My New Favorite Sunglasses

I posted an Instagram story the other day of us at the farm and I was talking about how the kids are obsessed with holding and walking around with the chickens, but all the messages we kept receiving were not about the chickens. Nope! Instead, they were asking about my sunglasses.

They just came in the mail last week and I have been wearing them ever since. They’re called Zero Sunglasses and they’re from Taylor Morris, a U.K.-based eyewear company that makes the coolest sunglasses. PJ ordered a pair, too, that I’ll share next week.

I got the mirrored/black pair and they're so different than anything I’ve ever worn before, which is part of the reason I love them so much. They’re fun and a bit quirky, and the circular shape of the lens adds a touch of whimsy to them.

BONUS: Right now, if you use code “JUBILEE” you will get 25% off your entire order!!

An Afternoon at the Farm

Today was spent outside. More specifically, at Ocoee Farm.

Since being back in Tennessee from our beach trip, PJ has been at the farm all day every day playing catch up and getting all the things accomplished that needed do be done while we were at the beach. There’s a new addition on the side of the Tiny House that we can’t wait to show you, and PJ got a lot of landscaping done. It all looks so good!!

The kids and I met PJ out at the farm today for an afternoon spent among the animals. The pigs, ALL the dogs, the chickens, the ducks, the geese and of course, the sheep. PJ spends more time out there than I do, but I love it. Every time I come out there, it starts to feel like home more and more, especially with the changes PJ has been making to it. I can really see a future there for our family.

The kids were running around with the animals and finding every little crawler imaginable. They’re so fearless when it comes to bugs. Meanwhile, when I was their age, you couldn’t catch me near a caterpillar. Okay and I am still kind of like that which is why I’m so glad they love little bigs so much!! They take so much pride in finding, catching, and showing them to us. I will forever be impressed by their determination.

It was also nice to see the twin Great Pyrenees’ Olive and Addie. They’re so friggin cute and mischievous and goofy. I could watch them all day. They’re also amazing escape artists and manage to get out of every fence we put them in. It’s in their DNA!

It was a gorgeous day spent at our favorite place (besides the beach, of course). Can’t wait to actually have a place to sleep out there!

Home Away From Home

We woke up at the beach!!

With three trips down in three months, Florida, or more specifically this area of Florida, has started to feel like our home away from home, compounded of course by the fact that we closed on our second property down here a few weeks back, and today we got the keys to it!! Our realtor (who we adore) met us at the house and handed everything over, including a sweet little gift basket complete with beach toys and cookies for the kids. How sweet is that?

In a perfect world, we would spend all summer down here. But of course, nothing is perfect, so we will settle for a week for now. We’re here with our best friends Matt and Beau, who arrive in just a few hours, and we all rented a condo for the week.

We try to take an annual beach trip for PJ’s birthday (remember last year’s?), which is the biggest reason for this trip, but it’s also a celebration of the ending of the school year and purchasing the house all rolled up into one big vacation. SO excited!!

We’re heading down to breakfast now where I will hopefully inhale an enormous amount of coffee. The hotel bed wasn’t too comfy last night.

What's For Dinner?

Happy Friday!

As we were eating popcorn on the couch and watching the new movie “The Lost City” last night, we heard a little pitter patter coming from the dining room. We yelled out, “Hey you!” and a moment later, Anna had come running in and jumped in PJ’s lap. She was wide awake.

At this point, the kids had been in bed for over an hour, and we had been watching on our nanny cam that Anna was up in her room putzing around, playing with toys, messing up her covers, etc. All we could do was laugh and smile because damnit she is so cute. Like out of this world. Even when she is naughty and we’re so angry at her, all she has to do is smile and it all melts away. What are we going to do with her?

Meanwhile, I’m feeling so good about the progress we’re making with all the clothes. I am loading all of Anna’s clothes that we’re donating into the car as we speak and just that alone will free up so much weight off my shoulders with how messy our living room is like, all the time. It feels like things are finally coming together and every day another part of a room gets cleaned. If you have young kids, please tell me you know what I’m talking about?

Tonight’s dinner is another Hello Fresh one. It’s almost a month in and I am still swearing by this meal service. PJ asked me the other day if it was as fun to cook these meals that are all laid out for me as it is to cook something that I came up with, and I said yes and no. It’s nice because I don’t have to think about it, I just follow the directions they give and I have all the ingredients there, but there’s almost no room for extra creativity (except I do always add more garlic than the recipe says, because you can never have too much garlic).

So, it doesn’t stretch my culinary skills very much, but in this season of life we’re in, I am okay with that. The most important thing right now is we all eat a nice meal together at the end of the day.

