living simply and embracing imperfection
Pssst: I’m SO sorry that the Winter Dinner Menus PDF link was not in the footer of the email update announcing the new ebook! I had put it in, but apparently I didn’t give it enough time to process (arrrgggg…) and I saw that it came through with the old Autumn ebook link. My appologies! [...]
Note: I originally wrote about our house’s transformation from a 1980′s ranch to a “what-year-was-this-built?” cottagey-farmhouse in a multi-part remodeling series during the first year of AOC. I am updating these posts by showcasing new “before and after” shots of each room and going into more details (want to make sure you don’t miss anything? Subscribe by email here or RSS here). We [...]
Note: I originally wrote about our house’s transformation from a 1980′s ranch to a “what-year-was-this-built?” cottagey-farmhouse in a multi-part remodeling series three years ago. I will be updating these posts over the next few months by showcasing the “before and after” of each room and going into more details (Want to make sure you don’t [...]
Note: I originally wrote about our house’s transformation from a 1980′s ranch to a “what-year-was-this-built?” cottagey-farmhouse in a multi-part remodeling series three years ago. I will be updating these posts over the next few months by showcasing the “before and after” of each room and going into more details (want to make sure you don’t [...]
Read about my take on exercise and weight loss here. Over the years I have tried lots of different types of exercise – running, going to a gym, workout videos, classes…well, you get the idea. What I’ve learned is: KISS (keep it simple, silly) – and yes I changed the last word, ’cause we don’t [...]
Whenever anyone asks me about exercise and weight loss, I always hesitate to answer because my answer is not “politically correct.” The short answer to the question, “Is exercise necessary for weight loss?” is… No. Before you hit that button to leave, though, hear me out: I’m not saying exercise isn’t important – it is [...]
After sharing with you my history, how I lost weight eating real, whole foods, and then the tips and “rules” I implemented to lose the weight and keep it off (part one and part two), I thought I’d share with you what I actually eat in a typical day (or two). In order to keep [...]
If you missed it, see the first six tips here. See other parts of this series to find out my history with weight, and how I lost more weight than I ever have eating real food. I hope you found something in the first six tips I shared to help you towards your food goals, [...]
While talking about weight is not my favorite thing in the world, I’ve really been enjoying all the comments and interaction we’ve been having the last couple of weeks that this weight loss series has run. Thank you for taking the time to post here or on AOC’s Facebook page! Today I’m going into a [...]
Based on all your wonderful comments and feedback (love you guys!) to my weighty issue, I’ve gone ahead created a banner, as it seems this is going to be a series here on AOC about weight loss and real food. Here are some of the topics I’m planning on covering over the next few weeks: [...]
Well…have you guessed from the title what this is about? Yep, I’m about to get real personal here at AOC. And I might as well tell you that I have sat down to write this series of posts on weight many times – only to have it languish in a folder on my desktop. It’s [...]
There comes a time in your child’s life when you are faced with the moment you’ve been dreading anticipating preparing for: your little baby is a preteen or teenager who has outgrown that little kid room you always thought was so cute. It happens in every child’s life – they want their room to reflect [...]
We’ve recently finished the last few finishing touches on our laundry room (started years ago, but better late than never!) – beadboard molding, floor molding, and cabinet brackets. I still need to paint everything- including the cabinet- to match the painted beadboard. With our track record, I didn’t think I should wait to do a [...]
Sometimes it takes awhile to come up with the perfect solution for a problem area. Or maybe that’s just me. Whatever. Anyway, this wonderful old dresser and mirror had been gifted to me last spring by a dear friend (when our kids were little I had asked her to think of me if she ever [...]
Our spices are housed in a ridiculously narrow cupboard to the right of the stove. It has bugged me since we moved here seven years ago. Of course, not enough to do much more than stuff things in there and quickly shut the door. See what I mean? When we first set up our kitchen [...]
As part of this Spring Spruce-up series, I spruced up our entry porch on Monday, a couple vegetable beds on Tuesday, and today I’m sharing with you a couple of flower beds I cleaned up and prepared using five easy steps to control the weeds- not only for spring, but summer, too! That’s right, spring [...]
The Tuesday Garden Party is participating in day two of the Spring Spruce Up series. We’ll have our regular link-up to show what is happening in your gardens at the bottom of the post. But don’t forget, we’ll also have a group linky on Thursday for you to share your own “Spring Spruce Up” posts! [...]
Last week I told you about a new tradition my sister started in our family, a seasonal work day, and I shared with you the before and after pictures from her backyard makeover. On another work day we helped my other sister’s family prep and spray the exterior of their house. Can you guess what [...]
Remember back in August when I asked for some help in choosing a color to paint our house? Well, you guys gave some awesome feedback that really helped us make our decision. Specifically, it was mentioned that deeper shades of yellow fade on south facing walls, which I hadn’t really thought about. That kind of [...]
Here it is (better late than never…), the “Master List” of family tradition ideas compiled from not only my Family Traditions Series, but also readers who left comments and emailed ideas to me. There are some great ideas here! If you need inspiration to start new traditions for your family, this is it. If you’re [...]
I mentioned yesterday that last weekend was our family’s annual “Apple Day.” My extended family all gather to collect and pick apples from where ever we can find them. There’s only one rule: they have to be free. You can see I came by frugality naturally. Though to be honest, what we need the apples [...]
See the other parts of this series for:Why traditions are importantTraditions around the tableWeekly traditionsOnce-a-year traditions In some ways it’s much easier to establish traditions around holidays. There are usually plenty of family gatherings and planned activities. Actually, there are often too many things. I think the real challenge for holidays is creating some special [...]
