Thank you for reading and tagging along with us through another year! If you know us well, you know that there are always ideas percolating around these parts (meaning our heads, when they're not too groggy), and the posts don't always keep up with the ideas. We'd be writing up a storm and saturating the internet with all our opinions – never leaving you a day without a fresh post (there are a handful of us, after all) – if only we could slow the seasons down a bit or at least just get the kids to nap.
But when we look back, we do see that we've recorded a lot of fun memories and a few worthwhile thoughts, and we hope that you'll enjoy revisiting these with us. Without further ado, here are a few picks from each of us — our favorite posts from 2015:
Auntie Leila's Top Picks (with comments from Auntie Leila)
- Deirdre's Guide to Wedding Planning — You can find all the posts about wedding planning linked in this last one, her secret to happy wedding planning!
- How to figure out where to relocate (Aka: Ask Auntie Leila: Relocation Priorities and the Desirability Quotient) — If you can choose where to live, what priorities should you have, and how should you rank them?
- Sukie with a demonstration of nursing a squirmy toddler out in public — Makes me proud, and the pictures are so sweet!
- Edited to add this one, that got left out by mistake: A {pretty, happy, funny, real} with Rosie and her thoughts on getting Advent going. One to consult next Thanksgiving-ish when you are feeling like the littles are preventing you from doing anything at all!
Rosie's Top Picks (with intros from Rosie)
- Taking Care of New Mamas Culture — Post Partum Does Not Mean One Day After the Baby Comes
- Family Dinner Culture — The Secret to Planning Menus
- I find this fascinating. The bees arrived after I moved away, so I've never seen this process in person: The Honey Harvest: a Tutorial
- Also fascinating and appealing to me (if we weren't on military healthcare, I would be seriously looking into this): Why We Love Being Medically Uninsured
Suki's Top Picks (with Suki's comments)
- Post Partum Does Not Mean One Day After the Baby Comes — Des was six weeks on Christmas. I had an easy recovery, but there's still the mental fog, and a huge need to slow down for the baby – and myself! (I also loved the controversy in the comments, stirred by my conspiracy theory!)
- The Secret to Planning Menus — It's not just about the food!
- And of course, Desmond's Birth. 🙂
Deirdre's Top Picks (with my comments)
- Secrets to Taking Common-Sense Care of your Sick Child at Home! — Wisdom from Auntie Leila on one of the best topics for the collective memory department. I have a theory that the whole vaccine debate would look very different if everyone had the basics down about how to care for sick children and keep germs contained, etc.
- Will you forgive me if I offer one of my own posts as a favorite? Your Marriage is Your Gift to Others: A Guide to Registering — part of my {pretty, happy, real weddings} series, is one of my favorite things I've ever written, actually – which surprises me, because I didn't expect that I'd end up recording anything too remarkable when I went to share advice about setting up a wedding registry. All you lovely readers supplied great advice in the many comments.
Bridget's Top Pick (with her comment)
- Hope For When You Regret the Past — A reminder that God is much kinder and much simpler than we expect Him to be.
And that wraps it up for us!
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Chere Mama says
I really enjoyed the Secret to Happy Wedding planning. It gave my daughter and I some really great ideas we tucked away for the future. I also liked all the “at home” posts of this Christmas. Thank you for such a delightful blog! It has been a joy reading it!!
Leila says
Thank you, Chere Mama! Thank you for being with us here!
Deirdre says
So glad you found it helpful!
Leslie says
I really enjoyed this trip through your year! So many great posts. Thanks for the linkup!
Leila says
Thank you, Leslie!
Amy says
Happy New Year to you and your family. I was just rereading your blog post about caring for sick little ones. My baby has been sick since Dec. 18 with two separate illnesses, and it seems like this fall and winter she is sick every other week. Now we have bronchitis and a bad cold going through the rest of our family. I wondered if you have any advice on disinfecting and freshening things up in the house during times like this. Essential oils? Lysol? Bleach? Launder everything? Everything just feels stale and sick.
Sarah says
Oh, that stale and sick feeling! My sympathies. So discouraging! I love all Auntie Leila’s advice about cleaning, and especially her advice to open the windows when you dust and vacuum. Even when it’s cold (I live in a 120-year-old house in northern New England so I do know cold) I open two opposing windows in a tiny crack while vacuuming. The whole house feels so much fresher when I’ve changed the air.