I’m off for the day. Have a great weekend!! xoxo

How Many Clothes Does One Little Girl Need?

I am coming to you live from the scene of the crime.

And by scene of the crime, I mean our living room is basically a crime scene at this point. What was once a peaceful, (finally) clean room just last week is now overtaken by 4t and 5t clothes for one Miss Anna McKay.

Mounds of clothes frame out the chair and couch where I am going through all of them and seeing which ones we want to keep and which ones we want to donate. They were all generously given to us by PJ’s cousin Lauren (thank you Lauren, we love you!!!). She has two girls, though, and so we were given double the clothes all at once, which means right now we have to decide which we be a good fit for Anna and which ones we want to give away. She can’t keep all of these! We only have so much space!

This year we have really committed to getting rid of a ton of stuff that we just don’t use and/or need anymore. PJ’s been great about it and I am on board, too, it’s just been hard to find the time to actually do it. And our house desperately needs it, considering it looks like this half the time:

But yesterday was one of those perfect days where no deadlines had to be hit and it was kind of cloudy outside, and I randomly got a burst of motivation and energy to tackle the overwhelmingness that is her clothes.

So I busted out the five or six totes that had all the girls’ clothes in it and started going through them. And you know what? It feels SO GOOD to cross this off the list!! It’s something we’ve been meaning to do for so long and will go such a long way in the never-ending battle to organize our house.

I’m going back in now. Wish me luck!!

Aaaaaand We’re Back!

After a night of little sleep (which I’m blaming on our dog for waking me up three times because she wouldn’t stop barking) I’m in a just-go-for-it-who-cares kind of mood today.

That being said, you might notice the blog looks a little different when you come to it today. Or maybe it looks just like you remember it?

After almost seven months of trying to make the new layout work, I am going back to our old layout for the time being. While I loved it, I could never get the sizing right on the other one, and kept getting email notifications from Google letting me know there were errors found on the site that I just couldn’t fix. It was starting to annoy me that I couldn’t figure out how to correct them, no matter how much I researched.

SO, here we are. Back to the layout I first started the blog with almost five years ago, only with a few fresh, modern, minor updates (a sans serif font!). And you know what? It weirdly feels good. It feels comfortable and it feels like home.

And it always feels good to be home.

The Farm is Green Again!

After what seemed like the longest winter ever, we went to the farm yesterday to find so much of it is green again. The trees are fully covered in their summer leaves, the grass in the middle field is high and perfect for the sheep to eat, and the lot towards the front of the property (in the pic above) is finally starting to get some grass!

That front field has probably been in the roughest shape out of all of them since PJ has been doing a ton of dirt work there over the last year. It’s been one big brown mud mess for what seems like forever, so it’s so refreshing to see a little bit of grass scattered around the hill (and how gorgeous does the mountain look in the background?!)

This might seem like a trivial thing to point out, because um of course it’s green again because that’s what happens in the spring, but it’s these little things that I am choosing to focus on lately.

They bring me joy, and we could all use more joy, couldn’t we?

A Little Peace and Quiet

Last night, PJ suggested he take the kids to the Greenway for a bike ride while I made dinner. It’ll give them a chance to get out some of their energy and give me a chance to cook in a little peace and quiet. How sweet is that?

And so that’s what happened. I turned on a movie, poured some wine and started making last night’s Hello Fresh dinner, which was a sausage flat bread with grilled onions and green peppers. We have yet to make something from HF that wasn’t good, and even though last night wasn’t PJ’s favorite, the kids ate it up and even had thirds. Success!

Meanwhile, as I was preparing dinner, I noticed the light in the house is starting to change as we get closer and closer to summer, which takes me by surprise every year with how beautiful it is. I know that sounds corny, but I have a thing with light and the way it moves and bounces throughout our home. One of the first things I look at when we’re beginning to renovate a house is how the light looks in it at different times of the day. I guess you could say I have somewhat of a lighting obsession that carries over into lamps and interior lighting, too.

And then, my family came home and there were hands to be washed and showers to be had and dinner to be eaten, and I felt home was back to the way it should be, the way I like it most.

There’s nothing like a little peace and quiet every once and a while to make you really appreciate the loudness of life happening with three kids in the home.

The Creek at Getaway House

We’re making more and more progress at Getaway House!

While the inside is thisclose to being finished (maybe just a few more weeks, can’t wait to show you), we’ve also turned our attention to the outside, specifically the creek at the bottom of the property. PJ cleared a bunch of trees the last few weeks to give us a better view of the water, which is more so for safety purposes than necessarily aesthetics.

We’ve started a few burn piles to get rid of all the trees and branches. This place will be cleaned up before you know it and will look better than ever.