While traditions around the table and activities done weekly will be remembered as a whole, the things we do as a family, and many times extended family, only once a year are remembered in a much different light. Maybe because they are usually out of the realm of every-day life. These yearly activities are anticipated [...]
In part one of this series (why traditions are important) and part 2 (traditions around the table)I’ve gotten some great additions for our list of family traditions- keep ‘em coming and I will list them all in one document at the end of the series. Today I’d like to highlight some of the simple and [...]
Some of the most important traditions our family has occur around our table. Food draws people together and creates an environment of nurturing and comfort. We use our time around the table to socialize our kids (one of our favorite things is to explain our emphasis on table manners by having them imagine visiting a [...]
Laundry is one of those things that I’ve always thought would be too basic even to talk about. I mean, no one I know talks about laundry unless it’s to say there’s too much of it. However, over the years I did notice friends always seemed to have laundry piled on the dining room table or [...]
We need to paint our house and detached garage this fall. Yes, the garage we finished a year and a half ago. I’m sure the neighbors will appreciate this. I really like the look of yellow houses with white trim. There’s something kinda farmhouse-y about it, especially with a long front porch like ours has [...]
I got some great feedback on the The Back to Basics series that ran a few weeks ago. We looked at simple, easy, and cost-saving homemaking skills like making bread, jams, and pantry items, starting a garden, and creating simple cards and pillows. Since there’s a lot more basics we can cover, I’ve decided to [...]
If you’ve got bread cooling on the counter, lettuce growing in a raised bed, cards ready for the next birthday, ketchup, mayo, and chocolate syrup in the fridge and jam in the freezer, what better thing to do now than sew some simple projects? And we’re talking projects that can be made with only a [...]
You’ll find lots of Pantry Basics here at An Oregon Cottage. What are Pantry Basics? It’s simply the term I use for items that are in everybody’s pantry or fridge door. The things I never once thought about making…I just threw them in the shopping cart on a regular basis. I started years ago making [...]
I hope you have made your first bread and scoped out where you are going to build your first raised garden bed! Today we are talking crafts for Back to Basics Week. But not the kind of craft that makes you feel like all thumbs. No, we’re talking about making cards which easily falls into [...]
How much more basic can you get than gardening? Growing your own flowers, fruits, herbs, and vegetables is as old as humankind. Problem is, we’ve sorta lost our foundation in the last half of the 20th century and grown far removed from time-honored traditions of working the soil. Now, as I sit here typing on [...]
To kick off the “Back to Basics” week here at An Oregon Cottage, we’re going to be making bread. Why bread? Shouldn’t we start with something simpler? My answer is this: bread is the staff of life. There’s something so elemental about baking bread to serve your family that it is…well, for lack of another [...]
Are you wanting to save money, make nourishing foods, and do things for yourself and your family, but don’t know where to start? Or worse, you’re overwhelmed with all the information out there and give up before you start because it seems like too much work? Then next week, July 5th through the 9th, is [...]
For those of you who’ve been with me from the first part of the Remodeling Series (*ahem* last August), I just want to say thank you for letting me write overly-long posts where I could ramble ad nauseam about my likes, dislikes, failures, and successes surrounding DIY remodeling. And to those who’ve recently joined me, [...]
I promised this last part of the Remodeling Series so long ago, I’m sure some might not even remember there was a remodeling series. But there was and I am finally ready to finish it by showing you the bathrooms and then doing a closing post on what I learned throughout our whole remodeling process. [...]
Here are the last two rooms we made from the original attached garage. If you missed them, Part 4 is the hall and laundry room and parts 1-3 of the remodeling series show the main house’s before and after transformation. This is what we variously call the workroom, guestroom, big room, front room…well, you get [...]
See parts one through three of this series here. This is what our garage looked like when we bought our house five years ago. Pretty typical ranch-style house with attached garage. However, the house was too small (my husband works from home and we needed office space), so we knew right away we were going [...]
I started our remodeling saga with the outside of our house in the first part of this series . This second part shows how we transformed the main living areas, mainly by using paint. When we bought our house, every piece of molding, all the wood, doors, ceilings, cupboards, and floors (the ones that were [...]
Have you started your seeds for a fall garden yet? In climates like Western Oregon, our vegetable gardens don’t have to end with the summer. Our last frost date is between October 15th and the 31st, depending on the area (and where you’re getting your information!) and with a little planning, we can fill the [...]
The Organic Vegetable Gardening Checklist is available as a PDF file. Simply click on the picture above to open and then print it out. This is a checklist I developed to help me keep track of our optimum planting schedule here in the Pacific Northwest, plus seeding and fertilizing information. I created this a few [...]
I should probably start this part of the series with this confession: I have never grown vegetables in the “traditional” way of tilling a large spot of land and planting in rows. To be honest, the thought just scared me when I was a beginning gardener. And on a number of levels, too: I’d never [...]
Here’s a look at the seeds I started a week ago: This is the first tray with cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli and lettuce. As you can see, some cells have an abundance of seedlings (Red Romaine lettuce has the most), and some have none (cabbage). This is normal (at least in my world!). Not all seeds [...]
Let’s start some seeds! Starting vegetables from seed is somewhat cheaper (although it can be expensive if you buy a lot of specialized equipment the gardening stores and catalogs want to sell you!), but the biggest reason I start my vegetables from seed is control and selection. I can select new varieties I want to [...]
I believe a cottage can be anywhere or anything (condo, ranch, farmhouse) as long as you have a "cottage mentality" which puts people above things, celebrates imperfections, embraces simplicity, and finds joy in everyday life. Thanks for joining me!
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