there's no place like gnome.

I follow a woman on Substack – Emily Gaines Demsky – who, every single day, lists three good things from that day. “Tell me 3 Good things.” She then encourages people to comment or share in some fashion their own three good things. By golly, it’s a delightful practice. Paying attention, naming and then sharing the good things.

I won’t copy it exactly but perhaps I will catch you up on life here lately through my own good list of sorts —

1. This is old news if you know me in real life but I bought a new sewing machine. And now every time I sit down to use it, it is such a treat. (It cuts my thread for me when I finish stitching. I push a button. Magic happens. Thread cut. And don’t get me started on the feed dogs and walking foot combo or the crazy amount of throat space …)
2. There is just something about one’s own bed. If there ever is a perk of returning from vacation, that is one of them.
3. I had coffee with my dear high school friend Kim who mentioned she kinda-sorta had an extra ticket to a Rob Thomas show and she offered it to me and I said yes and it was the very next day and I went and I had so much fun with my friends and listening to my all-time favorite musical guy even if it meant I didn’t get home until midnight the night before I went back to work after vacation.
4. I’m so very excited to start my garden seeds in the next couple weeks. New this year: soil blocking. (I hope it’s not as tricky as some people say it can be.) Let the research begin.
5. I’ve never been a real audiobook kind of person but I’m on my third in the last month.
6. SO MUCH GOOD TV RIGHT NOW. I can’t keep up.
7. At work: We’re currently establishing a ‘birthday kit’ for our patients who have a birthday while on our hospice service – a handmade card signed by the team, a birthday banner and a sweet treat.
8. We have really been loving steel cut oats at our house lately. With almond milk, a splash of maple syrup, and blueberries please.
9. I love learning new things. Currently: American mahjong.
10. St.Patrick’s Day decor.

Your turn.

A couple days late.

2025 was pretty neat. (See below.)

A few preliminary thoughts/hopes for 2026:

+ Return to a normal sleep schedule. The last two weeks with the holidays have been brutal on sleep. Anyone else? Uff. Ready to reinstate 10pm bedtime. May the dogs hold us to it.

+ Consume less. I’ve started the process where, instead of running to my Target or Amazon cart when something is needed, I consider if I can buy it secondhand. I keep a list on my phone – “Things to thrift.” Oh, the thrill of finding something on that list while out and about at second-hand stores! I’ve had pretty mild success at this point – a glass jar for the bathroom, a 3 ring binder to hold sewing patterns, a couple photo frames needed. There have been a few bonus finds too – a second yogurt strainer! A second Kitchen Aid mixer bowl for $4!

+ Survivor Pantry Island. I heard someone talk about this in a podcast. In the month of January, you do your best to use up the items in your pantry. (We’re adding the chest freezer to this challenge too.) For this month, the grocery cart should contain only (mostly) fresh and refrigerated items. Wish us luck.

+ The end of 2025 found a new sewing machine making its way into my sewing room. AND IT’S SO EXCITING. It has bells! whistles! and a throat space that demands to quilt quilts! (What’s a throat space? The space between the needle and the body of the machine, where one needs to roll/bundle/push a quilt through to quilt it. This new machine is more than double my old machine. DOUBLE.) There will be quilts. More quilts.

We spent the first weekend in August camping at a new-to-us state park: Blue Mounds State Park, between Madison and Dodgeville. (Fun fact: the only WI state park that has a pool – and a super nice pool at that.) We adore the drift less region of Wisconsin and were charmed to find this was in it.

The weather was delightful; no need for the air conditioning all weekend. It felt like fall was upon us and it was absolutely wonderful. We had fires at night and had to wear sweatshirts. Sign me up for more of that. (It’s me. I’m the girl who is absolutely over 90 degrees.)

We hiked, exploring the park, and spent time exploring some nearby towns. Mount Horeb was particularly enjoyable. (It felt like Wisconsin’s version of Decorah – my beloved college town in NE Iowa.) We had lunch outside a cafe and walked, looking for trolls. We learned that Duluth Trading Company is headquartered in Mount Horeb, so we stopped at the store. (Dog-friendly! Einstein shopped for skivvies.)

We also visited The Shoe Box, a giant shoe store that was part of more than one childhood family trip. (Also dog-friendly! The dogs were troopers as Dave found a new pair of running shoes.)

This state part has music in their amphitheater every Saturday night in the summer. We went to check it out but didn’t stay too long; Einstein was a nervous nellie. But we were there long enough to get caught in the Instagram story of Midwest Munchers. (I had spotted them sitting across the aisle.) Can you see Einstein staring at you?

