For the 3^rd year in a row, our family headed out to Clearwater, BC for some R&R. And we take our Rs pretty seriously over there … mostly by choice, but also by necessity. Clearwater is located in a beautiful part of interior BC, but it’s a small and sleepy kind of town. There are plenty of outdoor activities to be enjoyed, but not much else in the way of entertainment. So, we adjust our schedules accordingly: lots of swimming, some fishing, a little hiking. The kids watch cable TV at the motel – a luxury we don’t have at home – and I read. A lot. It’s heavenly, really.

Clearwater is on the edge of Wells Grey Provincial Park, and there are tons of great trails and scenic sights to be explored. My kids are very urban-conditioned, but they allowed themselves to be persuaded to leave the lake for a few hours and hike a teeny tiny bit. We saw the waterfalls again and I did some lichen-spotting, something I’ve been looking forward to since I read Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss.

I don’t love swimming, but I do love sitting by the lake with a good book and a cold drink, reading and watching the clouds go by. Dutch Lake is still beautifully clear and warm as last year, though its water levels have dropped a fair bit since our last visit. We spotted quite a lot of wildlife in and around the area: loons, ducks, Canada geese, bald eagles, hawks, turtles, and even a black bear. Yep, just a black bear, sauntering down a side road next to the lake one fine morning. Luckily, we were in the car at the time, but it certainly got out attention. As it turns out, a few days later, other guests at our motel had a much closer encounter with the (same?) bear down at the motel’s private lake beach area. (They were shaken but fine.) Our trip was much less eventful, though my daughter did get stung by a wasp. (She was also shaken but fine.)

This year, I put zero effort into my vacation clothes packing. I have a small capsule set aside specifically for our BC trip, and I only need to add a few warmer pieces and underclothing, and I’m basically packed. Since I know our trips mostly involve outdoor activities and zero likelihood of any need to dress up, what I pack isn’t very exciting; it’s comfortable and suitable for layering – some days can be chilly, others hot as Hades, so I need things that are weather-versatile. Most of the pieces in my vacation capsule are things I wore on the same trip last year, so I know they work. I must say that having a pre-planned capsule makes my life a lot easier when trying to get the family ready for the trip. None of my vacation outfits were the least bit interesting, from a fashion perspective, but they did the job. And I was very very very happy to be reunited with my closet when I got back home.

I was far more excited about my vacation reading and spent a lot more time curating my reading list for the trip than I did my outfits. For a vacation like this, where chilling is the main priority, I always pack books from my favourite genres: mystery, history, and biography. Picking the right number of books is also important; running out of reading material before the end of the vacation is the wooooorst. As I knew I’d have a lot of downtime – and I’m a fast reader – I decided to take one book for each non-travel day, plus one extra. I ended up reading 5 and starting the 6^th (which I finished once I got home), so that worked out well.

I also think I had the right mix of books and lucked out with the selection; they were all quite good! I had been saving the latest Richard Osman book for a while, specifically for this trip – I read the previous one in the series on our BC trip last year, so it seemed fitting.

All told, another great family vacation in the books! This trip solidified the fact that our kids are now seasoned car travelers, and that we love road trip adventures far more than air travel (something that wasn’t the case when the kids were younger). We’ve started making some plans for shorter road trips next summer – in addition to one more Clearwater visit, I think – to explore small-town Alberta. As we prepare to close the chapter on summer 2023, we have something to look forward to.

Details: Chepe dress (retail), Free People belt (thrifted), Old Navy shoes (Poshmark), vintage bag (gift)

Thoughts: I broke my “no retail” rule twice in a month, but I think this Chepe dress was worth that second infraction. It’s pretty much everything I want in a dress … except for the colour. The colour was a calculated risk. I would have loved this dress in white, but no dice. I did see it in black but I decided that would be too close to the black maxi dress I already have (and love). I was going to walk away and then I saw it in navy. Navy has never been a colour I’ve gravitated towards, but it does pair well with colours I do love, like red and brown. And the cut was so good! Well, you can see what happened. I bought it. And I regret nothing! It’s one of those dresses that’s easy to throw on, accessorize, and feel like a million bucks. We all need a few of those in our closets, right?

