Links for Your Weekend: Hometown Edition

Several times when our kids were little, Tom and I celebrated our anniversary by lining up my parents to watch the kids, booking a hotel room, and treating ourselves to an anniversary staycation of shopping, movies, and dinners out. I can’t say for sure how many times we did it, maybe it was only once or twice, but the memories still stand out all these years later.

We recreated the staycation tradition a few years back, and then again last year for our 28th anniversary. More good times. More good memories. Even though we’re no longer young parents in need of a break, being at play in our hometown evokes the same feelings.

It may be those good staycation memories that caused me to take notice of  The World Outside Your Window at the HOLSTEE Mindful Matter blog. This quote particularly struck me:

If we applied the same measure of curiosity towards where we live as the places we tear out of magazines, dream about, book time off work and travel to, I wonder how much more we’d enjoy our everyday lives.

Such an interesting thought, don’t you think?

Tomorrow is our 29th anniversary, and we’re skipping the hotel this year, but we do plan to visit City Market in the morning and have dinner at Lidia’s tomorrow night. More of a stayday than a staycation but I’ve been looking forward to it all week.

Here are some other things I bookmarked to share with you:

• Remember author Jane Green’s Creeky Cottage from last week’s links? New England Home magazine has this feature on her previous home. That dining room!

• I’d like to have a seafood boil like this one before the summer’s out.

• My sister read Rob Lowe’s first book and said it was surprising and good (reviewers agreed). Now that I’ve read this excerpt on sending his son off to college from his second book I’m dying to read more from him. Warning: You’re going to need tissues for this.

I hope you have a wonderful weekend.

P.S. Don’t forget to enter the book giveaway for The Castaways by Elin Hilderbrand. The deadline is this Sunday at 11pm Central Time.