This postcard was made by Cute Like Candy Corn, which is appropriate, as I believe Sara is a fan of candy corn. And cute postcards. You can find them on Etsy.
She reports that she had just woken up from a lovely afternoon nap.
My favorite kind of day.
The Albina Library has this display about Coretta Scott King. I enjoyed reading it.
This was my favorite part:
Initially, I wondered who the author of this great display was, but further research has shown that it was curated by students from a local elementary school, presumably Dr. Martin Luther King Elementary School. The quote make a little more sense in that context.
Thank you, Black History Festival NW, for this display.
Guess what age my mother is turning this year?
Did you guess 82? Gold star! This is a white velvet cake with ermine frosting.
I really liked this recipe. The cake instructions were incredibly thorough, and had some good tips I will incorporate going forward. And it was my first time making ermine frosting (which is a fancy name for boiled frosting, something I’ve wondered about for years but have never made.) It was not as magical as when buttercream frosting comes together, but it was less stressful and had a just-right sweetness.
Mom was also a fan.
Portland Center Stage did Portland a favor by staging this play in January and February 2026. Because boy howdy, did we all need to come together and laugh.
The laughs started early when the stage manager recruited someone from the audience to help them shored up the mantel. While the stage manager ran off to get something to affix the mantel to the wall, she left the volunteer on stage. Another stage manager-type person appeared, and wanted the volunteer to sweep instead of hold the mantel, so the volunteer did. And thus it continued.
The play went terribly wrong.
While the depiction of the female characters hasn’t aged terribly well (Scantily clad catfight? Really?) the play was otherwise the most rejuvenating things I’ve encountered this winter. Everyone did a great job, but I will probably forever say, “A ledger????” in the style of Darius Pierce when I’m hunting for something I know was placed in a specific place but can no longer be found in that place.
If the Play that Goes Wrong is playing near you, do yourself a favor and attend.
Hanging on the bathroom door:
*Book group selection | bolded means favorite
Good fiction and nonfiction this month!
*White Lies: How the South Lost the Civil War, Then Rewrote the History by Ann Bausum
*American Spirits: The Famous Fox Sisters and the Mysterious Fad that Haunted a Nation by Barb Rosenstock
Silver Girl by Elin Hilderbrand
The Matchmaker by Elin Hilderbrand
The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 4 by by Beth Brower
The Island by Elin Hilderbrand
Summerland by Elin Hilderbrand
Think of this as this century’s version of your grandma sending you newspaper clippings.
He brought along his other signs too. Because protests are more fun with more signs.
I’ve been “starting” my new side hustle since last May, right after Antares died. It’s called Kenton Cat Homestay, and it’s a different kind of cat boarding. Rather than your cat going to stay in a cage, or a room, they will have the run of my house. That way, my house can become a visitor cat’s home away from home.
The starting is slow-going, as you might have guessed from the quotes deployed in the previous paragraph. For 2026, I’m aiming to work two hours a week on getting things ready. It’s moving things along quite well.
So much so, that I have choices for the logo! Check them out!
Pretty fun, eh?
I showed these to many people to get their opinion. I found that people who had been to my house and met the cats chose the logos that depicted the house and the cats. While people who had not chose the other logos.
What turned out to be the final result? Have a look on the website.
I went through a big phase of reading about bullet journals in autumn 2024, and really liked the idea of making “quilts” using the dotted pages as reference. I made one for my energy levels, and one for my training status. Here are the final quilts:
The energy was a pain to track. I’m not one to get out the markers very often, so I was often coloring in a month-plus at a time. And at some point, I started questioning what “average” even meant. If my sleep got better near the end of the year (it did) and that was my new average, what even was “best ever”?
And filling out the training quilt became difficult because, well, training became difficult near the end of the year. (Ironically at the same time my sleep got better.) Eagle eyes will note that I didn’t finish December. At least that information is kept on my Garmin app, making it easier to access when I finally sit down to “quilt.”
I’m bringing these back next year. Energy will have categories that are: getting things done, maintaining, resting, under the weather, not tracked, and I have a system built now to track those and update the calendars more frequently.
One mistake I made for 2026 was assigning the same colors to both quilts. I like the visual difference of the 2025 quilts using different colors.
I would prefer to buy my DMC floss from my locally owned embroidery shop, but I haven’t yet found one near me. So I try to do a big order of embroidery thread from Maydel, which is a shop based in Chicago. If I ever go to Chicago, I will visit their store, but in the meantime, look at this bounty!
Now to wind everything on cards…
