I made coasters. I needed some for my pretty-much-finished basement family room and for inspiration, I borrowed a theme I’d created on the wall of the same room. I call it my “two favorite cities” theme. {More on this later.} So I used maps of each of the two cities from an old atlas and followed the instructions at http://www.marthastewart.com/how-to/map-coasters.  I only have one mod-podge trick up my sleeve, and it’s probably not anything you haven’t thought of before: it is always so messy no matter how careful I am so I always keep a half wet/half dry paper towel on my workspace for a quick-fix for my gluey, sticky fingers.

They’re just your average mod-podge travel-looking coasters, but they tie into the room well and I think will hold up much better than the last non-mod-podge (glue-stick-only) coasters I made. Just ask my regular houseguests Erin, Rachelle, Robbie, and Zach.

Hi friends!

Sorry I’ve been gone so long; I’ve been absent due to turning a major corner in my personal life. Actually, it was simultaneously much less and much more dramatic than that: my baby finally started sleeping through the night.

So why, then, have I been blogging less, not more, you ask? I really don’t know. I guess I’ve been too sublimely happy even to open my laptop. I guess my mind has been too preoccupied with simple thoughts of rapture even to do the work of forming sentences. Nevertheless, I’m back, and I’m proud to say that a few of my brain cells survived.

My post today is just to say “hi” and that I missed you and that I couldn’t help but return in time to blog about autumn: my favorite season! Pumpkin and cinnamon and crispy weather and the prettiest version of deciduous trees you’ll ever find… what are your favorite things about fall?

Thanks to treelink.org for this picture.

This Wednesday, June 30, I’m launching a new blog with two of my besties. It’s called lemontree3 and we hatched the idea late one night in March. Now we’re making it come to life. In fact, you already know these two friends of mine because I wrote about them here. I’m so excited to be blogging with them. They’re both good writers and have interesting things to show and tell. I hope you’ll be even more enriched by reading lemontree3 than you’ve been so far by a-lemon-tree. You can subscribe to our new blog here.

As it did with the name, lemontree3 will probably also take over a lot of the content of this blog, though I haven’t yet decided what to do with www.a-lemon-tree.com. Dissolve it completely? Take it in a different direction? Any ideas?

Thanks for reading, friends. I am so honored that you’d share life with me.

XOXO,
Jocelyn

I had a sublime idea (if I do say so myself!) that I wanted to share with you all so that you can claim it as your own and reap all of the happy benefits. I call it: A picture a day for a month. I don’t know where the idea came from. I guess God.

If you’re unmarried or don’t have kids yet, archive this one for future reference.

For every day this month, my husband and I are emailing one picture of our 6-month-old Howard to his grandparents (and my sister). Sometimes it comes with a little caption; it always comes with the subject line: A picture a day for the month of June. They LOVE it. They might even text you if it gets to 8pm and you haven’t sent a picture yet. I seriously feel like the daughter-in-law of the year. And I’m really not. And it’s so easy (especially if you have a smart phone) and really fun!

Disclaimer: Be selective and wise in who you send the pictures to; not many people can tolerate a picture of your little one (as adorable as he or she may seem to you) every day for 30 days straight.

Just to whet your appetite, this was today’s entry:

Mom took me on a bike ride in our new bike trailer…