welcome to the blog

preserving the pint – marisa wrote the first recipe i ever preserved. the tomato jam on her blog is insanely delicious. i went a few years using this book not realizing they were the same author! if you can’t get enough of her blog recipes then check this book out. she is super thorough and […]

Spring is here and I’m slowly starting to put actual pants back on. It’s amazing how different and more productive you feel getting dressed in the morning even if it’s just to take a drive to get otto to take a nap. (The boy is so  stubborn he will only fall asleep on a perfectly […]

Do you remember that post about the booth at the antique show that said “EVERYTHING IN THIS TENT CAME FROM A VICTORIAN ERA GARBAGE DUMP”? Well guess what? That booth also had a bunch of antique English advertising containers as well (and a bunch of other treasures to behold). In his booth towards the back […]

The garden is 100% officially done. We had two really harsh frosts this week and the dahlias that were left standing are officially brown. It was a true gift to be able to cut flowers all the way in to October. One of the good things to come from 2020 was a strong and healthy […]

What a treat to be able to get away with your girlfriends! That is exactly what I did this past weekend when my friend Ashley and I teamed up with downtown Holland to experience the official “Girlfriends Weekend“.  We relaxed, we sipped mimosas and coffee and we shopped until we danced. (don’t worry we dropped […]

well i think we’ve fully recovered from the wild one’s first birthday party. we had 90 of our friends and family (that’s right 90) over to our house friday night for what we called “ottopalooza” and that it was. we ate dinner outside on the most perfect summer night. different groups of friends mingled on […]