Penelope Illustration • Penelope Dullaghan

I like to picture the things I’m looking forward to as carrots dangling on the end of a string in front of a horse, making it walk forward, step after step. (And eventually the nice carrot dangler allows the horse to eat the carrot so it gets the reward.) Colin and I will often ask [...]

What do you do when you get bucked off the horse? You lay there for a moment to gain composure, you stand up slowly, you cuss and dust yourself off, and then you get back on.
We found another house we’re stoked about… a few more compromises with this one, but it’s still a wicked cool [...]

We found the perfect house yesterday. The house we walked into and immediately thought: “this is us”…”this feels like home”. And I moved in mentally. It only took a heartbeat. I did the happy dance in the living room and we decided to make an offer in the evening.
An hour later the agent called and [...]

I am the suckiest blogger in blogland right now… my apologies. If you’ve read my brother’s site, you know that Alison is in the hospital and everything that’s going on there. (She’s not doing well at all… we’re all praying and thinking positive thoughts.) We’re knee deep in the house search and I’m swamped with [...]

We are starting the home search on Wednesday, and I’m really looking forward to it because I think it’s kind of fun to spy on how other people set up their spaces. (Even if most houses during showings are freakishly clean — I mean, no one I know lives with nothing on their counter tops [...]

I’m pretty funkadelic funkalicious right now. But I am still seeing things worth cheering about right now. Things like:
- a brand new haircut. I’m light and airy now. I heart short hair.
- rocking my niece to sleep this afternoon. She’s a sugar-butt.
- new sushi restaurants. Bring on the wasabi!
- getting fun mail from friends. (pink [...]

(doing yoga with alison’s 9 year old niece, abbie)
Still here. Feeling quiet and a need to pay attention to my insides for a while… I’m not sure which way is up at the moment and I’m trying to find my footing.

I have officially clocked one week of living in my brother and Alison’s basement. It’s dark down there (Colin is out getting night lights as we speak) and I often bump my knees when attempting to find the bathroom in the middle of the night. But it’s also very spacious. We have our own bedroom [...]

We’ve landed, unpacked what we need for now, and I’ve had that first cup of coffee… it was even better than I’d hoped.
(I’m way behind on email, if you’ve written. Swamped with work. But I’ll get back to you soon. Thanks for your patience!)
I’ve missed you all here in blog-land…
xoxo