'm pretty sure that's when my love of scrapbooking was born.

College afforded no time for such frivolities, but it did afford me a few trips to Creative Memories home parties, where I learned the joy of scalloped scissors and double sided tape and archive quality pages. I learned how horrid those magnetic photo albums were and how I needed to run home right then and rip all my photos from the pages before they slid one millimeter closer to yellow ruin.

And then I graduated and became a grown up with little money and lots of time, and somehow, scrapbooking became my thing. From 2000 to 2011, I scrapbooked in the huge, thick 12x12 albums, purchased refill pages in bulk when Hobby Lobby ran sales, and spent many a weekend from morning until late in the night cutting and arranging and journaling and embellishing my pages. Had I kept going at that rate, we would have to have one full bedroom devoted to albums, because they're so huge.

In 2011, I discovered Picaboo, which is a digital scrapbooking site. There are many such sites (Shutterfly, Snapfish, MixBook, Blurb, and more) but Picaboo was where I began and it remains my only love in the digital scrapbooking world. We have a smooth relationship now. It understands me, I understand it, and we crank out albums at alarming rates.

I love digital scrapping for many reasons. It's much cleaner than traditional scrapping. I don't have to drag out supplies and make a mess and clean it up a few hours later. I can scrapbook anywhere, as long as I have my laptop and a wifi password. I can make books for days and order them whenever a good sale hits. The books look neat and professional, and they fit in tidy rows on a bookshelf. I can make photos inside as big or small as I want, I can journal to my heart's content, and cost-wise, I pay no more (maybe less, if the sale is good!) than I did with traditional scrapping, because I don't have to pay for photo prints and embellishments and ink and all those things.

So with all that said, how do I do it?

1. I have four chronological books each year. I (clearly) take a LOT of pictures. So to keep the cost factor manageable, I make one album for every quarter of the year. These albums house the memories of our everyday life. The covers have three pictures of the two of us, one from each month represented in the book.

The inside "cover page" has three more pictures of the two of us (one from each month represented in the book) and a quick recap of the highlights of life in that quarter.

I have one spread for each month of the book that includes all the daily collages you see on the Shafferland Shuffle each week. In that way, every single day of our year is represented in these chronological books.

From there, the rest of the pages are filled with the pictures and stories of our dates, holidays, adventures, county tours, trips - anything that keeps a record of that month.

 

I work on these books almost every Sunday afternoon, because scrapbooking is a restful treat to me. I try not to get more than a month behind in these books because I want to write about our days while they're still fresh in my mind. And honestly, my goal is to try to keep it current each week, but sometimes I get behind.

A page about a particular event contains a title, however many pictures I want to use to document it, and some journaling that tells the story of that event. At the end of each journaling box, I put the date(s) for that event so if I need to go back and see exactly when something happened, it's easy to do so.

2. My albums look "scrapbooky." Picaboo has SO MANY WAYS to do albums. You can make a true photo album, where you just drag and drop your pictures in rows, write a caption, and go on. Or you can do pretty backgrounds like a scrapbook, make shapes with your photos, put mats behind them, and the whole nine yards. That part is up to your preference. I like the scrapbook look, so I mix square and round photos, use photo borders (mats), and put cute backgrounds behind them. That's just my style.

3. I record names!!!! Unless the photos are of just Ryan and me (which I consider to be fairly obvious), I label each photo with the names of the people pictured. Even if they're family! Since Ryan's family  has so many kids, I know there might come a day when I look at a photo and wonder which kid it is. (Siblings can look awfully alike when they're little!) And for friends and co-workers, I know there might come a day when those people might not be part of my regular life and while I think now I would always remember their names, what if eventually I forget?? So I label every picture with FULL NAMES for that purpose.

4. I make specialty albums. Every vacation we take, every major life event (wedding, reception, our move last year, etc.) gets its own album. The events are still included in my regular albums, but at a much more abbreviated level. For example, when we take a vacation, I'll do two or three pages in the annual chronological albums to reflect the vacation, but the full story goes in another book all its own.

In those books, I'm a stickler for details. I still record the events chronologically, but I go into MUCH greater detail so I can always remember the fun we had!

In these albums, I'll include pictures of not only our adventures, but also details I might want to come back to later just to see how life has changed. I always take pictures of our hotel rooms, because who knows what hotel rooms will look like in 20 years? I know they sure look different now from 20 years ago! I also like to get pictures of things like welcome signs from each state, restaurants where we eat, the vehicle we're driving, scenery from the area, etc.

Sometimes I'll include trivia facts I find online. For example, when we went to French Lick for our anniversary this past December, we took tours of the two big hotels in town. We learned a lot of information on those tours, and I couldn't remember it all. But I found detailed stories online of the hotels and some of what we learned on the tours, so I included that in the scrapbook. It becomes a history book of sorts while recording memories.

I also record funny stories of things that happened, because while you think you'll never forget something, you will. Having those things written down in detail really helps. Because this is something I like to include, I try to do the specialty books as soon as I can after an event. If I feel it's going to take a while, I'll record the stories I want to be sure to have in a Word document or something and copy and paste it when the time comes.

