Saturday Afternoon Chat: Teaching my kids about Whitney Houston and a shared moment with strangers

October 4, 2025October 4, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 18 Comments

Good afternoon! Care for a cup of tea?

Which one would you like to try?

Simply Cinnamon Apple?

Salted Caramel?

Peppermint Bark?

Pumpkin Spice?

I personally liked the peppermint bark, but not as much as plain peppermint.

The last couple of days we have been celebrating Little Miss as she turned 11 on Thursday. We didn’t mean to celebrate her for four days but that’s how it worked out because activities we wanted to do with her were spread out a bit.

On Thursday she wanted to have pancakes at a diner downtown so her brother and I took her down. She had chocolate chip pancakes and a fresh fruit cup. The owner sang happy birthday to her.

The diner was decorated very nicely for fall. This diner always does a very nice job at decorating, from what I understand, but I have only visited there twice. My dad and son have visited there more.

After breakfast, we hung out at home for a bit and then Little Miss and I headed to my parents’ for some pizza and to celebrate her birthday with them.

We played a board game called Aggravation and Little Miss won (with a little help from Grandma and me this time, but usually she wins outright on her own). What was funny was my dad was going to play but sat down in his room for a few minutes and drifted off to sleep. I decided I would play for him and for myself until he woke up, but in the end, he didn’t wake up until the game was almost over.

Dad usually wins at this game, and he almost won this time, even though he was asleep. He was three spots from winning when my mom sent him home again because she didn’t have any other moves she could make.

After we played board games, Little Miss had an animal club meeting on Zoom and then she went home and rode bikes with her brother and then …. Yes, there is more… they watched two Disney movies. She really wrung every last minute out of her birthday and crashed pretty hard that night.

The Husband had to work on her birthday but yesterday he took the day off and we all went out to dinner at a nice restaurant and then they all went in Walmart to pick out a new dog bed and a gifts for the dog because that is what Little Miss wanted to do for her birthday. She also picked out a gift for her friend who is coming for a sleepover today because that little girl’s birthday was this past Monday.

I stayed in the car due to a sore leg and read my book. It was very cozy.

Tomorrow we are headed to a reptile zoo called Reptileland because Little Miss loves reptiles.

We are already fairly tired from celebrating already. By tomorrow night The Husband and I will be virtually comatose. We will be this way because we are, as Little Miss has reminded us a few times this week — old.

She’s been watching YouTube Shorts making fun of life in the 1990s and early 2000s and asking us if that is what it was really like “back then.”

It is hard to accept those years are so long ago, so I just pretend they aren’t and ignore her. Ha!

To show how old I am and how I have failed at educating my children about the 1990s — I learned yesterday that neither of them knew who Whitney Houston was. They sort of rolled their eyes when I mentioned her. There was some meme that mentioned her and my almost 19-year-old son said, “I don’t even know who that is.”

I was horrified and pulled up YouTube to educate them. They did recognize “I Want to Dance With Somebody” and “I Will Always Love You,” but I also made them watch her doing the Star Spangled Banner and The Boy was blown away.

“Okay, yeah, she was amazing,” he told me.

I went to tell him how she threw her life away and it was so heartbreaking to me and started to cry. She shouldn’t have died so young. No matter her talent and her beauty, she never seemed to feel worthy enough to enjoy her life of happiness and health and that always broke my heart. Now all we have left of her is her music and memories and we should have had her for so much longer.

Thank God we still have her friend and my favorite female singer CeCe Winans.

I am going to have to show them videos of CeCe this week too.

Earlier in the week I saw a beautiful sunset and even though I’m having an issue with my sciatica and leg, I made it outside to take a photo. While I was there, two guys (probably about my age) riding bikes came by our house. We do have some bike or foot traffic on our street but it is a back street so we don’t as often as some streets.

I was startled a little by them but had to laugh when the one guy looked at the sunset, pumped his fist and yelled out “’Merica!”

The other guy, with a shirt or something wrapped around the top of his head, looked up at me smiling and said, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

I said it was, and they kept going while smiling and left me smiling.

Later, Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) told me she thought it was cool that we’d had that shared moment together. I hadn’t thought of it that way, and her comment made me think.

After weeks of anger, hatred, and just all out sadness in the world, it was nice to have that shared moment of joy while admiring a gorgeous sunset.

