Welcome to the Year of the Ox.

I’ve been thinking just how much we all need to laugh right now.

Yesterday, many, many months since our last visit together, my friends and I decided to get together for a walk.

~1~ A few months ago, my husband installed Christmas lights on our back deck. We have always admired our neighbors’ string of multicolored lights on their back deck. If I wake up in the middle of the night, I look out our bedroom window and see theirs and think how cheerful and friendly they are. […]

It’s elegant and beautiful, covering the trees, spreading across the grass, and changing everything.

The other evening I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to eat. Then I opened the freezer and saw some bacon.

I have never considered buying a mandolin—neither the musical instrument nor the kitchen tool. But if I wanted to try to make this dish, I might as well do it right.

The cookies are a beautiful reminder that the end of life on earth doesn’t mean the end of a friendship.

There’s something about the simpler times in between the flashier liturgical seasons that speaks to me.

A little about the finches and other family highlights from the week