Happy Friday! Please enjoy this photo of when Chris put the cat in an L.L. Bean Boat and Tote bag the other day. I was going to make a joke about “the cat’s out of the bag” but then he settled right in. 🙂
We finally rolled out the new living room rug! Oh my gosh. Oh. my. gosh. It’s even better than I had hoped. Sometimes you add something to a room and it makes a lot of things that are already there suddenly look wrong, but this rug somehow makes everything around it look better. I think it’s just that it just has so many different soft colors in it and that allows it to tie into so many things around it and just play nice with everyone. Anyway, that little addition was a big success and I’m thrilled. 🙂 This is the same Kamran Ivory Opal Ruggable that I’ve had my eye on for months and I was right to love it.
Pictured above: Ruggable | Little side table | Coffee table | This is Home book | Curtains | Bookshelf lights |
Jack had his first field trip in so many years last week! Let me tell you, those kids were just so excited about all of it. I went along to chaperone, but so did so many other parents of course, so we didn’t really do too much other than just watch the kids and enjoy seeing them so happy. We went to a local-ish camp for the day and they just did some classic camp-style games and activities with them. Lots of running games, lots of building things out of twigs and leaves. I’ve said it a million times before, but it’s just so nice to see kids out having a normal childhood. It’s a relief, actually.
Speaking of normal childhoods, I’ve been trying to find “summer fun” things that we can all do together as a family. It’s not the easiest task right now to find appropriate activities that suit everyone’s different ages and interests. Jack wants to go to the splash pad and the beach and be constantly on-the-go, and Kennedy just wants to stay home and work on her portfolio to apply to university next year. It just seems like it’s so hard to get everyone doing the same thing together at the same time right now so quality “family time” is pretty hard to come by. But you know what I have found that works for everyone? Ice cream. 🙂 The great unifying force. If you ask everyone if they want to go out for ice cream, of course the answer is always “yes”. So I guess this will be the summer of ice cream for us around here, and that’s not a bad thing at all.
We did our first beach day of the year! We were getting a little impatient since we’ve had a bit of a cooler spring, so even though the weather wasn’t 100% perfect, we decided to go for it. Jack’s been begging to go the beach since about April. 🙂 We used to go camping every year for Father’s Day when the kids were younger and we didn’t mind pulling the kids out of school for a few days, but now that they’re older we’ve stopped doing that. So a little afternoon at the beach seemed just right. Even though we live so close to so many beaches here, I always forget how beautiful the colors are with the water, sand, and sky. Such a simple way to spend a day, but always so inspiring. The ring toss game was the hit of the day with all of us. It’s definitely feeling like summer is here for real!
These are my people. One of them is always thrilled to be in my photos and that’s why you see so much of him. The others, not so much. 🙂
Pictured above on me: Sunglasses | Hat (This is just a great plain hat. Comes in a lot of colors.) | Shorts | Sweater is old and super well-worn as any good Breton top should be. 🙂
Somehow I over-did it at the gym even though we only go a few times a week for about 30 minutes. Insert face-palm emoji here. I sort of got it in my mind that I would like to start running again. I saw a trainer on Instagram talking about running treadmill intervals, and since I was a sprinter back in my high school track and field days, that just sounded like a lot of fun to me. And it was super fun. For about 5 days. And then my ankles and knees gave out and it hurt to walk for about a week straight. I realized that my shoes probably needed to be replaced and a lack of support was probably a big issue, but it has taken me quite a while to heal up and feel like I’m ready to try again. And then. I decided during my “off time” while I was healing that I’d just entertain myself while I was waiting for my ankles to heal and try a few different strength training moves. Just a few. Nothing big. Nothing too hard. Well, I think it was kind of like when you hear of people getting a massage and releasing all these toxins from their muscles and they end up feeling nauseous, because from those few minutes of new, different exercises here and there I ended up making myself feel ill for about 2 days. I’m better now, but I’m laughing at myself pretty hard, especially because I wasn’t particularly out of shape to begin with. Moral of the story: still having fun and am absolutely thrilled to be back in our gym routine, but going to continue to take it very, very slowly and cautiously even though I do feel so much stronger already. The human body is fascinating! Ha!
NEWS AND FINDS
-Hydrangeas are about to come into bloom here! If yours are looking a little sad here are some of my most popular hydrangea tip posts from the past:
- How to Revive a Sad-Looking Hydrangea
- Emergency First-Aid For Hydrangeas
- Pruning Hydrangeas for Maximum Growth
- How to Make a Hydrangea Bowl Arrangement
-Did you know that I’m on Pinterest? You can follow along with me here. This is a great place to connect with me because all of my best tips and ideas from the past (almost) 11 years of blogging live on and re-circulate over on Pinterest continuously. 🙂
-I’m so excited to be hosting a little pillow giveaway this week with Hurlingham House over on Instagram! Hurlingham House is an Etsy shop that makes the most beautiful designer pillows and we’re giving away a stunning pair of outdoor black and white block print pillow covers (exactly the same as the ones she sent me) to one lucky follower. I was so excited to discover them because they’re actually from a town about an hour away from me and I love seeing beautiful work done in our local area. It’s just a little extra exciting for some reason. Hurlingham House ships all over North America so this giveaway is actually open to residents of Canada and the U.S.! Find the photo of these pillows over in my feed on Instagram and tag a friend in the comments to enter!
If you’re looking for indoor pillows, oh my gosh, this neutral cane-print pillow of theirs is so lovely and their color-blocked velvet lumbars are my absolute favorite. So simple but so good!
-This is not a new find, but I just have to let you know about it because it’s come in so handy for me. Bought this Dustbuster in the fall just as a cheapo vacuum to use mostly in the car, or just for this and that and this thing has come in so handy! Chris still loves our Miele canister vacuum best, but I find myself reaching for this all the time to do around the baseboards, up the stairs, and just any little corner that I want to get to quickly and easily. I didn’t expect it to last, but I’ve been thoroughly impressed with it!
-Using lighter weight beach towels has completely changed our beach going routine the last couple of years and I just can’t go back. I do love a big fluffy beach towel, but lugging a giant bag filled with four heavy towels down to the beach is so cumbersome. I started using large Turkish towels a couple of years ago and then recently the Easter Bunny brought us some of these super lightweight microfibre towels. They work just as well to wrap up in as a full beach towel, but fold up into basically nothing so you don’t need a whole beach bag just for towels. They can fit in a cooler, or a bag of beach toys, or just about anywhere. It’s like when we got our tiny camping chairs. I just can’t ever go back!
MORE RECENT POSTS
- Our Front Porch This Year
- How to Get Ants Off Cut Peonies
- Five Things on a Friday 6/10/22
- How to Grow Gerbera Daisies
This post contains affiliate links.
Courtenay Hartford is the author of creeklinehouse.com, a blog based on her adventures renovating a 120-year-old farmhouse in rural Ontario, Canada. On her blog, Courtenay shares interior design tips based on her own farmhouse and her work as founder and stylist of the interior photography firm Art & Spaces. She also writes about her farmhouse garden, plant-based recipes, family travel, and homekeeping best practices. Courtenay is the author of the book The Cleaning Ninja and has been featured in numerous magazines including Country Sampler Farmhouse Style, Better Homes and Gardens, Parents Magazine, Real Simple, and Our Homes.