Please excuse the over-the-top passion in this love letter. I’m a local, a writer, and in-love with this island. This little sandbar has given so much to our family—and gushy praise is one way to celebrate it. Many years ago, my parents were Texas transplants (young teachers who were called to teach at St. John’s...Continue Reading
Our kids are at the age where they’re starting to understand relationships. Yesterday Catie pulled me aside and confidentially explained to me about my moods. She said,“just so you know, when you’re in a bad mood, we notice. Sometimes we don’t even want to be around you.” I explained that was kind of the point of a...Continue Reading
Last year at this time we were buying a house at the beach, and I was scared to death. Even as we were signing the papers, I wasn’t completely sure a vacation home was such a good idea for us. While I was also excited and determined to make this longtime dream a success, the house...Continue Reading
BEFORE: The rusty, dated bathroom lighting and wallpaper My strange relationship with exercise (by this I mean how I went to the gym for two years to work on my computer instead of working out) nicely illustrates how I’m afraid to suffer. I went to the gym’s café every day and watched hundreds of people...Continue Reading
Here’s what we learned, house redos are an expensive, time-consuming PROCESS. If we had remembered what a rigamarole renovating a house is, we would have never signed up to do it. Because of HGTV, we SHOULD HAVE KNOWN what a pounding, expensive headache we were signing up for. But we refused to hear the HGTV...Continue Reading
When we bought Best of Times Beach House, it needed a lot of love. It had “good bones” (realtor-speak for “good luck finding the bones under all its scars and cellulite.”). But the ugly scars of bad paint and the cellulite of dated wiring and rusty fixtures didn’t daunt us as much as they probably...Continue Reading