This is what it looked like last week after PJ cleared everything out. Even though it doesn’t look like it in photos, there’s already been major progress since then just by dragging the cut down branches from the creek to the burn piles.

Sure, it does look a lot better with less overgrown brush, and everything looks a little more like someone lives there as opposed to what it’s looked like for the last few years: scary and abandon, but the biggest reason for the clearing of trees and shrubs is to allow us to see the creek in its entirety. This way, we can see when the kids are playing and know that everyone is okay (not that we will ever let them play in the creek by themselves alone without us being there, but it still allows for a clearer view).

And speaking of the kids playing, yesterday we all rode out there to check on the house and see the progress of the inside. While we were there, the kids swam and played in the creek, splashing and laughing and falling all over the place. I love that we finally have a property with water to cool off in the unbearable summer heat.

Though we do have our river land that we’ve had going on five years now, the water is too tall and the current is too strong for the kids to enjoy right now. The creek is a much safer option for them. We also have the pond on our farm that we had built over the last year, but it’s not holding water right now. Will it ever? We’re waiting to find out.

After a rather stressful night back at home once we got finished playing in the creek (involving two of our kids and their slightly rough play with one of our chickens- they’re still learning what is okay animal behavior and what’s not), I am choosing to focus on the good times spent at Getaway House. It was a beautiful afternoon, and I could listen to our kids laughing forever. They had so much fun.

And we did, too.

Rainy Friday Afternoon

Happy Friday!

On this dreary, windy Friday afternoon, I find myself struggling to stay awake. We woke up extra early this morning and had to run to a few stores to grab bathroom tile for Getaway House, and after forgetting that Riah got out of school at 10:30 this morning and having my mom pick him up instead, we’re all home, full from lunch, and relaxing.

Riah is taking a nap in his room, PJ is taking a nap beside me on the couch and Anna is watching some educational videos on TV (Allan is still at school). It’s one of those cozy, don’t-want-to-leave-the-house kind of days, where all you want to do is curl up on the couch and shut your eyes for a little while.

I may just do that.

But first, I came across these photos of Amsterdam I took a few years ago when we were there last. We’ve been so excited to travel out of the country lately, and seeing these again has be wanderlusting (is that a word?) for somewhere romantic and charming like Amsterdam. One day!!!

It’s starting to rain again, so I’m off for the day. I can barely keep my eyes open.

The Ukrainian Crisis is Inescapable

The humanitarian crisis in Ukraine is unfolding every day, and has now forced more than 10 million people from their home in the last few weeks- 4.7 million refugees and 7.1 million internally displaced people (IDPs). The world watches in horror as millions of innocent lives, most of them women and children, are affected by the Russian invasion.

There are also an additional 13 million people who remain stranded in hard to reach areas, directly affected by the conflict and in urgent need of humanitarian assistance. As the conflict continues, USA for UNHCR is on the ground, day and night, providing aid to those who have been forced to flee their homes due to this conflict.

Please, if you are able to, consider making a compassionate donation today.

(information via USA for UNHCR)

We’ve Been Using This Meal Service for the Last Week and We’re Hooked

Dinner has been incredibly easy and appetizing the last few nights, and it’s all because of Hello Fresh.

Have you ever used them? PJ’s cousin Lauren recommended we try it out, after raving about how she’s been doing it for her family for a while now, and even gave us some coupons for major discounts. After thinking it over for a week, we finally decided to make the jump and place our first order of Hello Fresh.

For starters, this isn’t a sponsored post, I just really like this meal service. I mean, any opportunity to make dinner easier each night I can get on board with, and bonus points if it’s actually easy and tasty, which every meal we’ve made so far has been. Like, really really delicious and actually really fun to make. I made a buffalo panko chicken the other night and PJ revealed he thought it was better than his lunch he had that day (which was from a favorite local joint).

Tonight’s dinner was pork and veggie bibimbap (pictured above), which was, you guessed it, SO GOOD. The thing about the recipes we’re receiving is they’re all so easy to make, with every day ingredients (for the most part) and they take all the guessing and hard work out of thinking what to make for dinner every night. We did the math, and it’s definitely way cheaper for our family of five to eat these meals as opposed to going out to eat, but also, in some cases, cheaper than buying a bunch of groceries to make dinner. Plus, where we’re at in our lives right now, we’ll take anything easy if we can help it.

We’re doing the four nights a week for four people, but the servings are such good sizes that they’ve been enough for all five of us. Again, this post isn’t sponsored, we’re just having fun with these recipes and the convenience of Hello Fresh right now. How long will we be using the meal service? TBD, but for now, it’s easy and delicious.

And at the end of the day, can you really ask for more?