• The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 14 June 2020

    Each week lately seems to have the amount of reflection and change and decisions and deliberating that you’d usually expect from a half a year, or at the very least a quarter of one. Since so much can change from week to week, I hesitate to say anything with certainty, but at this point, our plan is to put our house on the market at the beginning of July and then rent in the new area for awhile until we figure out more of a life plan (and until we can find the right place, since nothing has felt quite…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 7 June 2020

    This week was exhausting. I felt like my well of energy and emotional wellbeing started to become severely depleted by the end of the week, so I tried to take some conscious steps to regroup and recharge. I still don’t feel like I’m operating at full capacity (it would help if the baby would give us a full night’s sleep!), but I’m at least a bit better than I was mid-week, at any rate. I was ecstatic to see, however, that the weekend forecasted stormy weather and drizzly days. Our summers here are often extremely hot and dry, so I…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 31 May 2020

    What a week. Like much of the nation, I’ve found myself thinking deeply this week about what I believe, and about why I believe what I believe. I’ve found myself examining experiences I’ve had over my life and asking myself hard questions–were there times I should have spoken up but didn’t? (Yes.) Were there times I made concerted efforts to speak out against racism and injustice where I saw it? (Also yes.) I don’t generally talk about politics, mostly just because my personality has always been such that I tend to avoid contention wherever I can. I can usually see…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 24 May 2020

    After several weeks that felt like we were speeding right into summer, this week was a cold, drizzly one where we had not just one or two, but THREE frost warnings. We got lucky in that everything seems to have survived the chilly nights, and I just reveled in the chance to make soup again and in the desire to turn on my oven, which meant that we ate particularly well this week. This was also the week of getting haircuts, as both Matt and I were in desperate need and as we now were able to, with salons recently…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 17 May 2020

    Whew, what a doozy of a week! If you read my last post, you’ll know that we had a loooong day on Friday that involved driving three hours’ south of here to where the company my husband works for is moving so that we could look at houses. It was a long day that ended in disappointment, but at least it gave us some concrete experience to draw from when it comes to deciding whether we’re going to move with the business or not. Here’s what we were up to the rest of the week, though: In the Kitchen I…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 10 May 2020

    When planning when we would get married, Matt and I didn’t really think about anything other than getting married as soon as we could swing it, which meant getting married the Saturday after taking our college finals for the semester. What we didn’t realize was that having May 7th as our anniversary would mean that our anniversary, my mother-in-law’s birthday (on the 6th), and Mother’s Day would always fall right next to each other. It basically guarantees a really busy week every year, but it also guarantees a really exciting one! Here’s how that week looked this year. Note: There…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 3 May 2020

    Well, we made it to May. April *kind* of feels like it both didn’t exist and like it existed TOO MUCH, if you know what I mean. (I’m sure you do.) Here in Northern Utah, the statewide pandemic restrictions lifted this week so that many businesses saw a “soft opening” on the 1st, like dine-in options, gyms, etc. (all with precautions, of course), and now the group gathering has been extended to include up to 20 people, rather than the 10 it was before. In our particular county, the numbers have looked especially good over the past week and a…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 26 April 2020

    One thing that’s been encouraging in the few weeks since I started doing these is that even though every week FEELS like it’s the same as all the other weeks lately, I can at least see through these little updates that we are, in fact, making progress and learning new things and making good memories together. And one thing I know for sure about myself is that for my own well-being, it’s important for me to experience, notice, and celebrate progress. Note: There are affiliate links to the products I mention below, which means I may get a small commission…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 19 April 2020

    Oh man, what an up and down week! For a long time, I felt like we had this quarantine-at-home thing DOWN, but this week, the whole never-leaving-the-house started to wear on us all. Couple that with the stress about our unknown future with Matt’s job situation and where we’ll be living in the next few months, and it turned out to be somewhat of a doozy of a week, until I finally just let it all out on Wednesday night. Note: There are some affiliate links in this post to the products I’ve mentioned. This means that if you click…

  • The Homestead Weekly

    The Homestead Weekly, 12 April 2020

    In the Kitchen I feel like I’m going through a mourning period in the kitchen. Before, I was baking batches of chocolate chip cookies every other day, trying recipe after recipe to see if I could narrow it down to a few favorites (I never really could); I was pinning quick bread recipes to dream up new uses for browned bananas and wrinkled carrots; I was dreaming of the cakes I would make out of The Baking Bible (aff link), which was a Christmas gift to myself I bought with some gift money I’d received. Now, ever since Matt’s celiac…