Afterwards we went to the Mount Horeb Culver’s and met their troll.

Other summer happenings:

We went to a Kenosha Kingfish game with some friends and it was super fun. It was a stormy night but somehow the storms just skirted the stadium.

The dahlias have started to bloom! Finally! Slowly but with lots of buds to watch. Turns out I have these teeny tiny purple pompon ones that I didn’t even realize I bought! I am so tickled by them. And the larger ball dahlias, also pictured below. They rank pretty high too.

We’ve done a little kayaking and have had one day at the beach. Masterpiece’s Sanditon on the PBS app has my television attention and we started making our own yogurt in the Instant Pot to go with our homemade granola. So, you know, life is pretty exciting. Let’s see what the second half of August brings.

The tomato hornworm.

Gross.

Gross.

Gross.

These green giants will decimate a tomato plant if not found promptly. I’ve had them in the past. Two. Maybe three in a season.

I picked 16 (SIXTEEN!) off my tomatoes tonight alone.

Now, when I say ‘picked,’ don’t be fooled. I don’t touch them. Heavens no. I cut the branch they are on and delicately take the branch to dispose of these green gross things. Removing hornworm + pruning all in one step. (That’s what I tell myself.)

There was one that was the biggest I’ve ever seen – the size of my middle finger, I swear to the tomato gods.

They look very similar to the tobacco worms we confronted in the tobacco fields as kids. You know, the ones my Dad would throw at me while working in the fields. Turns out those are considered hornworms too.

I didn’t love those then, and I don’t love these now.

Gross.

Gross.

Gross.

The things we do for fresh tomatoes.

(Apparently they turn into a moth that’s an important night pollinator or whatever so I don’t kill them. I just move them far away from my tomatoes with their own personal little tomato branch. A snack for the trip. Plus, killing them? Ew. I don’t want to imagine that squish.)

We spent Fourth of July weekend at the best campground – Hillside Springs. There is no website and, sorry, you can’t make a reservation.

It’s my brother’s farm, in the town where we grew up. He installed camper hookups behind one of the barns, complete with lights, a fire pit, and river views. The cattle are our neighbors while camping.

Bonus: My sister-in-law runs a little bakery stand out of one of the out buildings. Cinnamon rolls for breakfast? Sure. Cheesecake to take home with us? Yes.

The cost: Dave mowed a pasture (which was more fun than actual work) and I pruned tomatoes in the garden. (Also fun.)

Following the camping trip, we welcomed a week of visitors. My sister and my brother-in-law stopped at our house on their way home to Indianapolis from their own camping trip adventure in the UP. My mom came over too and we had a nice dinner looking out over the marina.

They left and then dear friends from seminary came with their three girls! Joel and Melissa and I became besties our senior year of sem. Our other friend (Pastor) Paige and I took the train out to Montana, oh, three times or so, where they lived at the time, to visit and attending a continuing education event in Glacier NP.

Their three girls are no longer toddlers (!) and they requested some time in the kitchen – they wanted to make cake pops and French macarons with ‘Auntie’ Lindsay. Done. We packed a lot of other things into essentially a day and a half – a stop at the lighthouse, a beer garden, the Sprecher Brewery Taproom, Culver’s, and Aldi. (Aldi? They’d heard of this mystical store but don’t have them out west!) We had fun catching up like it hadn’t been nine years.

Flower garden update: Snapdragons snapping. Yarrow yarrowing. Globe amaranth globing. Dahlias: still to come. They don’t normally bloom until August. Anticipating their arrival!

We’ve been home now for almost two weeks and the trip feels like it was a dream. Like, was that even real? We’ve gone back to work, back to routines. I write this while camping at my brother and sister-in-law’s farm. (It’s quite the sweet – and free – campsite. It’s raining so we’re hanging out in the camper. Dave plays video games; I blog. Dogs sleep.)

At the tail end of the trip, we had one more day and night in Barcelona. We get kicked off the ship pretty early so they can clean and welcome the new batch of cruisers by lunch time. We taxied to our hotel to ditch our luggage and then set out into the city. But it was Sunday. And a lot of things did not open until noon on Sunday.

We found a cafe (specializing in focaccia bread – how fun) and across the street a different cafe that serves basque cheesecake. (This was Dave’s goal for our last day – to find basque cheesecake. Check. By 9:30am.) After that, we twiddled our thumbs. Now what?

We were tired. It was getting hot. Our hotel room wouldn’t be ready for quite a few hours still. Enter the hop on, hop off bus tour.

