The Days of Secrets Are Over
Did you happen to see the fascinating and really well-told story about the woman who thought she was Irish, until a DNA test opened a 100 year old mystery? I really want to discuss it with you, but don’t want to give away any spoilers if you haven’t read it yet. (Go read it!)
Underlying the story, the article is about identity. How much do the labels we give ourselves really mean? And the article is also about DNA tests in general, and the unexpected results that many people are experiencing. Along those lines, one paragraph stood out to me:
… Living With Kids: Margot Ogmundson
Margot lives in British Columbia, Canada. When Margot first emailed me about sharing her home and story, she introduced herself by saying “we our raising our boys, two in our arms, one in our hearts.” My breath caught. What a simple, beautiful way to describe something as difficult as the loss of a child. I’m so grateful for the chance to read her perspective.
… A Perfect Day in Oakland
I’m feeling an extra-dose of Oakland Pride today — I sure love living here! For the final post in my 3-part series with Uber, I’m going to take you on a little tour of Oakland, and give you a helpful itinerary for your next visit. If you are traveling to the Bay Area, consider taking a break from San Francisco and spending the day across the Bay Bridge. It’s sunny over here!
We used uberX for our entire day of exploring. It made life so easy for us. We could go door-to-door with ease, and didn’t have to deal with finding parking (which can be a big challenge in Oakland), or paying for parking (which can be very expensive in Oakland). Here’s my suggested itinerary for A Perfect Day in Oakland:
8:30 – Classic Breakfast
Start with a lazy breakfast at Sequoia Diner in the Laurel District. The menu is classic diner food, but upscaled and made with super fresh ingredients. Try the Coconut Almond Granola, or the Herb and Goat Cheese Omelet (served with a buttered slice of house made sourdough). Don’t be surprised to find a line out the door for this popular brunch spot, but it’s worth the wait. …The Treehouse: Family Room Design Ideas
Are you ready? It’s before and after time! I could not be more excited to share this Family Room redesign with you. I worked with Room & Board to transform the space and I am absolutely joyful about how it turned out. The room is full of light and color. It’s comfortable and inviting. It’s practical and useful. And now we spend at least 70% more time in the room than we used to. Not joking. And more on that in a bit.
But first, let’s watch this time lapse video and then go see some pictures and details. The video was captured on the day that the big Room & Board delivery came to our house. It’s best with the volume turned up:
…Living With Kids: Khrista Cornista
I’m excited today to introduce you to this week’s Living With Kids family, the Cornistas. Khrista and her husband are both immigrants from the Philippines and work in the medical profession. When they started their family, they wanted to stay in Los Angeles, but they were priced-out of real estate there, and ended up settling down in Santa Clarita — which is still in Los Angeles county, but about 30 miles north of the city. Their home has a calming and classic color palette and a lot of fun details that I think you’ll really enjoy.
Come say hello! Here’s Khrista: … Will My Kids Ever Own A Car? Or A House? Will They Even Want To?
There was an article in The Atlantic a few weeks ago called The Cheapest Generation, Did you get a chance to read it? It talks about the shift in spending habits between Generation X (my generation), and Generation Y (Millennials). I feel like the title is misleading — it sounds like it’s going to paint Millennials as some sort of cheapskates, but it doesn’t do that — and thank goodness, because I’m definitely over articles that drag Millennials. Geez. They get blamed for everything.
Instead of the cheapskate angle, the article is really more about how Generation Y is making different spending choices than their predecessors. Which personally, I don’t see as a bad thing, even though I realize it could have major repercussions on our economy as we’ve known it.
Basically, it turns out Millennials are not buying houses or cars, and it goes into some of the strategies car companies have been using to try and reverse that trend.
…Will My Kids Ever Own A Car? Or A House? Will They Even Want To?Read More »
Living With Kids: Sandra Jergensen
I feel like Sandra and I are kindred spirits, and I have had so much fun getting to virtually poke around her house. Sandra’s a cook, an editor, a mom, and has a flair for saturated colors and unexpected design decisions. (There is a polka-dot wall I am sort of swooning over and planning to copy in my own home soon.) Her home is such a fun mix of mid-century modern and vintage pieces that I have no doubt you’ll have as much fun exploring and getting to know her as I have.
Say hello to Sandra:
… How Do You Feel About Eating Bugs?
“Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, guess I’ll go eat worms.”
Do you remember that song? Did you ever hear it as a kid? I have no memory of the context around it, (where did it come from? why were we singing it?), but it came to mind when I was reading about new cooking flours and powders made from crickets.
Apparently, the flours can be used to add extra protein into baked goods, beans & rice, pancakes, and dinner dishes. The description on a bag of 100% cricket powder says: Cricket contains twice as much protein as beef, as much calcium as milk, as much Vitamin B12 as salmon, and 17 amino acids, including Lysine. I’ve seen cricket snack chips and protein bars too.
The powder is said to be incredibly high in protein, but requires much fewer resources to raise than other types of animal products. And I suppose there could be less of a meat-is-murder guilt factor for some people when eating bug protein than they might experience eating beef or pork. (Though who knows. Is it morally better to kill 1 chicken or kill thousands and thousands of bugs? I don’t pretend to have an answer.)