Also, when my children were little I tried to get us out every day in the wimter. I would promise myself it only needed to be for 10 minutes, and sometimes we did spend far less time outside than all the suiting up had taken. Often, though, we loved it once we were out and stayed for a good long time. That changes the air in our lungs!
Amy says
Thank you Sarah!
Leila says
Amy, Sarah’s comments are so on target. Also wash all the bedding of course — but wash the pillows too! If they are not down, just throw them in the washer and dryer (on permanent press/medium). If they are down, you can wash them IF the seams are nice and tight, preferably “frenched” — i. e. doubled up. I have had a down pillow come open in the wash and, well, it’s better to just buy a new one, sigh. Put it in the dryer on high.
Once your pillows are laundered you are going to feel a lot better about everything.
Amy says
Thank you! My mother bought me a steam mop for Christmas that can be used on carpet, mattresses, and our couches as well. I think that will also help.
Tia says
By any chance do you have the model for that steam mop? Something you can use on carpeting seems genius!
Amy says
Yes, it’s a Haan steam mop. It is supposed to disenfect, sanitize, kill dust mites, etc. it only uses water. It’s amazing!
Tia says
By any chance do you have the model for that steam mop? Something you can use on couches seems genius!
Dixie says
Amy, we just recently went through a six-week sickness marathon, only our bronchitis turned into walking pneumonia! Not fun and, actually, a little scary. We found that the most important thing to do with the bronchitis/pneumonia was to not go outside AT ALL. The sickies should not even walk out to the mailbox in the cold air. And no church for anyone with a cough, even if they’re otherwise well enough. The cold air was the one thing that could keep setting us back even though we were resting, taking medicine, etc. Fresh air can be good for some kind of sicknesses, of course, but I would be really careful with the bronchitis 🙂 God bless and I hope you are all better soon!
Leila says
Dixie, that is interesting information. It makes so much sense, since warm, moist air is the best for calming coughs. Thus, cold, dry air will be bad, no?
I relied on my hot steam vaporizers constantly during the years we suffered from seemingly endless coughs and colds — and bronchitis and what have you. I think that cracking a window while cleaning is a good idea, but put the sickies in a different room!
Amy says
Dixie, thanks for this information. My son with bronchitis has finished his antibiotic, but his cough is still there, so I’m wondering if it could be walking pneumonia. I didn’t know that about the cold air.
sibyl says
I love every post! Your blog has been a source of comfort and relaxation. I recommend it to everybody. Thanks for sharing your family life with us all. Happy new year!
Leila says
Thank you so much, sibyl!
Lisa G. says
This is a very nice post. A Happy New Year to you all! And, Bridget – I find it very interesting that *you* , a young person, are mentioning the post about regretting the past. 🙂 God Bless.
Leila says
I know, Lisa! Gosh, makes you think.
Theresa says
I think I’m only a second-time commenter here, but I’m a long time reader! I’m so happy to have your favorite posts compiled here. I can already see there were a few I missed so I know what I’ll be up to tonight 🙂
Thanks for hosting the link up. I added my Year in Review!
Happy New Year!!
Leila says
Thank you, Theresa!
Debbie G says
I loved the post The Secret About Planning Menus – especially the piece of advice about the family holding back when guests are over. Need to implement that wisdom in my house!
Rebecca says
Sigh, Deirdre, I’m disappointed by your “vaccine debate” comment. If your child has tetanus or polio, putting them on the couch and feeding them nursery foods will not solve the problem!
Leila says
Rebecca, remember — not all vaccines — in fact, few — target life-threatening illnesses. In fact, the most commonly given ones are for illnesses that respond quite well to time on the couch and nursery foods, which are nothing to be scorned. Ask any epidemiologist — the need for chicken pox vaccines, flu vaccines, and pneumonia vaccines have much to do with public health issues like daycare, working parents using schools as daycare, and increased exposure to changing populations brought on by daycare and public schools.