The photos do not do it justice.

How about you?

How was your week last week? Anything exciting coming up for this week?

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot Oct. 3

October 2, 2025October 2, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 16 Comments

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it. Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.

Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.

Today is my daughter’s 11th birthday so we started our day with a pancake breakfast at a local diner. This afternoon we had some pizza with her grandparents and this weekend we have a lot of other events planned, including a sleepover with a friend and a trip to a zoo called Reptileland. Yes, they have a lot of reptiles.

I hope all of you are having a great week!

Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.

We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!

WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!

This week we are spotlighting: Bettie G’s RA Seasons!

A little about Bettie:

I’ve been blogging for a few years now, and thought it would be fun to share a little more of who I am with all of you.And in the process, I hope that you will feel comfortable to share a little of your story with me as well.

I was raised in a Christian home, and my Mom told me that I asked Jesus to come into my heart when I was only 4 years old. But when I was 9 years old, and sitting in my Sunday School class listening to my favorite teacher praying, I suddenly realized that I could not remember telling Jesus that I wanted to live for him. That conviction caused me to stand up in front of all my friends and say that I wanted to spend my life following Jesus forever. It’s been an adventure ever since.

Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!

And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:

Such a relaxing post from Thrifting Wonderland

(Beautiful decorations, as always, from Debbie Dabble Blog!)

(Very cute idea for fall activities with littles!)

Banana chocolate muffins. Need I say more?

Important things to know about the link up:

You may add unlimited family-friendly blog post links, linked to specific blog posts, not just the blog.
Be sure to visit other links and leave a kind comment for each link you post (it would be too hard to visit every link, of course!)
The party opens Thursday evening and ends Wednesday.
Thank you for participating. Have fun!

*By linking to The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot Link Up, you give permission to share your post and images on the hosts’ blogs.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Sunday Bookends: Disappointed in humanity but enjoying silly books to forget all that

September 28, 2025September 28, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 21 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This past week was rainy and muggy but our leaves are changing and at least our nights are cooler.

The feel of autumn is in the air for sure on those cooler nights. The apple fritter scented candle my husband picked up this weekend is helping that mood even more.

Yesterday the kids and I took advantage of the “nicer” weather we had after a week of rain and headed to a playground about twenty minutes from us. It was a gloomy and muggy day, but the kids still had fun playing on the zipline and in the creek. Little Miss made a new friend she might never meet again but they had fun at least.

I capped off my night with a Cary Grant movie, The Talk of the Town. It was a bit of a quirky film that was supposed to be a comedy but bordered on a drama at times.

This week I am going to work on being less overwhelmed with the world. To do that I am going to try to go on a media fast of sorts. Very limited scrolling and almost no news. My nervous system is overstimulated, overworked, over…something.

I have a lot going on with my parents’ health right now and some other things in life so I can’t take on the hurts and pains of the world too.

And I do take them on. When I see people hurting and then see people who do not care about that hurt because they have become desensitized to the pain of others with the 24/7 news cycle I start to realize that people around me are also probably thinking these horrible things that people are writing online too. It feels like people care less these days unless it is some political cause they are behind and while they are promoting that political cause they are tearing down others and yelling that is actually the other people tearing them down.

It’s exhausting and I’ve heard this over and over and over recently —that our brains were not built for all this news and 24/7 stimulation from social media. As a pastor I listen to once said, “We were not meant to be walking around with the entire world accessible via our butt bone.”

Of course he was talking about people who slide their phones in their back pockets and can slide it out at any time and at any time see the horrors of the world unfolding in real time. We can see good things too but we all know that the worst of the worst that is happening is what sells news and makes people stop scrolling.

More of us need to put our phones down and actually interact with people. As an introvert this is hard for me to say. I don’t like people. Ha. I know there are good people out there, though, and we need to find those people and interact with them more and the grumpy mouthy people on the internet less.

It’s a goal anyhow and I want to work more toward it.

Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are still hosting crafternoons but completely blanked on setting up a date on September. We both started homeschooling and had other events and all of the sudden September was over. It’s crazy to me how fast it went by!

We will be announcing a date for October later on, probably next week.

If you are wondering what Crafternoons are it is a monthly Zoom meet up where we get together with other bloggers/crafters and do a craft while we chat about life and books and all kinds of other things. We do our best not to focus on religion or politics so we don’t depress ourselves.

