It is SIXTY degrees and sunny today!! Hello spring and warmth. I have seriously missed you. My weekend is going to be spent outside - what about you all? Gardening, biking, walking the doggo. All the outside things, thankyouverymuch. This post may contain affiliate links. Please read my disclosure for more info. Friday’s Frugal Five…
Welcome to March! And slightly longer days. Sunset is now almost 6pm, which is glorious. Finishing work days before it's completely dark is just lovely. For those of you who don't live at latitudes closer to the poles, the difference between 4pm and 6pm sunsets is everything. I'll handle the cold, wet days just fine,…
Since I've skipped the last couple of Fridays, I'm writing to you as the parent of a now eight year old! Which means we're halfway to sixteen (if he even ends up driving at that age - maybe we'll get him an electric bike instead). So far, I don't have any "bittersweet" feelings about him…
Life has been packed full the past few weeks for me, but I really do value having this space and this blog, so I'm doing my best to share updates here most Fridays. I may not write here as much these days, but I am nowhere near the place where I'd be ready to say…
We are thiiiiiis close to being back to 5pm sunsets (4:51pm tonight). While I don't mind the rain so much, I do mind the short days during the winter, especially when I'm having a busy time at work and don't get done until after it's dark most days. If you're in the northern part of…
We've made it to 2023. Will this be a better year? No matter what, it means that I've now been blogging at this little space for seven different calendar years (2017 to today). When I started TLRE, I didn't realize how much it would change my life. But through the relationships I've made by being…
It's been a couple of weeks since I've posted anything (beyond an update of my Christmas Traditions posts that I originally wrote back in 2017). I didn't want another week to go by, so checking in with a quick update. We spent nine days in Mexico right after Thanksgiving, and then promptly tested positive for…
Somehow it is six days until Thanksgiving? Time has been so wonky since COVID began, but it feels like November especially disappeared in a blink. The weather has continued to be strange here, and I think that's part of it. We're on our second week in a row of cold, sunny days, when normally it…
It went from summer to winter overnight here - and we're seeing freezing temperatures already. My husband had said that they were predicting a warmer than normal winter, but that's definitely not turning out to be the case. Between that and the time change thanks to Daylight Savings, the cold darkness of late afternoon absolutely…
This week's Frugal Five was all about Halloween, so it's fitting to talk about something truly scary: next week is election week. I honestly can't even begin to guess at how things will go... but I'm glad to be in Washington, where even a shift won't look like a shift compared to other parts of…