The Weekly Best

The Weekly Best is a curated collection of my favorite finds from the week – a mix of everything inspiring, useful, or just plain fun! Each week, I’ll share a handful of things that caught my eye, from helpful tips and interesting events to must-have products, books, recipes, and more. Think of it as a little grab bag of discoveries to inspire, entertain, or add something new to your day.

Recently, I’ve had a lot of questions about our move and what brought us here, how we did it, etc. I promise to get to all of that. There is honestly so much to tell that I’ll just have to roll it out slowly. And like I said here, I think this is our 13th move and the first one overseas.

All of our moves have been for job or business related opportunities and this one was no different. We are definitely a family who has always held a sort of “Lord, we’re about to make a giant leap for this…..stop us if we’re not right”- kind of attitude, lol. It’s made for a very interesting and adventurous life and I look forward to telling you about it!

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Now without further adieu, lets get to this weeks “The Weekly Best”!

Are you savoring this cool weather? I’m honestly loving it. We’ve been heating the villa with just the little wood stove and I’ve gotten pretty good with fire starting using pine cones.It does a nice job of keeping the house warm, but the glass was getting dark from creosote build up and I couldn’t get it clean.

This Wood Stove/Fireplace Glass Cleaning Hack

Here’s a you tube post showing how to do it, but basically, you just take some wet paper towels and dip them into the fine (cool) wood ash and scrub it onto the glass. It takes it right off! Then wipe it clean with damp paper towels. No chemicals or scrubbing tools needed. Now our wood stove glass stays sparkling clean. Works like a charm. Not sure if I’m just late to the game on this one, but I’m really glad to have found such a simple solution!

We have a ring neck pheasant that hangs around our part of the village. Such beautiful, big birds! I hear him calling almost every morning when I’m hanging out our duvets to air. His screechy squawk sounds like a creaky hinge!

This Pheasant Artwork

I was perusing Etsy the other day and found this art work. I really love it and may have to get it for the house. It would look so nice in a vintage frame.

As I mentioned earlier, pinecones make amazing little fire starters. There is a pine forest, down by the sea and about once a week, Troy and I go down there before sunset to take a stroll and collect a bunch of pine cones.

This View

Oh you guys. The views! The waves rhythmically splashing on the rocks, the smell of the sea air. I look forward to it every week! It’s seriously like a little mini vacation for my central nervous system, lol. It’s so calming.

’m continually amazed by how much our household waste has decreased since moving here. There are likely several reasons for the change, but it’s genuinely surprising to see just how little we throw away each week now. One thing I use far less of compared to my time in the States is paper towels—I can’t believe how long a single roll lasts! A big factor in this shift is my introduction to tea towels!

These Tea Towels

I’m not a barbarian- I’ve always had dish towels of course, but I wasn’t aware of the usefulness of nice tea towels! They’re like the dish towels more refined cousin. I now keep a stack of them in the kitchen and use them for drying hands, placing in the bottom of the bread basket, for a casual place mat, drying glassware, even for wrapping salad greens to keep them fresh. I’m obsessed with them and have started my collection!

These are from a company called Forest and Linen and they’re hand made in a little shop Lithuania. Just beautiful! The shop wraps them really nicely too, so they would make a nice gift.

📷 photo credit Forest and Linen

Have you guys seen the Martha Stewart documentary? Oh. My. Gosh. I have no words……..and yet I have SO many words.

Martha Stewart Living shaped my thinking about my home as a young wife and mother. I LIVED to get that beautiful magazine in the mail. I cooked so many wonderful meals from those pages. It was Martha that inspired me to begin the tradition of creating elaborate gingerbread houses with the kids when they were little.

This Documentary

The documentary really showed, many times in her own words, the deep (sometimes disturbing) complexities of who Martha is as a person and just what an incredibly talented, hard working business woman she really is. And as I understand it, she’s not happy with the film at all.

Have you seen it? It’s on Netflix. Have you seen anything worth watching lately? Please share, we don’t watch much TV but it’s always nice to have something to turn to when we do!

I’m obsessed with pillar candles set in simple glass cylinders. Obsessed. They create the dreamiest atmosphere and they look good everywhere.

This Centerpiece

I put this candle in a vintage dough bowl for our dining table centerpiece. It looks good plain, but since we have an abundance of herbs here, I cut a good bit of rosemary and a few sprigs of lavender and placed them in the bowl around the cylinder. So simple but I love it! It smells so nice too. You could use acorns, chestnuts, pine sprigs, cranberries…….the list is endless.

I’ve been thinking about some sort of an advent arrangement for the table next, so we’ll see what I can come up with for that soon. If you’re interested in looking further into anything I’ve talked about today, I’ve added them for you below.

Our youngest son just arrived last night to visit for a bit and to get a change of pace from the city. We are looking forward to showing him around this week and of course to cooking lots of good food and laughter.

We’re spending Thanksgiving with a large group of friends here on the island and I’ve been asked to bring pies, so let’s hope I can find the ingredients that I need!

I hope you enjoyed The Weekly Best as much as I enjoyed writing it and I’m really looking forward to more! How was your week? What was the best?

If you want to read more, you might like:

Small Kitchen in the Stone Villa

A Quiet Morning in the Village

My Essential Skincare over 50; What’s Working for me!

Lashes over 50

You can pin any of these photos to Pinterest , by clicking on the Pinterest button and you can also find me there. I’d love to have you follow me in the LTK app. I’m brainstorming to curate truly useful content for you there- things that I use and love and that are truly helpful. And they’ve really improved that app to create more of a “hang out space”, and it just keeps getting better! I’m also on Facebook. Anywhere you share my content helps me out so much, so thank-you!