If you are interested in the crafternoon, you can find more information here.

Erin and I are also hosting a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. It is almost over for September but you can still get your bookish links in. They do not have to be recent posts, just related to books in some way. I’ll have a new link party up on Wednesday.

I am finishing up the Nancy Drew book The Clue of the Broken Locket and will probably take a bit of a Nancy break.

These books were written for the youth of the day back in the 1930s and then rewritten a bit in the 1950s, so I get that there is some unrealistic stuff in there, but did they not know about concussions back then? I suppose they didn’t but these characters are always taking headshots waking up, getting a cold cloth on their head and a drink of water and then continuing on their day. Like in this book, a huge rock was thrown through a front door, supposedly hit the couch, and knocked two people forward where they hit their heads on the hearth and were both knocked unconscious at the same time.

Hmm….oookay….let’s go on and believe that could happen but then let’s also believe that no one thought they should take both of these people to a hospital to have them checked out???

So the Nancy Drew books can be silly at times, but they aren’t written for adults, and the mysteries themselves are actually very interesting and sometimes even give me ideas for my own book. I suppose that is why I keep reading them off and on. All that being said, it is time for a little break and to read something more mature.

That’s why I’m reading The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. Hahahaha! Really I just have a goal to reread The Chronicles of Narnia so I am reading another children’s book but it’s less annoying than the Nancy Drew books can be.

I am actually reading an adult book by Agatha Christie called Come, Tell Me How You Live but I put it down somewhere in the house and could not find it all week. I found it yesterday finally!

So I shall be reading an adult book this week!

I am also starting one of my fall books, A Fatal Harvest by Rachael O. Phillips, this week since I will finish Nancy Drew today and probably will finish the Narnia book later in the week.

I might start Death of a Gossip by M.C. Beaton this week too, depending on my mood. It’s the first book in the Hamish MacBeth Mystery series. And Emma Lion. I totally forgot I want to start that this week! That might come before Death of a Gossip.

Little Miss and I are going to finish up The Good Master this week. We did not read it last week for some reason.

I’m not sure what The Husband is reading at the moment because I forgot to ask him before he went upstairs for a nap before work and I’m going to publish this before he gets up.

The Boy isn’t reading a book right now but he’s getting ready to read a book based on the Halo games.

This past week I watched less TV than normal but I did watch one of the worst Murder, She Wrote episodes I’ve ever seen. I’ve seen a couple of stinkers and this one was…well, weird and creepy. Jessica essentially had a college guy stalking her. A college guy who looked about 30, I might add. Either way he was obsessed with her and all older women. It was …. Ew.

The Husband and I later watched another one that wasn’t very good either. That’s how it is with series, though, there are good and bad ones. Can’t be helped when a series runs for 12 years!

I stared a movie called The Talk of the Town with Cary Grant last night but didn’t finish it yet. It’s weird. That’s all I can say. It’s also funny. Cary is accused of burning down a building with a person trapped inside but escapes from jail and Jean Arthur decides to let him stay at her rental house even though a law professor is renting out the house at the same time. Cary must prove his innocence to the professor played by Ronald Colman.

It’s a bit crazy, in other words, but I really had an itch to watch an old movie.

I also enjoyed this video about comforting reads from a new-to-me vlogger:

Last week I worked a bit on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School.

I also pulled my books out of Kindle Unlimited on Amazon because I feel like Amazon takes advantage and rips of indie authors. My ebooks and paperbacks are still for sale there but they will not be exclusive there anymore. I also introduced new book covers for the Gladwynn books.

On the blog I shared:

|| Embrace Autumn: Tea Breaks and Kitchen Moments by Thrifting Wonderland ||

|| Insomnia: The Nightmarish Gift That Keeps on Giving by Coffee Addicted Writer ||

|| Things I Know by From This Side of the Pond ||

Please keep praying for Mama’s Empty Nest’s family:

|| Traumatic Thursdays by Mama’s Empty Nest ||

Now It’s Your Turn

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this. Link up below if you want to:

This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date. Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Reading Reality.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot September 26!

September 25, 2025September 25, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 7 Comments

Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.

This week fa truly set in and we also finally got some much-needed rain. When I say fall set in, I want to be clear that the temps didn’t necessarily get cooler. In fact, it was humid and sticky most days as the rain came in.

