4th of July GIVEAWAY!

We thought it would be fun to host a little 4th of July Giveaway for one of our New England Lakeside Baseball Caps! Head on over to our Instagram or Facebook to enter, giveaway ends July 6th at 5PM and one winner will be chosen at random and notified. Good luck!

Interested in purchasing one of our New England Lakeside Caps?
Please check out our Etsy Shop - they are currently on sale at the moment too!

Summer Sale!

Most items in our Etsy Shop are 10-15% off for the month of July - help us clear out some inventory! I will be adding some new items this month too, including new sticker designs and prints - stay tuned :)

Teaching Our 4-Year-Old How to Read

Just wanted to hop on here real quick and share about this book we have been loving for teaching our 4-year-old how to read! | This post isn’t sponsored but does contain affiliate links |

Our 4-year-old has been asking us to learn to read for a little bit now. She sees her older sibling reading and wants to join in too… after researching around I decided to try this book "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons", which came highly rated.

The book and its format took a little getting used to at first, but we quickly caught on and our little one is EXCELLING at it. The program starts small, and builds on letter sounds one-by-one. They start with the predictable sounds and add annotations to help differentiate different letter sounds and minimize letters that are silent. Your little one builds confidence and knowledge and slowly starts to decipher how words, sentences, and paragraphs are made. Our 4-year-old is now sounding out and reading small paragraphs all on her own, and we’re only a little more than 1/3 through the book! Her comprehension/recall still isn’t quite there (she often needs to be reminded about what the beginning of the paragraph was about by the end of the paragraph), but she is honestly enjoying being able to decipher words all on her own. She’s even starting to read and recognize words and sentences in other books that don’t have the sounds broken down like this book does.

I think this is a great jumpstart to reading if your child is ready and willing. I know it will definitely give our child more confidence and a jumpstart on learning to read before starting Kindergarten. We’ve been taking our time doing the lessons (we only do them 2-3x a week), but I’m really looking forward to see how well she reads by the end!

SHOP: "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons"

Etsy Sale Through June 3rd

We’re joining the spring Home and Living Sales Event over on Etsy, everything in our shop is 10-20% off now through June 3rd! Happy Shopping :)

Easy and Cheap DIY Windowpanes - No Tools Needed!

This past fall we had a detached garage built on our property. Being what construction costs are these days we went with basic vinyl windows with no window panes since it was cheaper. We thought “Meh, it’s just a garage - it doesn’t have to match our house perfectly.” But after the garage was done we realized it really was missing something with the basic plain windows, and adding panes was just what it needed. | This post contains affiliate links |

I considered a bunch of different ways to make the panes, including using thin scraps of wood painted and set within the window frame on the inside - but all of that was pretty labor-intensive. In the end I realized using thin strips of vinyl or tape would probably be the easiest - and so that’s what I did!

Using white electrical tape ended up being the perfect solution in our situation - it was to be used in a little-used area, it was the right width, and it was the right color.

Materials:

• white electrical tape (though if your window sashes are black or a different color you can buy different colored tape to match)
• scissors
• tape measure

How-To:

To apply, I first washed and dried the windows well. Then I measured out how to divide the window in an aesthetically pleasing way. For the small windows I did 4 panes across and 3 panes down, and for the big window (not pictured) I ended up doing 4 panes across and 4 panes down.

I measured out my spacing and then made small marks with a pencil on the edge of the window where I was going to place my tape lines, then carefully pulled the tape across the window (I applied the tape on the inside of the window). I did the shorter, horizontal runs of tape first because I found them to be easier and help keep the longer, vertical runs straighter since it was easier to line them up straight with those horizontal reference points.

When pulling your tape lines make sure to go slow and pull the tape out straight. Electrical tape is rather stretchy and it’s easy to distort the lines and make them wonky. Taking your time is key and don’t be discouraged if you have to redo some of the lines! I had to redo a bunch of mine, especially at the beginning while I was getting the hang of it.

TA-DA! In just a short amount of time you now have easy and cheap windowpanes, and the best part was no tools were needed. The style windowpane I tried to mimic was “colonial” in order to match our house, but if you wanted to get fancy you could try laying out your lines in a different style (diamond, prairie, etc).

DISCLAIMER: Please note that the electrical tape I used for this project does have a Prop 65 warning on the package. You may want to do your own research regarding this. We used it since it was a non-living area in a detached garage. I also made sure to wash my hands well after handling it. Use at own risk.

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Looking for more cheap and easy DIYs? Check out our blog post on how we gave our garage door a makeover in just minutes with no tools needed!

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New Vintage Items Listed in Our Etsy Shop

Just wanted to post a quick update that we have some new Vintage Items listed in our Etsy Shop. We also have some great all NEW products and designs coming soon to our shop as well - stay tuned! :)

Star Seller on Etsy

I’m a Star Seller on Etsy this month! That means you can purchase from my Etsy shop knowing I have a record of providing an excellent customer experience.

Giving Back - Who We Donated to This Year

A tradition I started five years ago was to donate a percentage of profits from Birch Landing Home at year-end to Charity.  This year we were able to help support The Myasthenia Gravis Foundation of America as well as The Nature Conservancy. I chose to support The Myasthenia Gravis Foundation in memory of my Dad, who passed away this past spring due to complications of MG. We miss him greatly, and hope in the future families will not have to deal with this debilitating disorder. I chose The Nature Conservancy because protecting our natural resources and reducing climate change is more important now than ever.

Thank you so much for all your support during another strange year. I hope to continue to grow Birch Landing Home and be able to give back more each year in return. Thank you all!