I talk to my mother every day. Not once. Multiple times. Five calls is a normal Tuesday. Sometimes more if something happens that requires immediate reporting — a thing one of the girls said, something I saw at the market,…
If you are a mother reading this and quietly pinning ideas for what you’d like your children to make you — I see you. I do exactly the same thing. There is no shame in it. We know what will…
I said goodbye to a cactus once. I want to be upfront about this before I start recommending plants to anyone. A cactus. The plant that exists specifically for people who forget to water things. The plant that lives in…
I have a complicated history with faux flowers. For years I was firmly in the real-plants-only camp. The kind of person who looked at a silk flower arrangement and thought: why bother. Real flowers have a smell, a life, an…
I want to tell you about the afternoon Marina decided she was an artist. Not in the general way that eight-year-olds decide things. In the specific, committed, I-have-already-found-the-scissors way. She had seen something on my phone….One of those satisfying craft…
I need to tell you about the porch at the house in Volos. It’s a lovely porch, truly. There’s the bench, the lanterns, fall blankets, and Maria and Marina have their annual disagreement in October over the pumpkins. Tasos put…
I want to tell you something before we get into this. For two years, two years, I stepped over the same garden hose every time I walked into the garden. It was just there. Dumped on the ground in that…
No one warns you about the courage required to paint a room initially. You’re standing there, roller in your hand, with a shade you’ve considered for weeks, and the sense you’re about to either really improve your house, or mess…
The nursery room is one of the most important and useful rooms in a home. In this room lives your little angel, probably your #1 priority in life. Everything in your nursery room matters because it not just a place…
I used to spend ages on Instagram looking at those unbelievably gorgeous Christmas living rooms, you know, the ones with huge, high ceilings, enormous fireplaces and Christmas trees almost touching the light fitting! And each year I’d look around my…
