Banishing the darkness.

I have previously shared photos of the exterior of The Cabin. However, I’m posting a new photo below because we have made a few changes. No more green shutters! The shutters are now blue and I love them. (Kenn chose the yellow for the front door, so I got to choose the color for the shutters.)

Wow. We really need to trim the holly.😬

What you haven’t seen until now is the interior. The living area is a “great room” with a lofted ceiling. The walls of the living area are a dark wood as are two of the bathrooms; the bedrooms and one bath have sheet rock walls. However, even in the rooms with traditional walls, the doors, door frames, window frames, and base boards are stained a dark brown. The wood walls are perfect for decorating. Want to hang a picture? Just grab a hammer and nail. Not the right place? Just yank the nail out. There’s no need to patch the nail hole, no one will ever see it. However, all of the brown makes the house DARK.

We have a wall of shutters (dark brown, of course) between the living and dining areas that cover sliding glass doors. When we’re home during the day, we open one side of the shutters to let in more light, and the cats enjoy watching the world go by. Then night falls and the shutters are closed. This is when I turn on almost every light on the main level: the kitchen light, the dining room light, and the three hallway lights. Occasionally, even all of these lights leave me feeling like I’m sitting in the dark.

I have to admit that even feeling like I was living in a cave, it took me far too long to actually check the fixtures for burnt out bulbs. LED lights are bright and all that, but I miss incandescent bulbs. Flip the switch and and incandescent bulb would fail with an audible pop and one last dramatic flare of light; there was no doubt that the bulb needed to be replaced. LED bulbs just quietly fail and it seems to take a while for the failure to register with me. In addition to replacing failed bulbs, I replaced the yellow-tinted “daylight” bulbs with the brighter “bright white” bulbs. This small change made a noticeable difference.

A couple of weeks ago, I was once again replacing burnt out bulbs when I told Kenn that I wanted to replace one of the hall fixtures; it was a smaller one-bulb fixture with a translucent globe so it really wasn’t providing a lot of light. Kenn agreed and said he wanted a light that would actually illuminate the interior of the hall closets. So, we made a trip to Lowe’s and bought a replacement fixture that not only matches the other two, but has a clear globe. The new fixture produces such bright light that Kenn says he feels like there’s a spotlight shining on him whenever he is in that area. Sounds to me like Mission Accomplished!

On of my future goals is to replace the sliding glass doors with French doors thereby getting rid of the dark wall o’ shutters. Not only will that provide more natural light during the day, but I will no longer have to dust the bloody shutters which is one of my least favorite chores.🙌

Are there any changes you would make to your home?

Welcome, September!

It’s hard for me to chose a favorite anything, but September is the exception. September is easily my favorite month. September not only marks the autumn equinox, but, for me, it is a month of hope.

I cheated. This is actually an October picture.

August in the South is miserable. The temperature and humidity say “hold my beer” and proceed to see just how miserable they can make us. Then, when we are at our wits’ end, September eases onto the scene and says, “I’m here. Everything is going to be okay.” There are no drastic changes, but there are glimmers of hope. We don’t get a lot of colorful leaves, but September means they do start to fall. Occasionally, we will have a day in the 80s instead of the 90s, or an evening/night that is on the cooler side. Just a few hints to let us know that change is coming. (Kenn is doing yard work today and just came in and said, “It’s hot today, but every now and then I feel a cool breeze. Fall is coming.”)

So, welcome September! It’s good to see you again.

We are family.

We have had family photos made every couple of years since our boys were young. I wanted to document the growth and changes in our family, and I also wanted the boys to have something to remember me by. When it came to candid family photos, I was always the one taking the photos; I was rarely in any of them. I once told Kenn that if anything happened to me, the boys wouldn’t remember what I looked like.

As the boys grew, our family did as well. Our first daughter-in-law joined our family photos when she and our eldest got engaged. Our youngest son’s long-term girlfriend soon joined our photos as well. As far as I’m concerned, if you date one of our sons, you’re family! When you get engaged to or marry one of our boys, you’re stuck with us for life. (Fortunately, our daughters-in-law like us, LOL.) Of course, this did make things a little awkward when our youngest son’s relationship ended on less than amiable terms. This was also about the time our eldest and his family moved to South Carolina, which made getting the whole crew together for photos a little more difficult. Until recently, our last family photos were taken in December 2019.

However, the photographer our OG daughter-in-law uses for their family photos was going to be in Atlanta the weekend of Mother’s Day 2026 and Atlanta is a good halfway point for all of us. So, we all met in Piedmont Park for an updated photo shoot.

Our family has gained several new members in the past six and a half years. The twins (the tiny people in the front row) were born in 2022. Our youngest son began a new relationship in 2020(ish) and we’re thrilled to have his now-wife as a part of our family photos for the first time. Actually, there is one family member not visible in the photos. Our youngest son and daughter-in-law (in pink/pink and blue on the right side of the picture) are expecting their first child (a girl) due in November.

I have to admit, when I first looked at this photo, I had a moment of… existential affirmation, maybe? Or maybe it was just a Bill and Ted “whoa” moment. For a moment I was just blown away by the fact that Kenn and I, the couple who’s marriage got off to such a rocky start, created this family. Now, we will literally live on in the DNA of our sons, their children, and their children for future generations innumerable. Also, I’ll be one of the people future generations are searching for when they are trying to figure out where their baby’s red hair came from, LOL.

How often do you have family photos taken?

Friday Funnies

It’s not unusual to get samples of various items in our Hello Fresh delivery. However, most samples are full-sized; I had a good giggle over this tiny container of sea salt. Of course, I had to use one of our many Golden Orb Weavers for size reference; the perspective makes the spider appear smaller than it is.

Friday Funnies

Part of spider season is needing to check vehicle doors, handles, and such for stowaways. Wednesday, Kenn and I got in the car to run errands and I checked and didn’t see any spiders. I didn’t check well enough. A couple of miles down the road, I realized there was a young Golden Orb Weaver in the web it had spun between the mirror and door. Well, now that I knew it was there, there was no way I was getting out the way I got in. I was either going to have to climb over the center console and exit via the driver’s door or Kenn was going to have to rescue me. Kenn rescued me. When we reached our destination, Kenn found a stick and relocated the spider to a bush. I married a good man.🤣