Tag: Featured

Big Sur Beaches Have Character

What does it mean for a beach to have character? To me, it means the beach has more to offer than just a long stretch of white sand. It has interesting things to see and do, like driftwood that may have traveled from across the sea, tide pools teeming with squiggly life, granite outcrops that …

Continue reading

Spring Plants for Indoor Planters

Spring is a little late arriving this year, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bring a little bit of spring weather indoors. There are plenty of spring flowering plants that will do well in indoor planters. With a plentiful choice of bulbs and plants available this time of year, here are just a few of …

Continue reading

30 Day Declutter Your Home Challenge

The New Year is a wonderful time to start fresh by decluttering your home. We are in our homes now more than ever, which makes creating tidy, beautiful living spaces more important than ever. Make your home your sanctuary. Here is a printable declutter checklist to help you get started; I keep mine on the …

Continue reading

A Poem by Helen Keller

I am ghostwriting a few chapters on child development right now and found that I needed to fact check a few of the points that I was writing this weekend. I have boxes upon boxes of reference materials as well as all my notebooks and textbooks from when I was in college. I was extremely …

Continue reading

Encouraging Reading Part One: Your Infant

I am a big fan of reading, huge, gigantic, enormous. I can add many adjectives to just how big of a fan I am but I think I may have already got my point across and one look at the boxes of books that I don’t have room for will confirm it. For this reason, …

Continue reading

Aquarium Life: Adding Driftwood to the Aquarium

After adding a few plants to my aquarium in its early stages, I added one good-sized piece of natural driftwood, for several reasons.  One, I simply love the natural look of it.  Secondly, fish like to have items that they can swim around and hide in and behind, so I wanted to make the place …

Continue reading

Spend a Weekend at Pickathon

Every summer for the past twenty-plus years, music-lovers have flocked to an 80-acre farm outside of Portland, Oregon to attend an event called Pickathon. The three-day-long festival takes place from August 2rd through 4th this year, and this year, the lineup is huge: 65 bands, including Sudan Archives and Damien Jurado, will play at least six uniquely constructed stages, delighting …

Continue reading

Language Development and Your Four Year Old

The preschool age is a wonderful time during childhood and I really enjoyed teaching children in this age group.  They are interested in learning about any topic from bugs to space and have countless questions for you to answer.  Developmentally, they should be at a level to really express their needs and some of them …

Continue reading

Cheat Sheets: Butterflies

If you have ever spent a few minutes with any child, you will know that they can come up with questions that stump you.  I have seen experts in a field being taken completely aback by the complex question asked by a 5 year old.  I have also seen those same experts sputter and blush …

Continue reading

Healthy Alternatives for Easter

It’s only a few days away and the stores are packed with chocolates, candies, baskets and everything else that has to do with Easter.  Actually, in some places those shelves have been packed since just before Valentine’s day but Easter probably hasn’t been on your mind for that long. Every year I do the exact …

Continue reading