Predictions are that eating bugs will become a totally normal thing here in the U.S.. From this article:
“A growing need for more food sources as well as a desire to treat animals more humanely have proponents predicting entomophagy, or eating insects, will eventually spread more heavily to western and developed countries. They envision pancakes made with cricket flour or falafel chocked full of mealworm goodness will be just as desirable as sushi.
“Sushi took 30, 40 years to really become a normal thing, but kale took like five years and kale’s not even very tasty,” said Allen, head of Austin, Texas-based Little Herds, a nonprofit founded to educate the public on the nutritional and environmental benefits of edible insects.”
I haven’t yet tried any foods made mainly with insect protein (or if I have, I’m not aware of it), but I’m open to it. At least, I’m open to a processed version of insect protein that doesn’t look bug-like in any way. I know there are places in the world where eating bugs in their natural bug form is not unusual, but I doubt I could personally ever get used to that. A powder on the other hand, I can probably handle.
What’s your take? Does the whole idea of insect-based flour gross you out? Would you eat a cookie made with cricket flour? How about your kids? For those of you who are vegan, do you classify insect-based food the same way you classify animal-based food? Or is it in a different category? And what do you think of the predictions? Will we all be eating cricket powder food in the next few years?
P.S. — I read that if you have a crustacean shellfish allergy, you may be sensitive to crickets. Also, Gateway Bug tshirt found here. Living With Kids: Jill Pauli
I’m so excited to introduce you guys to Jill. She’s a mom, an artist, a scientist, an entrepreneur, and so much more. You’re going to love her intentionally-small home in the San Francisco Bay area. It’s full of light and art, two of the most important ingredients in making a home beautiful. What makes it even more special is that a lot of Jill’s art is either made by her, or by people she loves. How great is that?
Welcome, Jill!
… The Ideal Age For a First Cell Phone
I’ve been getting so many thought-provoking questions from readers this summer, including a very short one that came in last week: I am a longtime reader of your blog and wanted to know, what age did your kids get a phone? — Michelle
I have a few thoughts on this topic, but I’m especially interested in hearing how you’ve handled this at your house. I really believe this is an area where we all need to share what we’ve learned so far. So I hope you’ll chime in. Here are my thoughts.
1) Our 3 youngest kids, currently aged 12, 11 and 7, don’t have cell phones. They have access to screens — the family iPad, the family desktop iMac — but they don’t have their own phones, or even iPods. At one point, our son Oscar was set to inherit a hand-me-down phone that he could use as an iPod, but it ended up being old and faulty and didn’t really work out.
Our 3 oldest kids, currently aged 15, 18 and 19, all received their first phone during high school. When we moved from France to Oakland, Ralph started his sophomore of high school, and Maude started her freshman year, and they both got their first official cell phones as the school year started. In France, we had experimented with some basic flip-phones for them to use in emergencies, but their first real data phones didn’t happen till we moved back to the States.
Apparently, that makes us somewhat unusual. Surveys show that back in 2010, 69% of 11-14 year olds, and 31% of kids aged 8-10 had cell phones. I assume the numbers are even higher these days. But, I don’t think it’s as strange as the statistics makes it sound. I feel like we know many families here, with kids in middle school, who don’t give their kids cell phones yet.
… The 4th of July Felt Different This Year
Raise your hand if Independence Day felt a little different to you this year. At our house it mostly felt the same as usual, but not totally. The activities were definitely the usual — we did 3 main things: we watched fireworks on the field after the Oakland A’s game, we watched a community parade (where Betty, Oscar and Olive helped hand out programs), and we had a very casual get together for burgers at our house.
What felt different this year:
… Her Daughter Asked: Why Do I Need to Wear my First Bra?
Friends, I need your collective wisdom. I received an email from a reader named Tina that brought up a really good question: What do you tell a 10-year-old who wonders why she needs to wear her first bra? Here’s an excerpt from Tina’s note:
“I have two daughters ages 10 (11 later this summer) and 7. On a whim, while on a rare after school trip to Target a few months ago, I asked my daughter if she wanted to pick out a bra. (Most all her friends started wearing bras sometime over this past school year.) She said sure. She has only worn her first bra a few times, and until a month or two ago, didn’t need it. However, now buds are starting to show through her shirt so I approached her about buying more bras to wear everyday. She asked why she needs a bra. Admittedly that question stumped me.
…Her Daughter Asked: Why Do I Need to Wear my First Bra?Read More »
Would You Call the Police if You Were in Danger?
I know the news cycle is fast, and maybe people have already moved on with yet another headline, but I’m still thinking about Philando Castile. Like most people, I hadn’t seen any footage of Philando Castile’s horrible and completely preventable, totally unnecessary killing until after the officer was found not-guilty and the dashcam footage was released. Like most people, I was nauseous when I saw it, and then nauseous again when I remembered a jury found the officer not-guilty. Further retching came as footage showed how Diamond and her toddler were treated in such a demeaning, cruel, despicable way after the shooting.
In the conversations I’ve watched online, I haven’t see police officers speaking out on behalf of Philando Castile’s killer, which is good. But I haven’t seen them condemning the injustice of the verdict either.