The trees are changing beautifully but I am sad that the leaves are already almost the way off our tree in the backyard.

What is the weather like where you are?

Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!

This week we are spotlighting: Postcards from the Third Planet

Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!

And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:

These dishes look amazing! And that doctor is infuriating!

(Wonderful Tribute to Gail’s Mom)

(What a beautiful Alaskan cruise)

No need to try to fix a reading slump!

Important things to know about the link up:

You may add unlimited family-friendly blog post links, linked to specific blog posts, not just the blog.
Be sure to visit other links and leave a kind comment for each link you post (it would be too hard to visit every link, of course!)
The party opens Thursday evening and ends Wednesday.
Thank you for participating. Have fun!

*By linking to The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot Link Up, you give permission to share your post and images on the hosts’ blogs.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Birthday celebration, Supernatural, and changing leaves!

September 20, 2025September 20, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 10 Comments

Good afternoon! How are you all doing?

Glad you stopped by for a chat and thanks to my sister-in-law’s gift of some new teas, I can offer you some different varieties.

She even brought them in a very cute little basket that Little Miss had fun rearranging yesterday. She plopped my jar of honey right in the middle of the teas.

I have never tried the cold tea brews before so I am excited to do that later this week.

The Boy has already tried the pumpkin spice one and has loved it.

Yesterday was my birthday and The Husband took me to a very fancy restaurant in our area that he’s been saying he wanted to take me to for a long time.

Every time we would drive by it on our way to cities southeast of us, he would say, “I’m going to take you there for our anniversary one day.”

Well, he didn’t for our anniversary, which was totally fine with me, but he did for my birthday, and it absolutely lived up to the hype.

We sat out on the patio overlooking a creek and a tiki torch, as well as the walking trails. The weather was absolutely perfect, even if the trees had not changed as fast as the ones near us are changing.

The food was much fancier than what we would normally eat and absolutely incredible. I’ve never tasted steak like that. It was like butter in my mouth it was so tender. I mean, it tasted like steak not butter, but I think you get what I mean.

I gave my daughter a sample when I got home and she said she had no idea what I meant by the butter comment and sort of looked annoyed at me, but for me it was amazing.

The Husband had chicken marsala.

We both had potatoes with a fancy name, which the waitress explained was simply mashed red potatoes with the skin on. Ha! Fancy name or not, the potatoes were insanely good.

It was very relaxing to sit there and look out over the small creek that runs on the property. They have a botanical garden somewhere but we didn’t find it. They also have a garden on the property where they grow food for the restaurant. So, it is essentially farm to table.

The restaurant is also an inn and it’s a gem in the middle of nowhere really. It’s not in a bigger city near us — it’s a little bit away from a small “city” near us but there really isn’t anything else around it. I will say I felt a little out of place there, since I would say most of the clientele is in a different financial bracket than my me and my husband. I ignored those feelings, though, and made up stories in my head about the people around us as I waited for our food.

I decided the man sitting behind my husband, who did look a bit tired and unshaven, though well dressed, was a businessman who hadn’t yet told his wife that things were falling apart. He was also a closet gambler and alcoholic.

The young waiter who looked about 16 but was probably older, was a rich kid made to work there after his family kicked him out because he was an entitled brat who felt he didn’t have to do anything to contribute to his family, alone society. (Of course I didn’t really think this about the kid, despite the weird side eye he gave me on the way by — these are just stories I made up!)

Then there was the group of friends all in their 50s or 60s who were sitting in chairs along the creek, sipping their various alcoholic drinks.

I definitely knew they could be the basis of a murder mystery and tried to choose which one might get knocked off first. I chose the one man in white shorts and blue polo holding his cocktail, looking annoyed as everyone else pulled chairs up to sit next to him. I also imagined he used the word “insufferable” a lot in every day conversation, especially when referring to some of the women around him.

Most of the men and women in the group were wearing blue tops and white pants. I don’t know if that is a rich person thing or just a style choice. Either way, they all looked lovely and like they were having a good, yet slightly annoying time. By “slightly annoying” I mean none of them were really smiling much. They seemed somewhat annoyed at each other. Gosh, looking back, maybe they had come from a funeral or something. Like the funeral of their murdered friend….

Okay, yes, I need to stop reading and watching so many murder mysteries.

