It’s been a good week.  A full week.  A week where my eyes did not shut frequently enough.

So Friday is here already all over again, like it does.

Thursday’s rain was slow and welcoming, except for when the dog spent his day getting soaked outside and then dreamed of still sleeping in my bed.  That’s unacceptable Ryder.

 

 

FUNNY

 

I did see this really fantastically awful music video that my friends Tom and Erica showed me.  Parts of me really want to share it, but parts of me really feel kinda sorry for the misunderstood gent who is performing his heart out.

So, I’m not going to share it here.  But, if you see me in person, I can connect you with a good smile or two.

Instead, let’s say for this week – I’m going to reach way far back into my mental archives.  (Well, relatively far back.  Time is relative – am I right?)

When we were first introduced to this video, the kids and I watched it obsessively.  We could not not stop.  We still sing parts of it all the time. And, if anyone anywhere EVER says the phrase “stuff like that” in front of me, you can guarantee that I am missing their next eight words or so because I am instead singing this song in my head.  (It was brought back to our memories recently because one of the guys in this video does one of the silly songs that stick in your head from the movie Moana.)

 

 

 

FASHIONABLE

 

Good grief, it’s like I have a corner on the market of all the talented friends.

I’m sorry, guys.  I’m not trying to keep them all to myself.

Olive + Grey is a local business making the best t-shirts.  (But you don’t have to be local to buy or wear their shirts.  Naturally.  Enter – the magic of the internet!)

I like both of these, but she has lots of other great options.

 

 

 

Sometimes I secretly feel like a traitor when I wear clothing that says “home” and shows a South Carolina outline as opposed to a Virginia outline.  But, I’m also probably suffering from a gigantic case of denial.  I’ve been calling South Carolina home for almost an entire decade this spring.  My Wilde Otto Fox was born here.  He’s a for real native of this southern state.  So I guess I can wear a South Carolina home shirt with a regular amount of pride and truth.

My friend Tanya, who owns Olive + Grey, also is carrying this great trucker hat.

I heart trucker hats.

 

 

She also makes fantastic signs and lots of other pretties that you’ll want to own.

 

FLAVORFUL

 

One of the biggest fundraisers my small school participated in every year was this far-reaching, day-consuming, pretty much over the top, candy egg making sale.

School practically shut down and we turned the cafeteria into a candy egg factory.  We made (from scratch) peanut butter eggs, coconut eggs and buttercream eggs.  They were giant – like the size of your fist.

And they tasted amazing.

People would buy them by the dozens – even though they were pretty expensive – and freeze them and hoard them.  Mothers would eat them after their children were in bed.  My brothers and I would buy our own with our own money so we were not forced to cut them up and share them with one another.

I have yet to try to recreate them myself, but this week a friend from that sweet old Virginia school shared the peanut butter egg recipe.

Maybe this year we’ll start a new Easter tradition.  I’ll buy the ingredients and I’ll let the kids make these peanut butter eggs for me.

 

 

I’m still searching for the buttercream egg recipe, if anyone out there has it.

 

FAITHFUL

 

One place God showed up this week:

When I pulled up in my friend Katie’s driveway, unannounced and uninvited and asked, “Want to walk your neighborhood?” And she didn’t act like I was interrupting, although I surely was.  It was dinner time(ish) and she has four children and her husband was feeling under the weather.  She smiled, genuine and beautiful.  “Absolutely.”  And we walked and she has this gift of saying what needs to be said, of being quiet when she needs to be quiet.  Of smiling and sympathizing when the stuff is just too heavy and of calling it exactly what it is – even when the words aren’t pretty and polite.

 

FEELS

 

I am missing my weekly fix of This Is Us.  Sigh.  Maybe it’s for the better.  It DID NOT end the way I would have preferred.  In fact, the season’s last episode left me dry-eyed and feeling ….. nothing at all.  Come on, This Is Us, you owe me more than that for my previous time and emotional commitment to your show and your people.  Jack?  I’m looking at you, buddy.

This week was a super fun mail week though.  (I hope I never get so old that receiving real mail no longer excites me.  Every day there’s a tiny sense of wonder and hope when we check the mail – will it be all bills and weird sales flyers or will there be a handwritten note? A letter from a friend?  A card?  Or – the height of surprise – an unexpected package?)

This week there were a couple of goodies – those really great t-shirts arrived, a card from one of my favorite aunts, and a magazine with my first Travelers Rest Here ad featured in it.

Running this business has been a huge learning experience, but lots of parts have turned out to be quite fun and completely rewarding.  Like the culmination of this tidy and pretty ad, designed by Emma, photographed by Jane and featuring Amanda.

How could it go wrong?

 

 

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