I guess I should start off by saying that not everything about this summer has been terrible. We’ve played at the lake, went on a great vacation to Bend, OR and I had a really good birthday at the end of July. It’s not been all bad. In fact, bad is probably the wrong word to describe this summer. It’s just not been great.

Here’s how I pictured the summer earlier this year when I ordered a new outdoor dining table that extended to seat 10 people… I planned on having people over… often, making delicious summer inspired food, taking my kids on fun day trips and exploring together, feeling inspired by all the sunshine, connecting with friends I hadn’t seen much throughout the pandemic-ridden year… you get the point. I wanted a summer filled with connection, beauty and a lightness that I was craving after a year that felt heavy.

The reality is that this summer has been none of those things. We’ve had snippets of connection and beauty and lightness but the over-riding feeling of this season has been very hard for me. I can’t share all of the things that have made the last couple months so hard but here are some I can share:

• I was not ready for summer break this year. I wanted my kids in school for at least another month. My introvert self felt pretty drained going into the summer, especially after having family stay with us for 3 weeks… which I LOVED WITH ALL MY HEART… but I was very tired afterwards. So the full on days of my people asking questions for the whole day, plus the kid fighting and mess of everyone home has done wonders for my mental health.
• Once a year, I flip a house and my hard and fast rule has been that it will not be during the summer. And that rule got broken this year. I’ve been working on a flip this summer and my kids feel like a ball and chain. The amount of whining and complaining from them as I run errands for this project has been a total joy stealer.
• Someone who was very important to me during my growing up years passed away suddenly last month. It makes me cry to even type this now and I’ve been really sad about her passing. Her daughter Shereen was my very first friend and still my friend now and about half of my childhood memories are shenanigans that took place on their dairy farm. I hadn’t seen this person in several years but had planned with Shereen to go see her parents new home and say good-bye to the dairy farm that was sold this past year. The closed border made that impossible up until recently. It’s just a really sad reality that I won’t see her again.
• I’ve been sick twice this summer… at least 10 days of not being able to do much of anything.
• We have barely seen friends because of scheduling conflicts or just feeling plain overwhelmed and I’ve had plenty of moments of feeling lonely, even while being with people.

I’m not sharing all of this to complain or even to make you feel sorry for me. I’m going somewhere with this. A couple days ago, while I was sick, I was scrolling instagram and ended up reading a beautiful blog post by Studio McGee about their favorite summer recipes. The table was set so beautifully, the food prep was picture perfect and I had this moment where I just felt SO lame for not having made my summer look like that… the beautiful food, the table set for friends coming to eat, the sheen of a happy & light summer on display. And then I remembered that Shae McGee (of Studio McGee) has just had a baby and she’s probably very tired and her actual making of these dishes is probably a lot less beautiful. She has a team of people to make everything look perfect for the pictures but that’s just not real life. We can have moments like that but it’s not an everyday reality for anyone.

I was talking to my husband this morning about how I felt when I read that post and that I’d had a full stop moment in the middle of my emotional dumpster dive and realized that while my hopes for what I wanted this summer didn’t quite pan out, it was okay. It was okay to have a hard July, to feel grief, to be sick and even, to feel lonely. I could cut myself some slack. And if you know me well, this was a big moment because while I have plenty of grace for everyone else, I am not so generous with myself. It felt good to extend grace to myself.

Acknowledging that most of life can’t look OR FEEL like the shiny, beautifully staged photographs from (and here I date myself) Better Homes & Gardens… or (and maybe I redeem myself now) the non-stop scroll of instagram helps. Life is not picture perfect. Real life is messy. In fact, most of nature just grows out of control and seems to be just fine with that. We’re the ones often working so hard to tame it back into our preferred version of beautiful. Maybe there’s some beauty to be found in the lows. It can’t all be high moments, right? I mean, I want to say ‘YES IT CAN’ but if it’s always good, we’re going to want it better and best and then bestest… and then what? Maybe we need the low moments to appreciate the beauty of the sweeter ones.

While I can’t change the things that have made this summer what it is, I’ve decided I’m going to stop being mad about it. And look forward to what’s ahead. We’re heading to Canada next week to see family, bike in Whistler and do all the Vancouver things we have missed after 1.5 years of not being able to go. We have some swim lessons left at the pool. We have some sunny days and I happen to have this really great outdoor table that seats 10 people… But even if that table sits empty for this season, it’ll be okay. Sometimes it’s okay to just let things be what they are and know that it won’t always feel this way.

xo Bon

Wow, I can’t believe we’re halfway through May. How did this happen? I haven’t posted anything in awhile because I’ve traveled a bit and I’ve also been scrambling to finish our guest suite above our garage. Our out-of-state family announced they’re coming for a 3.5 week visit in June and there’s nothing like the threat of 6 more people in our living space to make me hustle and create a guest space for them. I’ll share some of that process soon but floors install on Monday and I have boxes arriving everyday with furniture and faucets and all the things. In the meantime, here’s a rambling I wrote recently. 🙂