The man behind us was in the middle of an interview for a job at State Farm with a guy who made a lot of dad jokes, so I don’t think he needed a made up story. He just needed an escape. I didn’t hear the first comment, but I did hear when the older man said, “Because we’re always there. Get it? Like State Farm is there…”

There was some nervous laughter that trickled around the table and then the sales pitch to join the team started after that.

After dinner, we headed to where all birthday girls around here go — Walmart. Ha! Actually, The Husband ran in to grab some bottled water my parents. We made a quick stop after that and picked up a treat for the kids.

At home I watched a couple episodes of Supernatural with The Boy, but don’t know if I will do that again. I enjoyed them to a point, but they were also quite disturbing in parts.

It was hard to see Jared Padalecki as anyone but Dean on Gilmore Girls and it was confusing that his name was Sam in this show, but his brother was Dean. I kept getting confused.

Speaking of The Boy — he got his driver’s permit yesterday and we were so happy for him. He was a little nervous about the test but it turned out to be much easier than he thought. Though he has waited a bit to get his permit, he has been driving grandpa’s tractors and truck around his property for a couple of years now, so he knows what he is doing.

Right after he passed the test my dad actually took him driving around some backroads for a couple of hours.

We are definitely having fall weather and fall vibes in our neck of the woods right now. The trees are changing fast and falling down on the ground. It seems like we got our color much quicker than I thought we would and I am trying to enjoy it as much as I can before our trees are bare.

When even more of the trees have changed we plan to go leaf peeping and admire the views.

I hope to post some photos for all of you of the leaves on here but I am having an issue with WordPress,, who says my storage is almost full and they want me to pay even more than what I do so I can add more storage.

I’m rejected the idea of paying more by backing up some old posts, deleting them from this blog, and moving them to a backup blog. These are posts from seven or eight years ago, not recent ones.

I’ve also been combining photos on collages I’ve made in Canva to help cut down on how much storage space I am using.

Another blogger friend of mine, Mama’s Empty Nest, has been struggling with this for months now. She’s also been struggling with a lot more as her husband had to undergo an emergency surgery and her daughter was admitted to the hospital after going into labor way too early. I don’t know if she has mentioned this on her blog yet, but the baby did not make it and I just ask that you pray for that family right now. This would have been her daughter’s second child, as she has an older daughter. The little girl is around the same age as Little Miss and was really looking forward to a sibling. Just please pray for their healing and comfort at this time.

Luckily, Mr. Empty Nest is doing fairly well after his surgery, but I just can’t imagine how hard it was for him and his wife with him recovering and their daughter suffering as she lost her little one in the hospital.

I would say that I am ending my post with some sadness, but there is also joy in the story. This little one has gone back to Jesus where her family will meet her again one day and her grandpa is getting healthier by the day and will be able to spend more time with her older sister. There is some joy in the midst of heartache, thankfully.

This upcoming week isn’t yet a busy one for us, but we will see how that goes.

Do you have anything interesting planned for next week?

Did you do anything interesting last week?

Let me know in the comments. I’d love to know.

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot September 19

September 18, 2025September 18, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 8 Comments

Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.

Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!

This week we are spotlighting: Deb’s World

A little about Deb: My name is Debbie but you can call me Deb – all my friends do!

I’m an Australian midlife, travel, adventure and lifestyle blogger.

I’m a bit quirky, full of energy, enthusiastic, into social media, sharing things and looking for the positives.

I am Debbie – a wife; mother; grandmother; daughter; sister; friend; blogger; reader; runner; walker; cyclist; Rail Trail enthusiast; traveller; Rotarian; Whovian; former teacher.

My aim is to make you smile, educate you in some way, maybe inspire you and to share my world, while learning about your world.

Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!

And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:

Yaaaay! Autumn decorations are out at Debbie’s!

(Many of us certainly need a digital detox right now!)

(Love the versatility of these pants!)

Important things to know about the link up:

You may add unlimited family-friendly blog post links, linked to specific blog posts, not just the blog.
Be sure to visit other links and leave a kind comment for each link you post (it would be too hard to visit every link, of course!)
The party opens Thursday evening and ends Wednesday.
Thank you for participating. Have fun!

*By linking to The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot Link Up, you give permission to share your post and images on the hosts’ blogs.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot for September 12

September 11, 2025September 11, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 12 Comments

Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.