Details: Liz Claiborne dress, For Cynthia shirt, Rebecca Minkoff belt, Barbara Barbieri shoes (all thrifted)

Thoughts: I’ve come to terms with the fact that the bodice of my favourite rainbow dress simply doesn’t fit well. Plus, I hate spaghetti straps as a general rule. I could take this to a tailor to come up with a fix, but I don’t currently know a good tailor. So my fallback has been to work around the issues by layering, aka camouflaging the problems. I usually layer things over the dress, but this time I decided to layer something under it. This worked out pretty well, if I do say so myself. It’s a good reminder that white shirts are very versatile.

Details: Emmy Deveaux bodysuit, Gap shirt, Twik jeans, Isabel Marant belt, Tommy Hilfiger bag (all thrifted), J. Crew shoes (retail)

Thoughts: I know a lot of people avoid wearing black and brown together but I love it. It helps to choose shades of brown that aren’t too muddy, so there is clear contrast with the black. Whiskey brown is my usual choice, but this warm chocolate-y colour also works, albeit as a lower-contrast pairing. I love the simplicity of this outfit; it’s a pretty classic formula updated with a more contemporary pair of denim.

Details: UO top, vintage cardigan, Ralph Lauren skirt (all thrifted), Zara shoes (retail)

Thoughts: I’m calling this Highlands cottagecore. I know it’s still only August, but I love taking advantage of cooler days to give myself a preview, as it were, of my fall outfit options. More on my fall 2023 inspo to come, but this vibe is a contender for sure. I love blue-green colour palettes and, of course, anything plaid. I see a lot more of it in my near future 😉

I freaking love flex spaces. Flex spaces are key to use maximization in small houses, especially for families. Having spaces that can serve multiple purposes, at the same time and sequentially over time, is huge. We are lucky to have a very spacious bonus room above our garage, which basically doubles the amount of “communal” space in our house. When the kids were little, it allowed us to have a dedicated play area – full of the usual toys and baby gear – away from our main reception space, the living room. It gave us some breathing room so we didn’t feel like we were drowning in colourful plastic. But it was also a place to store books. An ever-growing number of them. Now that the kids are older, everyone in the family is looking for space to chill in peace away from everyone else; the bonus room is a premium “chill out” zone. And it also doubles as a guest bedroom when needed. Last year, we replaced the couch – which has now relocated to the basement – with a daybed, which can be used both as a sofa and as a bed (it has a proper mattress).

Here was the room about a year into our living in the house; my husband had just added the bookshelves, which completely transformed the space:

But it didn’t look like this for long. Believe me when I tell you that the room looked vastly different when its floor space was taken up by baby gates and rubber mats, and one wall of shelving was filled with nothing but toy bins. We’ve had 3 different couches in this room over time, each one geared towards the needs of the moment. The one in the above photo came from my husband’s college era apartment. The one we had when the kids were babies was a huge, microfiber sectional that we got secondhand, which saw a lot of abuse in its time. The third couch was a major upgrade: a brand-new sectional in a vaguely mid-century style which reflected the ongoing “maturation” of the room along with that of our youngest family members; this piece is now living its second life in the basement.

It’s safe to say that the look of the room now is a reflection of the growth of our family, the development of our aesthetic instincts, and years of collecting via thrift. Most of the décor items are secondhand treasures. The furniture currently occupying this space, apart from the daybed, has been “recycled” from other parts of the house. It all works together … but it didn’t come together overnight.

Here is the side which has has the biggest “glow up” in many ways — it used to be dedicated to toys and children’s books (which have been relocated), and it’s now a space for art & design books, my collection of magazines, and plants.

That blue chair, by the way, is a piece of furniture that my husband built back in his undergrad days. I love having a little piece of personal history tucked away here, amid other accumulated memories of our life together. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years curating various little “vignettes” around the room, and it brings me so much joy to see them all coming together.

The room has no experienced its last evolution; more changes will be afoot in years to come. We need to change the carpet and plan to put in either hardwood or laminate. Area rug(s) to follow, I am sure. There are also 2 rolling staircases that we have been waiting to install, once the kids are old enough. And we will be painting the walls (along with the rest of the house) to match the creamy white we have selected for the basement. We think that colour will really set off the art we have on the walls. And I am sure there will be other changes that aren’t even on our radar at the moment. But that is the beauty of a living space.