And it was here I learned something about Dave – apparently he loves hop on hop off bus tours? He was giddy with excitement as we rode the double decker around the city. There was an audio guide that explained the sites and it afforded us the chance to see SO much more of the city.

We got off at the beach which was so busy (again – Sunday) we couldn’t even reach the water. We ate a crusty ham sandwich (which we will try to recreate at home sometime because they’re so good), found a late lunch place off the beaten path and rode back to the stop closest our hotel.

We checked into our hotel, cleaned up and went to meet up with Dave’s brother, Matt and family for one last drink. They had one more day in Barcelona too and had spent it at the aquarium. They had an early flight and so were staying near the airport. After saying our goodbyes, we headed back into the city, found a spot for paella, and called it a night at our creepy Shining-esque hotel.

On Monday, we had a little time to take one last stroll through the city before boarding the bus to the airport. We strolled … and found an Aldi! (This had been one of my trip goals, as I remember going to the Aldi in Dublin and loving it.) We bought some coffee and chocolate, and had we been staying longer, would definitely have bought some bread and other fun things. The coffee we bought is in capsule form for our original Nespresso machine. The Aldis in the states don’t sell their own brand of capsules but it’s what Europeans use for their espresso at home; we thought this was pretty cool.

And that’s it, folks. We went to the airport, ate just one more ham sandwich, and had a direct flight home. Since then, we talk about how Barcelona was our favorite and we’d love to return; maybe a tour of Spain? We joke and say we’ll go back when La Sagrada Família is complete … so probably never. (They’ve been saying it will be complete in ten years for the last fifty.)

Our one stop in France was a quick one – the first tender boats were running at 6:30ish, last boat back was 1:30. Our ship anchored away from shore so our tender ride lasted about 10 minutes before docking at the port.

Dave and I wandered around. The main goal: find a patisserie with fancy desserts and French macarons. Success? Kind of.

We wandered into old town, struck once again by the charming rambling streets. We found fancy chocolate croissants and espresso across from a local market.

We, tragically, had little luck finding a place that had rows and rows of macarons. Sigh. Granted, we didn’t have a whole lot of time to explore. We did, however, find a McDonald’s. And guess what? McDonald’s in France have macarons! And you know – they were lovely and full as macarons should be. (McDonald’s also sold poutine-like French fries. We did not try.)

We walked uphill to a cathedral that overlooks the town and port. More charming streets. Endless charming streets. Bakeries with piles of freshly baked bread. Gelato. Cheese! So many delicious things that we would have bought and ate if we stayed longer.

And this is it, folks. We came back to the ship, ate some lunch at the buffet and then came to our room to shower/pack. We’ll go out for dinner tonight, see a show, and then tomorrow by 9am we’ll be off the ship. Another 28ish hours in Barcelona after which we’ll time-travel home. (We are ready. It’s been amazing in lots of ways but we’re ready for routine and dogs and flower garden and lower temperatures and less people all around.)

We stayed overnight in the port of Livorno with another day to explore today. Originally, I had thought we might take the twenty minute train ride to Pisa today but in true European fashion, there is a train strike (as happens occasionally, planned and known in advance). It began last night and runs until tonight.

With no train and, honestly, a desire for a low-key day, we stayed in Livorno. There was a local shuttle from the cruise port to the city centre for 7 euros. Done. Sold. We were on board by 1030 after sleeping in and a nice breakfast on board.

The goal: cafes, a nice lunch, and some shopping/meandering. Brother-in-law Matt and wife Lisa joined up partway through for lunch and what followed. We drank aperol spritzes and ate pizza. Dave bought some cherries at a local produce market. We consumed coffee in espresso form (And just look at that cube-croissant-pistachio thing!) and frozen form. We shopped at a local grocery store for pistachio butter and unique pasta shapes. (Ohmygoodness, the Italians love pistachios. And I’m on board with all of that. That pistachio coffee I had in Naples, aka the coffee I will think about forever? I’m thinking it may have been made by adding some pistachio butter; must try.)

We’ll be leaving port shortly. Dave and I have reservations at the steakhouse on board for dinner. Tomorrow: Cannes, France. A tender port. We have to take a boat from our boat. (Last day! And then one final night in Barcelona before flying home to be reunited with these goofballs who have – no doubt – been keeping my mom and stepdad good company.)

Another day, another port, another train.

We rode the train into Florence today, a train ride that was close to 1.5 hours. We walked around, ate some delicious things, saw some magnificent sculptures and buildings, but the main event was the pasta making class I had booked months ago.

Lorenzo guided us in making three types of pasta with one dough – two filled pasta and one not. He prepped the sauces and, when it was time, cooked the pasta we made for us to all enjoy.