This week was a really rough news week for many reasons (reflecting on 9/11 today in addition to all of the other horrible news) so I had to withdrawal as much as I could and reach for comfort reads and watches. Plus, it’s fall and that’s the kind of stuff I enjoy reading and watching in fall anyhow. What kind of shows and books do you watch when you want to feel cozy and comforted?

Think of that while I introduce you to your hosts:

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!

This week we are spotlighting: Creatively Beth

A little about Beth: Hey there, I’m Beth and Welcome to Creatively Beth where you will find crafts, DIYs, and printables that are fun, easy, and cute! I am the FUN Aunt who loves to doodle, paint, and create with and for the kiddos. I am a craft hoarder and a maker at heart who lives to stroll the clearance aisle and go thrifting.

Designing and crafting since childhood with my Gran I was constantly sewing doll clothes, learning needlepoint, making macramé plant hangers, and decoupaging EVERYTHING, but hey it was the 70’s! She was the true inspiration for my creative exploration, which continues to this day. (Read more at the link above!)

Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!

And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:

This mosaic is so beautiful!!

(Love this message of showing love)

(These trees are amazing!!)

Oh gosh…banana cobbler!

Important things to know about the link up:

You may add unlimited family-friendly blog post links, linked to specific blog posts, not just the blog.
Be sure to visit other links and leave a kind comment for each link you post (it would be too hard to visit every link, of course!)
The party opens Thursday evening and ends Wednesday.
Thank you for participating. Have fun!

*By linking to The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot Link Up, you give permission to share your post and images on the hosts’ blogs.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot September 5

September 4, 2025September 5, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.

It is officially fall here in Pennsylvania! Whoo-hoo! The leaves are changing, the days and nights are cooler, and our school days have started. Little Miss is the only one homeschooling this year so that is an adjustment for me. I’m surviving but miss picking out curriculum for my son…who mainly ignored it for two years anyhow while he was in technical school.
As I’m finishing this post it is raining outside and it is so cozy. I love autumn!

Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!

This week we are spotlighting: Is This Mutton

A little about Gail: Is This Mutton? Is all about fashion and fun for the over 50s.

We are vital, energetic and fashionable, and blessed with wisdom and experience. We spend the most money of all the demographics on beauty and fashion.

We certainly don’t need click bait articles and newspapers telling us what the over 50s should and should not wear! And we don’t want to wear elasticated skirts, except on Christmas Day.

What we really hate is being represented by pictures of people in their 80s with walking sticks, or described as “grandmothers”, “ageing gracefully” or “silver surfers.” Would these epithets be applied to men over 50 by the media? No.

The title, “Is this Mutton?” refers to a saying in the UK, “mutton dressed as lamb,” usually applied to older women in a derogatory sense. Consequently, women over the age of 40 are made to worry about looking like mutton.

The blog was created by Gail, a woman in London whose background includes journalism and marketing director.

Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!

And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:

I love this dress!

(This is such a fun tour in Wisconsin!)

A post with some good news

Some glowing skin advice in this one

Important things to know about the link-up:

You may add unlimited family-friendly blog post links, linked to specific blog posts, not just the blog.
Be sure to visit other links and leave a kind comment for each link you post (it would be too hard to visit every link, of course!)
The party opens Thursday evening and ends Wednesday.
Thank you for participating. Have fun!

*By linking to The Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot Link Up, you give permission to share your post and images on the hosts’ blogs.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Saturday Afternoon Chat: I don’t like change and changes are coming

August 30, 2025August 30, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 18 Comments

This summer has brought a lot of changes, and I am not a person who adjusts well to changes.

Some of these changes I can’t write about because they aren’t my changes to talk about. One of them I can’t talk about because it hasn’t been made public in our area yet.

I can say that the changes and adjustments have involved employment situations, my aging parents’ health, and my own health.

Some of them are serious and scary, but I’m hopeful that my own health issues are something I can deal with by making even more adjustments to my diet and supplements.

One thing I do know with my health so far is that I do have some autoimmune issues going on. Doctors just aren’t sure which issues yet.

As for my parents, they are getting older and struggling with some issues, including whether they want to stay in their house or not. Their health and age is a big part of that decision.

