Celebrate Good Times

We kind of do birthday months in the Burch household. On your birthday day you choose a treat and we all partake of it (Brooklyn chose pineapple whip and I chose Loblolly), but the whole month is a sort of ongoing celebration. There were Just Peachy balloons, a small outdoor gathering with grandparents (she agreed to share her party with Juniper on the condition she choose the cake - vegan vanilla chocolate - and the theme - unicorns), and general scattered sparkliness. It's a good way to start the summer, I think.

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The Margin and the Manuscript

My partner and I came from households with two contrasting money management strategies: one household who sorted cash from every paycheck into labeled envelopes and still sits down together on Sunday evenings to write everything in a ledger, and one household who had more of a "spend it when you get it so you'll have food to eat when the money runs out" philosophy. As the more financially literate partner, budgeting fell to me when we got married. I initially tried to track everything but found that to be a soul-sucking endeavor that didn't really help me accomplish my goals. I have finally landed on a simplified system where I keep a list of each pay period's major recurring expenses, check them off as they occur, and then divide the remaining balance to produce a "daily spending limit." The bills are paid and I'm not trying to figure out what line item flavored coffee syrup should fall under (groceries? eating out? personal spending?) I recently re...

Reading and Writing

#attunedpracticetuesdays: where we share the rituals and routines that are aligned with our sense of peace and wellbeing A couple of months ago, while working on a commission project , I started a new practice. I was listening to audio books while working since the project required my eyes but not my full attention, and since it was fairly labor intensive, I took the weekends off (not something I would normally do). Lacking something to do with my hands, the first Saturday I decided to put my speedy reading to good use and read a novel in one sitting (my preferred method, anyway). Then I read another novel the next Saturday. And now it has becomes a weekly thing. The only rule is that it has to be fiction - I read enough non fiction that a novel a week isn't going to hurt anything (and it wouldn't anyway, reading is reading). Helping out with Paper Heart Books and attending a bring-your-own-book-club meeting last week helped restock my dwindling supply. I like to get hard cop...

Festivals and Fairs

October is the Month of Fun Outings. The weather is generally pleasant, many things are less crowded than they are in summer because school has started back, and there are also an array of local events. We try to make the most of it, since I got used to not getting sick while we stayed in for a couple years so now we ride out the germiest months at home. But before that, we frolic. We'll miss our favorite fall festival due to scheduling conflict, but there will be a small one at my eldest's dance studio, and we're all going to the state fair this year. There are street fairs and at some point soon we'll go and each choose a pumpkin to stack on the front step five deep, and my littlest will name each family member while pointing at their pumpkin every time we go in or out the door. I've started leaving windows open at night, and sometimes it's been cool enough to have them open during the day, too. My desk candle has expanded to three candles on a cheese board b...

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