Nine years ago, almost to the day, I started this blog. At first, it was a hey-mom-and-dad blog. Kev and I were freshly married and had just moved from Dallas to Chicago. A blog seemed like an efficient way to let our families know what we were up to. By the second or third post, I was typing out recipes, mostly the baked variety, with a side of crafting and knitting. Read more
Mom, why are they singing the same words again? Hal, that’s called a refrain or a chorus. It’s a pattern people use to write songs. The repetition helps to communicate the meaning. (This is an excerpt from a December conversation we had on the way to preschool one snowy morning while listening to the radio.) Red white, red white, red white. It’s a candy cane pattern, Mom! (She’s learning about patterns at school right now.) Read more
It’s January, and in January I always seem to tackle another problem area in my kitchen. The kitchen naturally comes with a complex set of issues. But the good news is, there are simple solutions to make the kitchen a friendlier space to cook in. I wrote a whole book about it (The Minimalist Kitchen). Today, I’m tackling the cabinets and drawers. Read more
This bathroom reveal is so bittersweet. It means means that I have one less room to design in our house. Kev told me once I finish our house, I have to use someone else’s money if I want to keep designing spaces. Ha! On the other hand, now that the house feels more like a home and less like a project, we’ve been filling it with our favorite people. That’s a really good thing. Now on to the Minimal Masculine Master Bathroom reveal. Read more
Margaret made the Lemon Meringue Pie every Thanksgiving. I only got to spend a couple of those with her. But each time she’d shuffle proudly into my mother-in-law’s kitchen (her daughter) with her homemade pie saying something like, “Isn’t that your favorite pie, Kevin?” It was a rhetorical question. It was everyone’s favorite pie at the Anderson Family Thanksgiving. Read more
I used to think gingerbread cookies were for decorating only. They were always teeth-shattering hard. But these cookies—they’re sturdy enough to decorate and soft enough to eat, using a super easy powdered sugar icing (not royal icing). Friends don’t let friends make rock hard gingerbread cookies. Bookmark this post. Read more
The Christmas decorations are up, and I’m already starting to twitch a little. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. I wince. The house looks festive but full, maybe too full, especially with the tiny messes in every corner. Hal, age 4, is into wrapping the whole house and putting it under the tree. She, like most of us, thinks that empty space needs filling. For that very reason alone, minimalism is hard. It’s hard to do less. Minimalism is a continual, deliberate choice that manifests itself even in the space between the last branch of the lit evergreen tree and the hardwood floors. How will we fill that space? That’s a question we’re asking ourselves more intentionally this year, especially now that Hal can comprehend our decisions. Read more
I have two favorite games in the kitchen. The first one: Dishwasher Tetris. He doesn’t realize we’re competing, but I always beat him. I can rearrange that appliance to fit every last dirty dish, even dishes Kev swears will never fit. And the second game: Fridge Foraging. (It’s important to note, these might be the only two games in life that I have the upper hand on Kev.) Read more