As Summer draws to an end, though, I am looking forward to some cozy days this fall. I enjoy the weather when it is cooler. I function better physically and mentally on cooler days. I don’t function great on super cold days unless I am inside under a blanket with my warm rice packs.

I’m actually looking forward to those days. I get more writing done for my books in the fall and winter, which is probably why book four of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries is going so slow.

In the Summer I feel like I have to be busy and do things because “it’s nice out”. This Summer whatever autoimmune condition I had got worse, though, so I couldn’t do that as much as I wanted. The symptoms that go so bad were mainly the exhaustion and achy legs, the dizziness and the anxiety. I learned I have to put more salt on things, drink electrolyte drinks, and simply eat more regular meals. I have this tendency to eat a protein but not add carbs or veggies to it. By the afternoon I feel like a wet noodle.

In the last couple of weeks I’ve cut out gluten, reduced sugar, and added more vegetables, though I’m still not at the level of veggies I should be at.

I’m reaching for grapes or apples instead of chocolate, but still have a square or two of the Aldi brand chocolate, which tastes so much better to me than most of our American brands. I’m taking four supplements — Iron (with B12, b6, and vitamin c), garlic, probiotics, and an elderberry gummy with elderberry, vitamin D, and vitamin C.

I’m noticing small changes. I still don’t have a ton of energy, but I do have a little bit more. My weak legs aren’t quite as weak on some days. My achy legs are a bit less achy. The anxiety was still there and intense at the beginning of this week but by mid-week it had actually faded some and on Thursday when I had a doctor appointment to discuss all his it had actually gone away. Praise the Lord!

Even without knowing what autoimmune issue I have (pretty sure it is thyroid related since I already have hypothyroidism), the diet change is helping immensely.

Shifting gears a little….

Have you ever watched those reunion videos with mothers hugging their sons or grandparents with their grandchildren after not seeing them for a long time? It’s always a surprise and everyone is crying and then I’m crying.

Sometimes I’m crying because it is so sweet and sometimes I am crying because I think about how wonderful it would be to hug my grandmothers or aunts again.

I think about how wonderful that feeling must be for those people and how wonderful it would be to feel the same. I know why the relatives of the soldiers who return are crying so hard. They thought that soldier might not return alive. They don’t say it out loud, but it is tucked there in the back of their mind and then when they are finally holding them in their arms it all breaks loose. They aren’t injured. They aren’t dead. They are here in their arms and all those worries and fears just rush out in that moment.

Shifting gears again…

Did I mention that the weather is cold right now?

Like, for instance, while I am working on this post at 11:30 in the morning it is 61 degrees out! In August!

I know that summer weather isn’t done with us yet, though. Pennsylvania has been known to drop temps in the 80s on us right up until October and sometimes into October so we are going to enjoy these nice cooler temps but not plan on them staying.

I can tell you, though, I am already gearing up for hot cocoa, apple cider, leaves crunching under my feet after they’ve fallen off the trees. The leaves are actually already falling but they are just brown and dead, which makes me nervous that we won’t have pretty fall foliage. We will just have to wait and see but even without it we can have all the fall feelings.

I’m definitely an autumn person. I love the chill in the air, the smell of the leaves, hayrides (or watching others go on them at least), reading books under a blanket on the front porch while colorful leaves fall around me.

I’m not a fan of pumpkin spice anything or Halloween, however. I don’t hate either but they aren’t what I look forward to most. However, I might actually try something with pumpkin spice this year just for fun.

This next week Little Miss and I will be doing school every day after Monday, so while we were easing into it before we are fully immersing ourselves this week.

We are studying Paleontology for science for the first half of the year. In English, we are reading The Good Master and will be tackling parts of speech and sentence diagramming.

In History, we are reading about the early days of our country, but later will begin moving into some more modern history through historical fiction. I’m not sure which book we are reading first but there is a list of them that I am looking forward to.

Math is being studied through CTC Math, an online program out of Australia, for now. Art is going to be fun this year since I purchased Little Miss a huge art set with all types of paint and canvases. I hope we will be able to take a few online classes.

It looks like we might not be joining a co-op this year since the co-op that was local might have dissolved, but I am still looking into that and 4-H classes.

How have you been doing? Have you done anything exciting to finish out your summer if you are in the northern hemisphere? If you are in the southern hemisphere, are you planning anything exciting for your spring?

Let me know in the comments. I love catching up with you all.

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