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Holliday Lake is A Okay
Sundays are for parks. Well, if you asked me I would say that everyday is for parks. Sunday though, there’s something special about cruising along a windy road, watching the sun move around the sun as you wind your way around the state. One of the things we love is getting in the car and picking a direction. Sometimes we’ve planned it out, but more often than not, we’re just going in the direction that looks good. Often we’ll end up somewhere we’ve been before, but didn’t get the time to explore the first time. This time that drive brought us to Holliday Lake State Park in Virginia. The large…
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Spring in Nippon
As you may have noticed by the overwhelming amount of flowers on this blog, I love flowers. I mean, I LOVE them. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a flower I didn’t like. Even flowers that are “ugly”, see Rafflesia, the largest and stinkiest flower in the world, bring something to the table, botanically speaking. Therefore, even those ugly things are kind of pretty. Anyway, as a return to collage, I went with a frequent Inspiration. Oh, by return, I mean it’s the first time I’ve cut or glued in about 3 months. Something I go back to over and over are the patters, people, and animals of Japan. I…
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Mysterious Mystery Shells along the Potomac
One of the things my partner and I love most is traveling to different parks in our State. We’re super lucky to live in Virginia for a multitude of reasons, but our parks and recreation are superb! They aren’t free, but they are well maintained, always have staff, and boast some pretty great campgrounds. In a future post I’ll write about this amazing program that they offer where you can collect enamel pins like the little cutie below. While on one of our recent trips, we took the day and went galivanting a little ways north to a few state parks we hadn’t visited yet. Boy were we greeted with…
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March Date Night at Brenner Pass!
We don’t eat out a lot. Well, let me rephrase that. We do eat out, but it’s either cheap friend chicken from a gas station, an Italian sub from WAWA, or some fancy ass restaurant where we enjoy the experience that comes along with eating there. I’ve been really lucky to have been able to have some really, really delicious meals in the last decade or so. 1919 and Marmalade in San Juan, Puerto Rico just to name a few. A few years ago while traveling for work, I ate around Austin and San Diego too. Where I live, here in Richmond, there’s a food scene that’s been up and…
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My bathroom rainbow
A year or so ago, I asked my husband to figure out a way to cover up a small window in a downstairs bathroom. He does an amazon cruise and finds this awesome plastic film looking stuff that sticks to the window. Think the thing that clings to the bottom of your bathroom tub, but cute and no gross feet on the bottom. After you measure out the amount and pop it on the window, it gets colorful right away! When the morning light comes in through the side of the house, around 8am, the kaleidoscope pattern on the cling creates the most beautiful rainbow splashed across the wall, door,…
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Peony perfection
Do you ever see a flower and are stopped by how beautiful it is? It happens to me every, single, time I see a peony. I’m mesmerized by the petals and the colors. I love the gentle fragrance that wafts from the stems. I think they’re my favorite of all the flowers. Being new to gardening, I’ve not taken the time to grow them in my own garden, but I think next year, I might! Let’s learn a little big more about this perfect flowers. Peonies (genus Paeonia) are a stunning ornamental flower with roughly 30 different types of species. All but 2 of the known species are native to Asia…
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Welcome Smolr.com to the big, internet world!
Welcome to Smolr.com. I’m Carrie and I’m so glad you’re here. There are days when the world feels so…big. Even for me, as a 40something, I get overwhelmed with everyday things and need some time to enjoy the little things. Sometimes that means literal tiny things that make me squeal with delight and sometimes that means thinking about things within my influence and living with an intent. Whatever it is, follow along with me, my partner, my smaller human, and my frenchies as we try to make our smol way through a really big world.
