i’m writing this as i’m sitting in a starbucks in downtown naperville, super early on a saturday morning, after dropping no. 1 off to take the SATs. right now, i have three uninterrupted hours to write, plan, read, do whatever i want. which is nice. and while it’s not three hours in my craft room, it’s still three hours of finding creativity in other ways.

i’m taking solace in the fact that i am still flexing my creative muscle. it might not include acrylics and paper and canvases, but it’s coming out through planning my dinners for my family. by writing here. by getting outside and finally paying some attention to the landscaping needs of our house. (more on that fun in a minute!) so if you’re in a season of life where you feel like you’re not able to do all the things you used to do and love, there’s ways to still practice the same skills!

so the landscaping + outside of our house: when we moved in, there were so.many.big. and half dead shrubs and plants. over the years, we have pulled out so much of it and replanted new, smaller things. but all of that requires a lot of time + money, so like most people, we tackle a little of it at a time. and with northern illinois weather, we really only have between memorial day and maybe early october to get anything planted on the weekends. when it doesn’t rain. or we don’t have somewhere else to be.

memorial day weekend, i jumped. we had a whole blank area right in front of our house that needed something. so for the long weekend, i hit up lowes + our local gardening shop (yay blumen gardens!) and got the space filled. plus i had some other small spaces that needed some love: added some hostas to another area of the front of the house + along our back patio. but the real win? my planters.

i think i’ve said this before, but over the last three years, i have made the strategic decision to only use faux plants in my front porch + back porch planters. why? because i’m terrible at taking care of them. for the amount of money i was spending on the real life stuff each year (which ultimately died), i have been ordering more faux stuff each year to add to my collection. i don’t kill anything. i don’t waste money on plants i end up not taking care of. and, i think my faux pots look pretty amazing. (and a sweet note: my mimi would be so proud of me. she only had all faux flowers that she would use in her beds + planters. i’m going with the fact that this is carrying on her tradition!)