Enjoying the Small Things

Enjoying the Small Things

The Fall Bucket List is Here!

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Well hello there, friends. It’s officially the first day of Fall. While that means really nothing seasonally different here in Florida, it brings with it a much needed shift in mentality. We are hanging on for all the shifts we can get this year, and this fall one comes with simple delights independent of all that’s happening in the world. We still get chili & cornbread movie nights, cozy socks, mum displays in Trader Joes, the thrill of discovering the best apple crisp recipe ever and the beginning of the last three chapters of a long year—the “-ber months,” my favorite.

As promised, a new fall bucket list for you. I took a break from the summer one this year, and I’m so ready to initiate this new season by hanging a crisp new list on our wall, full of invitations to delights. It’s COVID friendly 😉 — all items you can check off safely with your families, friends or alone in your cozy little house.

You can download your own copy to print here. It’s formatted as a jpeg; so if you want to enlarge it, you can send the file as is to any photo printing lab (Walgreens will print it in an hour) and have it printed as a 16×20.

I’m also sharing my fall playlist here. (You can copy the Spotify the playlist here or play the songs right from this post.) There’s a little bit of old school jazz, a few classic crooners, some Indie folk songs. Picture candlelit dinners, sitting around a bonfire, road tripping in the mountains, touring an apple orchard, sipping wine in your kitchen while you bake…all the cozy fall feels.

One more thing—I’ve teamed up with two of my dear friends, Claire Bidwell Smith and Tamara Taggart to try something new and fun. We are bringing you Covid Confidential, a month-long pandemic social club intended to create a judgment-free place where we can connect and talk about the real things we are going through right now. You’ll laugh, have some fun and feel seen and heard. We were not meant to go through this alone. You can find more info here.

Happy Fall. Xo

Back to School Normalcy

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This post is sponsored by Stonyfield.

It’s official. We’re back to school, navigating the first days of online home school which is kind of like learning to ride a bike except 50 times harder. Everyone is showing up, teachers are pouring their hearts into this mess, and tech support is hustling to smooth out the glitches. We know and expect that there’re a lot of things that won’t run as smoothly as normal, and because of that, the routines in our life that haven’t changed are even more important. We cling to brain breaks and lunches–our daily solids during this interesting year.

Even though we’re learning at home, we are handling the day as much like a regular school day as possible.
A few school routines we’re keeping to cling to some normalcy:

Favorite School Lunch Treats

Packing lunches is one morning task I’m definitely happy to give up right now, a small silver lining to this situation. But the kids still love picking out special snacks for school lunches, so we’re stocking our pantry and refrigerator with their favorites to keep school lunches special. One of our favorite school lunch snacks has always been Stonyfield yogurt.

We love their yogurt pouches (we had our cooler packed with them on our road trip) and their yogurt smoothie drinks.

The smoothie drinks are convenient for quick pick-me-ups during school and, like all Stonyfield yogurt products, are made from organic milk sourced from small farms and free of toxic persistent pesticides.

They also happen to be delicious, and the perfect sized “shot” for a little energy boost.

We’ve found the kids’ Stonyfield product containers can be repurposed in so many fun ways for crafts, so we wash and save a lot of ours. Our latest repurpose? We sprayed the smoothie cups with chalk paint and then dipped them in black craft paint to make these cute bud vases:

Other routines we’re keeping to make school at home special this year:

Laying Our Clothes Out
We may be attending school in the dining room, but we’re still dressing for the day. The kids lay out their clothes at night for a smooth morning routine the next day, and we did our back to school shopping with the same enthusiasm we put into first day of school outfits for in-person school. It helps set the tone for productivity.

Creative Socializing
The hardest part about this school years is the lack of socializing like we are used to–free, fun play; hugs; crowds of kids on the playground at recess. We are working really hard to safely give our kids a sense of community and maintain their friendships. That might mean ice cream meet-ups after school (finishing our first day definitely deserved this!), socially distanced races in the park or, for Lainey, Face Timing with friends who share her online classes while they are in front of their computers learning.

We got this!

While you’re prepping for your kids’ first day or navigating the first weeks of 2020 learning, you can stock up on your favorite Stonyfield yogurt snacks by finding a store near you that carries them. If you need a good art project, you can find other ways we’ve repurposed our Stonyfield containers here and here.

Summer Fairy Houses

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This post is sponsored by Stonyfield.

Hello from Northern Michigan! We made it to my dad’s cabin after a 5-day road trip here and are now safely tucked into the woods with our family, stashing away summer memories in our favorite place. We brought books and crafts and twinkle lights–the Holy Trinity for summers up north.

A few years ago, we started a tradition making fairy houses, an idea born from a little box I found by the lake several years ago. “Fairies” was written in fat black marker, and the box had been left next to the dock steps by an unknown kindred spirit who believes in the kind of summer magic I love. In previous years, I’ve ordered milk cartons to make our fairy houses, but this year we were resourceful and reused the packaging from our favorite Stonyfield yogurt pouches, a treat we’ve been enjoying for years. I always have them in the refrigerator for lunches (especially when I was packing lunches), but they’ve been such a great on-the-go treat for summer as well (the pontoon cooler is full of them :).

My favorite is the Pear Spinach Mango pouches. They’re perfect for making fairy houses because A: Recycle, Reuse!, and B: they’re waterproof, so you can leave the outside. We went ahead and used the Stonyfield box the pouches came in for an added building in our fairy village, but the box won’t last as long as the pouches.

My kids LOVE this tradition, especially because our fairy house creation day always ends with a special surprise. Once we set up the houses in the garden, the kids sprinkle glitter around the fairy houses to lure the fairies in (they fly so fast, you need something sparkly to catch their eyes!). When we aren’t looking, they swoop in to the houses and leave candy treats.

Here’s how we made our fairy village:

After we enjoyed our yogurt, I rinsed out all the pouches (you’ll want to get all the yogurt residue out if you’re going to leave them outside so they don’t bring in critters), dried them and then spread them out (along with the box they came in) on a tarp. We spray painted them with a base color. I wasn’t sure if I was going to keep the caps on or not, so I left them at first but ended up cutting them off when they dried. To keep the pouches sturdy and weight them down so they stand up well on the ground, you can funnel a little sand or dirt in them after the paint dries.

Then the fun part begins. We used craft paint, some silk flowers, Sharpie markers, a package of moss I picked up at a craft store, a few little butterflies and dragonflies, and this amazing kit of fairy decorations that has plenty of enough supplies for a large group of kids to make their fairy houses (we had lots left over).

And then the kids went to town with the glue gun.

They turned out so cute!

The best part…glitter magic.

The fairies came later in the evening, leaving lollipops and chocolates.

The fairies now have their own little village in the garden, and we have lots more Stonyfield yogurt to carry us through our summer adventures. The pouches are great for road trips too because no mess! We’re also big fans of their smoothie pouches. And, as always, all Stonyfield products are made without the use of toxic persistent pesticides, artificial hormones, antibiotics or GMOs. You can find Stonyfield products at most supermarkets and natural food stories.