cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
Upon finishing graduate school, my new husband and I were wide open to all the places we could move. We were young, and the world was our oyster. The big dream was to move to Boston so he could attend a trade school, but the job hunt for me was hitting dead-ends and we were…
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Standing on the front deck of our bay house, I was captivated by the view of sunrise over the water once again. Pretty much every morning my husband and I have been here the dogs have woken me up earlier than I wanted for their morning potty break and breakfast. But secretly? I have loved…
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Last month, my husband and I moved from the home we’ve lived in for 24 years—the house we built after moving back to Michigan, where we raised our family. There were several moments throughout the stressful process when I felt like I’d foolishly launched into the deep end of the pool and wasn’t going to…
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Downsizing. The word sounds sad…and old. I am like a hermit crab, looking for a new shell, but not a larger one—a smaller one, to fit my smaller life. Purging. I roam around my big house, tossing overboard the flotsam and jetsam of my previous life.
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I feel nothing changes you like a new city and new people. I remember when I got the news that my family and I would be moving. I had come home from school and was tired and pissed off as I often was, being an angsty seventh grader. When my parents told me our house…
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Tension pressed in around my shoulders as I grabbed a large, silver spoon and plunged it into the thick, creamy mass of pasta and cheddar coming down from a boil on the gas range. Much of my culinary expertise has devolved into mac and cheese. Blame it on three small children, a husband in medical…
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“Working with our life circumstances is how we render reality perfected. Perfection is unattainable. ‘Perfected’ is possible.” — Sarah Ban Breathnach from Simple Abundance The cup of coffee my husband left for me on the nightstand is lukewarm now, reminding me I was supposed to actually get out of bed half an hour ago. I…
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Money was tight. I mean tight. There wasn’t any extra, not a lick. We had stepped out in faith to build the house. THE house. This was the house we would stay in forever. This was the house our children would move out of and our grandchildren would run into. We had been working and…
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The grass is always greener. The grass is always greener on the other side. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
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We moved over the weekend. This means, of course, that I do not know the location of my favorite brush, or the mustard.
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