In previous discussions we’ve had here about police violence against black citizens, some readers feel very defensive of police officers. And still others are married to cops or closely related to them and feel personally touched by news stories regarding police violence.
… My 3-Part System for Rotating & Storing Kids Clothes
My sister-in-law, Liz, was over at our house the other day and we were talking about rotating and storing kids clothing. How do you decide what to keep for a younger sibling and what to give away? And what about sentimental items? Then, once you’ve decided, where should all that stuff be stored? And how often do you need to go through this whole process?
She asked me to share how I handle it with our six kids and I thought about it for a minute, and realized that over the years, I’ve developed a 3-part system. I’ll give a quick overview of each part, and then go into detail. Hopefully this will be helpful to anyone out there struggling with organizing kid clothes and closets.
The first part is Scheduling. I approach this two different ways. Twice yearly, in the spring and the fall, I set aside a few hours to go through the kids’ closets for a seasonal switch and organization. And I also make ongoing clothing evaluations on a daily basis as we live our lives and do the laundry.
The second part is Sorting. Everything is assessed and sorted into 4 categories: keep, donate, trash or repurpose.
The third part of my system is Storage. We have specific places for off-season clothing, hand-me-downs, clothing-for-donation, and projects.
Here’s how we work it :
…My 3-Part System for Rotating & Storing Kids ClothesRead More »
Living With Kids: Laura George
Today’s home tour is taking us on the road. Laura George and her family spent their summer vacation on an epic road trip with their 6 young kids in a borrowed RV with spotty air conditioning. I know some of you are thinking: Sounds like the best summer ever! And others are thinking: No thank you a million times over. Hah!
Whatever your response, it certainly sounds like an adventure — one full of some epic highs and lows. Whether you’ve got your own family road trip planned this summer, or just know that inevitably you’re going to be spending some time with your kids in the car, Laura’s family’s journey is sure to inspire.
… The Treehouse: Master Bath & Closet Remodel with Before & After Photos
Ready for some more photos from the Treehouse? Last month, I shared photos from our Master Bedroom remodel, and today I’m sharing photos from the Master Bath and Closet remodel, plus the little Half Bath in the hallway.
To start, I’m going to repost drawings of the before and after floor plans, because the layout and pathways of these spaces changed a lot.
…The Treehouse: Master Bath & Closet Remodel with Before & After PhotosRead More »
Living With Kids: Barbara Haran
Have you ever done a remodel in your home and wondered how you were going to survive the mess and chaos of everything? Well today’s Home Tour family not only remodeled an old 1950’s Ranch House into a lovely light filled space, but they did the whole thing with a 1 year old under foot!
Meet Barbara and family. Their house is gorgeous and inspiring and full of light.
… Living With Kids: Jennifer McDougald
Have you ever wanted to achieve the perfect look in your home but just couldn’t quite find the piece that fit your budget and had the style you were looking for? Well you are going to love Jennifer, a mom of three and a small-business owner who has built her home and business around doing just that. Her home is full of charming, farmhouse flair and unique pieces, many of which were made or thrifted in her Texas hometown. And she’s pulled them together in such a lovely way.
Here’s Jennifer…
… What Was the Best Summer Job You Had As A Teen?
I read this Bloomberg article titled Why Aren’t American Teenagers Working Anymore, and wanted to discuss it with you. According to the article, summer jobs for teens are declining. For reference, the numbers look like this:
In July of 2016 43% of teens were working.
In July of 2006 53% of teens were working.
in July of 1988 & 1989, 70% of teens were working.
The article also goes into some of the theories about why the decline may be happening. Some people suspect they’re being crowded out of the workforce by older Americans who are working past the age of 65. Some people think teens are being pushed to volunteer for the summer to impress college admission counselors. Others think teens aren’t working because the earnings are low and only go a tiny way toward the costs of college.
But apparently, the data says the real cause is that the teens are studying. They’re taking harder classes and more classes, and they need the summer to keep up.
… Teaching Kids About Sex: Advice About Sex for a College-Bound Girl
Okay, Friends. I received a compelling email from a senior in high school and I would love to get your help answering it. It’s such a sincere, honest email with such heartfelt questions about an important topic. And I want to give a really good response. Here’s the email (with her name changed and any identifying facts removed):
Hi Gabrielle,
My name is Lisa and I’m a senior in high school living in a medium-size city in Utah (I’ll be heading to BYU in the fall). As you probably guessed I’m LDS. I’m emailing you for advice among all people in the world because a) you’re a mom b) you’re LDS, and c) I like what you have to say especially about tricky topics like this. So here I go.
Today I was talking to my college age sister about a terrible law of chastity lesson I had in seminary and explained my frustration about how Mormons have such an unhealthy way about discussing sex. Saying “sex” in seminary is almost like a bad word. We also talked about the sex education in Utah which is definitely lacking and most parents don’t supplement their kids sex education in the home. This combination leads to curious kids who don’t really know where to go for good answers. In short, this combination leads to kids like me.
…Teaching Kids About Sex: Advice About Sex for a College-Bound GirlRead More »