art family home observations

Feng Shui Insight

Bit by bit, load by load, Hubby and I are moving our stuff from storage into our house. Yesterday, we brought home some of our artwork, hanging a couple of pieces and arranging others. I was happy to hang a painting of sunflowers that was in my childhood home and somehow became mine. It was like seeing an old friend again. I also placed my Grandpa Jens’ painting on the mantle above one of our…

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family home observations

Junk Mail Pet Peeve

Now that we’ve moved into a new house, we are getting junk mail again. Apparently, as soon as you’ve signed the papers to buy a house, your name and new address get spread far and wide to advertisers, who make sure you get a flood of “Welcome to the Neighborhood” mailings. On one hand, it’s nice to get mail when you first move in. It gives you a sense of what businesses are in the…

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design observations product packaging

Your Child WILL Defeat This Lock

It’s been a while since I’ve found product packaging that strikes me as strange or curious enough to share, but I recently ran across something that fits the bill. A child safety lock, the type that is plastic and loops over a couple of cupboard knobs to keep them held shut, contained packaging language that made me question why anyone would buy the product. The text on the back of the package, reproduced in the…

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design family home projects work in progress

New Home Office

Work continues apace in our new-to-us home, which was built in the 1960s. One of my first orders of business was to set up a home office. We have four bedrooms in the house. I chose the one I wanted as an office and then promptly set up a temporary office in the bedroom across the hall. I had work to do before moving into my room of choice. The day we moved in, Hubby…

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family health

Covid – Blech!

It finally happened. After managing to avoid Covid through the pandemic lockdowns and beyond over the past almost-three years, I finally contracted it. Hubby had it once before and we were so diligent about staying in separate rooms that I didn’t catch it then. We’ve been pretty good about getting our shots, but over the past year, we hadn’t been back to get the fourth one due to getting a house ready for sale, buying…

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