1. It’s Taco Tuesday today so I’m thinking about them.
2. I don’t think I’ve ever met a human who doesn’t like tacos in some form or another. If you don’t, please let me know because you might be a taco hating unicorn.
3. Carnitas, ground beef, fish, pulled pork, turkey, butternut squash… on a salad, crunchy taco or tortilla… I could go on. I love them all. I make tacos on Tuesdays (and sometimes other days if it doesn’t work out on Tuesday) and we rotate. This week is Carnitas on corn tortillas.
4. There is something about good food and sharing it with others. I love to make food for people I love and eating it together is even better! Time around the dinner table together is always worth the work.
5. I’m not the best cook in town but I still invite people over. Now that life is starting to feel like it might be normal again, I’m excited to start having people over again!! It feels vulnerable sometimes but it’s worth it to share my home and my food.
6. Being vulnerable doesn’t feel good, does it? Or are you one of those people who likes to feel naked in front of others? I personally hate it.
7. I don’t like the way it feels and I have to be conscious of sharing who I am with others. It’s easy to stick to the shallow end of the pool because it’s safer. But are we ever really known if we don’t let people into the things that matter? Your fears, hopes, good memories and the things that have hurt you in the past… those are the meat of what makes you YOU.
8. I have a long time friend who told me once that I was very hard to get to know in the beginning. When she told me this, I was shocked because I had never thought that way about myself but also realized it was true. It was a hard realization to swallow.
9. Not letting people into the real and deeper places that make up who we are will only leave us feeling lonely, even in a room full of people. We all have a basic human need to be seen and known for who we are under that good outfit, shiny accomplishments and the presentation of ourselves we curate for the world to see.
10. The other day, I was working out at Barre3 and caught a friends eye in the hall during a workout but she was buzzing by. We have enough history that I just knew she would pop back to make a funny face so I kept watching and had a funny face waiting for her too when she did. In that moment, I felt known.

Be vulnerable. Let yourself be known.

xo Bonnie

Sixteen years ago, we bought an outdoor dining set at The Greenhouse in Bellingham, WA and it felt like quite a splurge. It ended up being worth every penny because it still looks brand new all these years later. We’re ready to get something new though because our current set only seats 4 people, which doesn’t leave any room for having people over. We’ve always just sat around in chairs to eat but I’m ready for an actual table that seats 6-8 people.

Because of where we live, a lot of the wood options aren’t on my list. There’s just too much rain here and I don’t want to buy something gorgeous for our patio and have it look 10 years old after a surprise week of rain in June. Am I being too worried about this? I’ve looked at approximately 476 dining table options and this is my short list.

Option 1

My main likes on this are that it seats 8 people and I like that it’s black. The chairs look like they might not hold up for many years but maybe they will. Their shape doesn’t make me swoon either and the table doesn’t have an umbrella hole. I might be talking myself out of this as a contender. But them my husband just said he likes this one.

Option 2

I love the look of this set but I can’t tell if that’s because of the way it’s been styled on the patio. It’s also got the mesh seating again and I’m not sure how that will hold up over time. The table top is not real wood and I wonder what that means in person. Does it look tacky or does it hold up? There’s also no umbrella hole so we’d have to buy a cantilevered umbrella.

Option 3

Don’t look at the benches because I’d just buy the table and get chairs (they have a matching option). I LOVE this table but my husband is hesitant to buy a wood table with all the rain we get. It does have a polyurethane topcoat and the website says to cover it in extreme weather. No mention of never being in the rain. This would be my pick. What do you think of the rain worries??

Option 4

This is the exact same table as the wood version above. I would go for it in a second except it’s not true black. It’s antique bronze and it’s hard to tell by the photos what that means in real life. It looks almost black in this picture but if you click on the photo, it shows another picture that looks more brown-ish. But it would wear very well, it’s a good shape and the matching chair options are a nice.

Option 5

This option is all weather wicker so it would wear very well in the weather here. I do like the gray color and it would look great agains our white house but the chairs are pricey ($350-$400 each) so it would be an expensive choice.

Option 6

Ignore the chairs. I’d just buy the table and buy better (looking & quality) chairs. This is the cheapest option and because it’s from Target, I don’t have high hopes that it would last a long time but it checks the boxes in terms of looks.

_  _  _  _

Alright that’s it. If you have a better suggestion from somewhere I haven’t looked yet, please tell me!!!  I still want to look around at local stores to see what’s on offer but these are my online choices after too many hours of searching. What would you pick??

xo Bonnie

Ramblings. Sometimes the things that travel through my brain can be compared to a deck of cards that got tossed onto the ground and could really be anything when you pick them up. That’s what my ramblings are like. I’ll start with what I’m thinking about in that moment and try to end up on somewhere that has a little more depth to it. Or not. We’ll see.

1. I’m reading this very long auto-biography right now and it’s fascinating. It’s also the smallest font and 700 pages long so it’s taking FOREVER to read. My husband keeps reminding me that I don’t have to finish it. But I like it. It’s just slowing down my book pace for the year. lol!
2. I have 8 new fiction books waiting patiently beside my bed. I can’t wait to start one of them!
3. There are also 8 non-fiction books sitting there. I will read one of them this year.
4. Do you ever write with an actual pen and paper? I am amazed by people who journal in a real paper journal because my hands are out of writing shape. I use a paper calendar and that’s enough for me. I can’t handle the muscle cramps.
5. And journaling… I don’t do it. I really wish I did but anytime I’ve tried, I use a laptop and it doesn’t feel legit enough. I feel like journaling should be done in a paper journal with a cute cover and a good pen. And that’s why I don’t do it. My thoughts run at a pace my writing can’t keep up with.
6. Instead of journaling, I talk my husband’s ear off. He loves this.
7. My husband has a romantic streak. This can sometime include romantic gestures but it also includes things like feeling awe and wonder about things like the universe, stars in the sky and good music. I am envious of this sometimes. I am much more practical.
8. This doesn’t mean I’m a robot with no feelings. I just need enough time and space to get in touch with my feelers to experience wonder.
9. Wonder defined: a feeling of surprise mingled with admiration, caused by something beautiful, unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable. – Thanks Google
10. I hope you have an unexpected opportunity to experience wonder today. I hope I do too.

xo Bonnie