Meet the Werner kiddos. That’s Isaac, David, Claire, Ben, Sam and little Zachary, bringing up the rear at just two months old. Last month, Nick and I came together with this three siblings, their spouses, and this 6-under-6 gang for a family vacation on his parent’s gorgeous Brown County farm. We baked in the heat...
Category Archives: Personal
Explorin’ Asheville with my mama
What to say about Asheville? I always love when a city lives up to my expectations and this Southern jewel was no different — from the hazy blue views of the Smoky Mountains to a revitalized downtown with its (local!) shops, art galleries and outdoor eateries, there was much for us to see and do...
The next best thing to having your own lake house…
Is being friends with people who do!
The Midwest may be short on an ocean, but northern Indiana is lake country and I spent plenty summers of my youth celebrating weekends on the lake at either my grandmother’s campground or at the lake houses of high school classmates. It’s a blessing that, while we no longer...
Sweatin’ to the oldies
It happened a few weeks ago: Nick borrowed my car to run an errand and, when he got back, forgot to lock it back up. Easy enough mistake, right? Well, that was the night a thief decided to take my iPod and my GPS unit FROM MY DRIVEWAY. Talk about feeling violated. Yeesh.
I was upset...
Celebrating my home team
I recently finished reading Shauna Niequist’s “Bittersweet” and it’s a book chock full of essays that really resonated with me. I’ve written once before about Shauna’s books and I found this second collection of hers just as meaningful to me as her first. There were two essays in particular that stuck out to me while...
Somebody loves our new Flokati rug
Mid-way through this living room project and I’m learning to let go—trying to, anyway—of caring so much about making everything look perfect. I’ve been trying to understand why I am stressing out over such material stuff—throw pillows and picture frames and curtains—when, elsewise, I’m a pretty unmaterialistic person. I suppose it’s because I’m a perfectionist....
Royal Wedding Party: Did you watch? ‘Cause of COURSE we did!
To the people who’ve done nothing but complain about Royal Wedding coverage, well, you might want to just stop reading right here…. ’cause it’s gonna get all monarch-y up in this here house!!! (whoa…where did THAT come from? Sleep deprivation people…TOTALLY sleep deprivation.)
Sooo….Friday morning I woke up WAYYYY earlier (like, 3:30 early) so I could...
I helped build a house!
Some of you have asked me to report back on how things went going social-media free for a week. So I thought I’d hijack the subject of this post for a minute to give a few insights: 1) I missed it — a lot. Going without social media for 7 days was a good opportunity...
Women Who Inspire: My Sister
Earlier this month, I’d spotted a story over on NPR that caught my attention: A query to submit your photos of women who inspire you in honor of March being Women’s History Month.
I took the story as a prompt to talk over here on the blog about someone who means the world to me...
Creativity and the Unconscious
A few weeks back I read a book called “The Courage to Create” by Rollo May. At times, I was totally engrossed. At others, well, I’m not gonna lie. Rollo lost me. But those passages that had me really had me. And one of them addressed the idea of how, to be at our best...