5. Great gift ideas! When my niece got married last year, I asked her if she would like me to make her wedding album as a gift. {I had made her high school years album and her graduation day album as gifts for her in years gone by.} She said yes, so after the wedding, she sent me all the pictures she wanted in the book, and I assembled it. I used the same background on every page so it looked clean and professional, and I kept the verbiage in this book to a minimum. A few titles here and there, and I did insist on labeling the members of the family and wedding party pictures (see above reasoning), but otherwise, this album was just full of pictures.

She wanted to give albums as gifts to her parents and her husband's parents for Christmas, and the BEAUTIFUL thing about digital scrapping is you can make duplicates of an album and change details as necessary. So I made two duplicates of her album and then changed the wording from "our wedding" to "our daughter's wedding," etc. and changed the cover photos to match her requests for each set of parents. I love this duplicate feature, because it saves so much time!

For people who don't enjoy scrapbooking, books like these make great gifts. I've made many over the years, traditionally and digitally, and they've always been really well received.


Obviously this is not the ONLY way to scrapbook, but it's how I do it, and I hope it gives you an idea or two. Any questions? Let me know! 

Linking up with the birthday girl!

The Saturday Six

** Quick housekeeping item: KAREN BLINN!! You are the winner of Designed to Pray, the book I featured on the Saturday 6 last week. I'll email you and make arrangements to get your copy to you! Hope you enjoy it! **

One.

I don't think I need to explain to you why I think this photo organization method is so amazing, do I? I happened upon this whole post via Pinterest, and while this girl-after-my-own-heart has a ton of amazing organization ideas, the photo one made my heart sing the most.

Two.

Whether or not you liked the change of presidential power yesterday, I'm pretty sure you can appreciate this article about the nuts and bolts of how they move one President out and a new one in to the White House in one afternoon flat. Given that we took something like a month to move from one house to another, this whole process absolutely fascinated me. I think if we ever move again (which is unlikely), I'd like this staff to be in charge.  

Three.

Maybe Ryan and I are the last people on earth to learn about the RTIC Tumblers, but just in case you're with us, let me fill you in! Ryan's brother and his family gave both of us an RTIC tumbler for Christmas, and we used them this week while home on Ryan's gallternity leave. Mind-blowing and beverage-changing! They're marketed to keep hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold for a ridiculous amount of time and they actually do. Ryan had coffee in his and hours later, he said it was still piping hot. I had iced tea in mine and still had most of the ice in it the next day. We are sold! Love them!! Worth the investment if you're looking for new drinkware!

Four.

I've talked often on here about Katie Farrell and the Dashing Dish website. Love Katie's ministry and her recipes! She recently announced that she's expecting her first child, and on  her blog this week, she posted a wonderful article about things she learned in the waiting. Whether you're waiting on a baby or something else entirely, I think you'll find some helpful words in here! 

Five.

Valentine's Day is less than a month away now, you know. Found this post with a multitude of decor ideas, but my favorite is the one for decorating an old window frame for Valentine's Day. Since we have three old windows decorating our home, I love this idea for sprucing them up! 



Six.

Source

As you know, our January has leaned more toward the heavy side, not because of all the food we ate during December, but because of all the health debacles. I decided life was heavy enough. No need for the book of the week to add to it! So I shopped on my shelves and found one I'd never had time to read, but knew I'd laugh all the way through: The Antelope in the Living Room by Melanie Shankle.

Melanie has published three books, and if I'm not mistaken, I think her fourth one is coming soon, but I had only read two of the three she'd published so far. I started with her first book, Sparkly Green Earrings, which is a hilarious memoir on motherhood, and then shortly before I left WBCL, I read her third book Nobody's Cuter than You, an equally hilarious memoir on friendship. (I also interviewed her about that book back when I was still in radio.)

But the middle book, The Antelope in the Living Room, her memoir on marriage, sat on my shelf, raising its invisible book-hand, begging to be read, but I just hadn't gotten to it! And my goodness, was it ever the perfect book for a heavy month!

If you've read either of Melanie's other two books, I'm happy to report that her conversational, blogger, story-telling tone carries through this one exactly like it did the other two. I am pretty sure I even read it in a southern accent, because she has one, and it's delightful, and I wanted to feel like she was reading the book to me.

This book is a collection of stories from her marriage to Perry, who is her opposite in many ways, and yet her best friend and support. I laughed so hard and made Ryan mute the TV no less than 37 times so I could read him "just one more thing" from the pages, because sometimes Perry and Melanie were so Ryan and Bekah.

I confess perhaps I should not have read the chapter on Perry's surgeries prior to Ryan's gallbladder extraction, because Melanie freaks out about the same sorts of medical mishaps I do, and it reminded me I worry for a reason. But even though it didn't calm my fears, it let me know I wasn't alone in them, and for that, I was grateful.

I appreciate how most of the chapters end with a tie in to a spiritual lesson, but I just dearly love the stories themselves. They are totally worth the read. It's good to laugh. It's good to know you're not alone in your own personal irrational thoughts. It's good to read real life stories. And did I mention it's good to laugh?

This book isn't a new one. It was published in 2014, so I'm clearly behind the times on this one. But it was a lighthearted read sorely needed in this month of heavy thinking. If you're having a heavy January, I recommend this one. (And Melanie? I cried forever too over Princess Diana's death. I can't believe neither of our husbands took it as personally as we did.)