the perfect fall salad

It's the most wonderful time of the year... fall! I don't even know what that Christmas song is talking about. Autumn makes me feel the warm fuzzies like nothing else. When September hits, I only last a few days into the month before I start busting out the fall decor, looking up fall recipes on Pinterest, and dreaming about wearing booties and cozy scarves. Yeah, I'm pretty basic and easy to please.

One time my sister told me, "Whitney, you're so funny. You always talk about how much you hate cooking, but then you have so much fun making beautiful meals!"

It's so true! I really do have a love/hate relationship with cooking. I love making delicious, special, unique meals for the people who are most important to me. I hate the cleanup, lack of counter space, and those adorable grumbles from my kids, because once again, they don't like what I've made for dinner. Sigh. Ah well, autumn is the perfect excuse to do just that! Last night I made butternut squash soup and this gorgeous autumn salad with a maple dressing, of which I may have had four helpings (and only one of my kids complained!). It's simple and delicious and contains all the flavors of autumn. The dressing is adapted slightly from a recipe I found on The Yummy Life.

I made the salad by combining the following ingredients. You can use as much of each as you want. Just go with your instinct!

no more small, cheap toys!

Does anyone else hate tiny, cheap China-made toys like me? I'm pretty sure I just heard a chorus of mothers from around the world shout a resounding YES. Why are my kids always drawn to the dollar section at Target? Oh... probably because I am. (I just can't resist those tiny ceramic pumpkins!)

I'm not going to pretend to live a perfectly sustainable life, or as though we only buy fair trade items... not even close. In a perfect world, I wish! I am totally supportive of that lifestyle, but it's not really one we can afford, so when possible we buy used items. We are huge fans of thrift stores! But you can still have a consumeristic mindset, even at a thrift store. You know what they say; money can't buy happiness... even if that happiness seems to appear in the form of a gorgeous vintage copy of that particular book I've had my eye on, priced at only $2. Happy sigh. My kids love to play in the toy section at thrift stores, but I almost always say no when they ask to bring those toys home. Games, puzzles, and books are things we are always on the lookout for, but toys... not a big fan.

We have a few boundaries surrounding toys in our house. We have to, or things get crazy. Typically, we ask that people don't bring gifts to birthday parties. We have limited room and plenty of play things, and my kids really don't need more stuff. We would rather just invite friends over to have fun and celebrate our little people with us. And my kids know we don't buy toys for them unless it's a birthday, Christmas, or Easter. Ever. We just don't. I feel like it took a good year for my kids to stop asking for little things when we were out of the house, but eventually they did stop... for the most part.

With these boundaries in place, we can avoid the house filling up with useless junk. (And yet, we still tend to have useless junk laying around... how?!) The less toys my kids possess, the more fun they have... ironic, but not really surprising at all.

However, we still have this little problem of when they have pocket change. So far, we don't give our kids an allowance. I know it's a great way to give kids an experience with budgeting and wise spending, but I don't really have the desire to send my kids lose with $10 a month, or whatever. I think I'd rather them come up with creative ways to earn money instead. But I digress. Every once in a while, they might receive $2 from a family member, or find some change on the ground. It adds up, and eventually, they want to spend it.

I inwardly groan as I walk them through the toy section at Target or the aisles of Dollar Tree, which contain just about every disposable, cheap, plastic toy that I try my hardest to avoid bringing into the house! But now, we have a new rule, and everyone is happy.

Only buy activities.

This means no dolls, animal figurines, cheap tiaras, or Matchbox cars. Only things you can actually do. This rule works wonderfully because there's an end. No more tiny toys lying around. Sometimes there's the added bonus of getting my kids to actually work the little gears in their brains, or getting their hands busy.

Here's a list of inexpensive things they are allowed to purchase:

• Playdough
• Sparklers
• Glow sticks
• Puzzles
• Coloring books
• Maze books
• Sudoku
• Word searches
• Crayons, colored pencils, markers, etc.
• Paint
• Other craft/art supplies like felt, pipe cleaners, etc.
• Notebooks, paper
• Balls (I feel like one can never have enough balls, our always seem to go missing!)
• Jump ropes
• Healthy snacks
• Calculators 
• Books (only quality books... "twaddle" can be borrowed from the library)
• Beads
• Stickers
• Wooden toy kits
• Pegs to turn into dolls
• Seeds
• Bubbles
• Gardening tools
• Chalk

This worked out splendidly for us, and the other day after the first time I implemented this new rule, my kids enjoyed a fun 10 minutes of sparklers outside after the rain stopped yesterday. Austen bought herself a word search book that is helping with her reading, and Chase picked out a coloring book. Wins all around!

secret life of mothers

Me with my mom (far right) and sisters, Sky and Emma

I wrote this a couple years ago, but wanted to update it with a photo of my mom and I and a link to a rich, encouraging podcast. This story still rings in my heart to this day, and it frequently crosses my mind when I make little, daily sacrifices for my kids - some normal and almost missed, and some harder and more emotional.


On my mind today is a story my mom recently told me. We were taking a walk around the neighborhood and I mentioned how much shorter a mile is to me now than it was when I was little. I recalled a memory, saying, "I can't remember where we were walking, but we had to park somewhere down town when I was eight or nine. I remember you telling me it was about a mile-long walk to where we had to go, and I thought it took us forever to get there. I couldn't believe it was an entire mile. It was so hot and I remember being miserable."

"Oh, I know exactly what you are talking about!" my mom exclaimed. She continued to tell me about that day. I was in Girl Scouts and our troop was going to be on a float in a parade. She was getting over a kidney infection, but she didn't want me to miss the parade and she was a leader in the troop, so she took me despite the fact that her back was still very sore. Since there was no parking in the area where the parade was going to take place, we had to park the car pretty far away. There was no sidewalk so she couldn't take the stroller and had to carry my chunky 18-month-old brother the entire way, in the middle of summer, in the Texas heat.

I never knew all she went through to get me to that parade! My mom never complained about being a mother. Of course, I know some days were hard, but I don't remember that my mom was in pain, or that she was uncomfortable with a sore back carrying my little brother for a mile; I just remember having a ton of fun at that parade.

I am so thankful for my mom today. I never truly understood or appreciated all she did for me until I was a mother myself, and I hope I am able to give my own children good memories, and that I do it with grace, as she did. I am so thankful and honored that God has trusted these three beautiful little souls to me.

Happy mother's day to all my beautiful mama friends out there... mothers with one or five or twelve children. Mothers who are going it alone and hardly get a chance to breathe. Mothers whose children were brought to them through adoption. Mothers with aching hearts, who have lost babies before they even took their first breath. To women who have lost mothers and spend this day in mourning and to mother who have lost children. And to women who long to be mothers. To women who act as mothers to the lost and lonely. I hope you feel loved and appreciated today, and if you don't, know that God sees the sacrifices you have made for your children with your bodies, your minds, and your hearts.