Raising questions about defaulting to vaccines is not tantamount to relegating everyone to an unnecessary death by fatal illness. Nor does it mean rejecting vaccines in principle. Making distinctions and resisting false dichotomies only make everyone smarter.
It’s not only vaccines! How about antibiotic use? Knowing a little bit about basic nursing care can mean the difference between taking a powerful antibiotic and… not. For instance, one of my children had an infection in her toe. Because the toe is far from the center of the body, a very powerful antibiotic was prescribed. The second time the infection came around, I was reluctant to go there. The nurse *at that point* told me that hot soaks 3 times a day plus a topical antibiotic would take care of things — and they did.
The reason I hadn’t been told before was simple: It was assumed that I wouldn’t have time to administer that kind of care.
And then we wonder why we’ve become antibiotic-resistant…
Rebecca says
thanks for clarifying. I guess we have different frames of reference. I live in a third world country and it would absolutely not cross my mind to put vaccines and unnecessary antibiotics together in the same category. If the primary referent for you is the chickenpox and flu vaccines, then I agree with you – bring on the couch and nursery foods (which I do not scorn; the will-she-stay-on-the-couch test is a faithful guide to whether my 4 year old is truly sick or not). And you already said that you agree with me about polio and tetanus.. As for the ones in the middle of the spectrum, like measles and pneumonia, if a disease is not that serious in america that does not mean it is not elsewhere; if you want to travel to or live outside of the first world you should take that into account. But I guess you do have the privilege of treating measles as a couch-illness; here, kids did die in the epidemic last year.
Deirdre says
Please do be flexible and thoughtful about this — Did I say anything anti-vax? No. I said the “vaccine debate” would improve. Meaning, simply, that we need to get better at talking about the whole issue, and learning to take care of kids when they’re sick is part of that.
And yes, I am writing in America about the standard here; I think that can go without me saying! If I were addressing the (very different) topic of disease in the third world (where nutrition, access to water, and other factors are very different), I would have said so.
Deirdre says
I agree with everything my mom said above, Rebecca.
Of course I didn’t say that home nursing on the sofa would cure tetanus… and I never would, naturally. 🙂
My point is simply that we would be able to address the whole topic very differently if, as a culture, we were versed in basic home remedies and care and we weren’t driven by an economy that functions *on the assumption* that moms won’t be there to provide care for their kids and quarantine germs or, if they are there, they won’t know how.
Most moms in the current generation of moms don’t know how, and they don’t have helpful moms to ask (as I do) — hence my appreciation for a post that fills that gap in the collective memory.
The fact that we lump polio and tetanus in the same breath as the flu, chicken pox, or even measles is a great part of the difficulty.
Chiara says
Oh so many! You ladies are a source of delight and encouragement. Many a PHFR made me smile.
Re-read, bookmarked, shared: Hope for When You Regret the Past. My favorite.
Loved Five Food Thoughts. Can’t miss, quoting Joel Salatin!
Dining Room Reveal. So much fun, so clever! (Go Bridget!) The wall color is smashing. Also, I am bearing striped floors in mind for when there’s only a few boxes of X color left and it’s on sale.
For us personally, Relocation and the Desirability Quotient is a great framework that will prompt discussion and focus. Life is full of surprises, and we’ll be tackling this situation soon. So let’s make it great, right?
Leila says
Thank you, Chiara!
Thank you for reading!
mary says
LOVE your blog. My favorite post is Hope for When You Regret the Past. Have read, and re-read, and read again. Have it saved and will read it again and again. It just so resonated with me and gives me so much hope. May God bless all of you ladies; you may never know how much you have blessed your readers. Thank you!
Leila says
Thank you, Mary… glad that was of help. God bless!
Candy Hartmann says
I’ve been meaning to tell you that I received the books I won and to thank you again. I haven’t had time to begin reading yet, but hopefully will this week. Thanks again! Happy New Year!
Leila says
Enjoy, Candy!
Kim says
I love your posts! Your book has been a huge help for me in 2015.
Leila says
Thanks, Kim, so glad to hear it.
bobbi @ revolution of love says
Happy New Year and thanks for hosting! Now that my kiddos are back in school I’ll have a little time to sit down and read through your own top posts. 🙂
Leila says
Thank you, Bobbi, for linking!