dear lovely readers,
if i could give you all a yummy baked good and sit down w each of you for conversation over coffee, i most certainly would. over the years and as this blog has grown and i’ve gotten to meet some fabulous people — both near and far, in real life and just through the interwebs. i want to thank you all for your kind words, thoughtful questions, and support for me as a mama, writer, documenter, and sometimes over-sharer. your involvement and participation at this little space has been encouraging, affirming, and welcoming. thanks for being a part of A Denver Home Companion. this place is a lot better with people like you!
as a big believer in the power and necessity of community, i’d like to open up this space to other voices. i would like to strengthen this web presence by including words from, perhaps, you!; i’m looking for contributions from writers/readers/bloggers/whathaveyou who may want participate a little bit more on my blog. it doesn’t matter if you’re based in denver or australia, male or female, single or married-with-children: if you have something you’d like to post about that makes sense for this blog, i’d love to hear from you.
i’m not sure what this will ultimately look like — or if i’ll even get any submissions! but i wanna give it a shot. if you are interested, please send your idea for a post (or a draft of one) to me at emily [at] adenverhomecompanion [dot] com. i cannot promise i’ll be able to accept and publish everything as it’s important to me to remain true to the relative energy and character of this space, but i’ll certainly consider everything. and, though i can’t pay you in moola, i promise to plug the crap outta you on the social platforms i utilize. woohoo!
again, thanks for everything. thanks for stopping by, whether that’s daily or weekly, or just here and there. thanks for saying hello. thanks for reading!
+emily
this week’s links are either a week late or a day early, depending on how you tend to look at things. ah, well, vacation called and i was off the grid for a bit. but i’m back! and can’t wait to catch up with all of you. i’ll be back tomorrow and more regularly next week w photos of our stay at the beach as well as some thoughts on sweet treats for little ones, potty training, and some great new denver happenings.
- see our full home tour on apartment therapy!
- a couple of weeks ago i joined other denver bloggers, lashley, amanda, and sarah at an EatDrinkCreate event at west elm hosted by the proper pinwheel. what fun it was! check out the eat drink create event video at the bottom of the post.
- a must: wordpress website owner’s emergency checklist.
- hearing your song.
- i’m excited to introduce you to a new sponsor: nourish, a weekly meal plan by chef karolina. just what i need to take some stress out of planning meals AND cooking for 1.5 people. click through and take a look!
- if you’re interested in being a sponsor: take a look at my sponsor page and see if we’re a good fit. i’d love to work with you!
- just read: tenth of december by george saunders and the bill from my father by bernard cooper. two great reads i’d recommend to nearly everyone. currently on: dream work, poems by mary oliver.
dear ramona,
what a beach bum you were (and had)! we went to the beach this past week and you just soaked it all up. you loved loved loved the sand — especially when we let you run naked and especially when papa would bury you up to your chest. you’d go find a low spot in the sand, wiggle your butt in, and say “bury me! more bury me!”. papa would push the sand up up and up around you and you’d giggle and squeal and then try and burst out, first wiggling your toes and then flinging your legs free.
you and i would take walks up and down the sand and you’d just plunk yourself down at the water’s edge, letting out a “woohoo” whenever the wave came up and kissed your toes or hugged your body. it was only when mama took you out deeper w the choppier water that you let out cries of fear. this was, obviously, not the swimming pool you were used to! you said “no wave! play sand!” and we’d go back up to the shore, plop ourselves down, and dig for shells, letting the wet sand fall from our hands onto our legs and feet.
what fun we had with you, miss mo. i love you. love, mama.
a portrait of ramona, once a week, every week, in 2013. inspired by jodi’s project.
we love the denver library. we are dedicated library-goers. so many books at your fingertips! and denver’s library system (and most library programs in urban centers fro my experience) has great online resources for putting books on hold, keeping track of books-to-be-read, e-books, and calendars for free activities. ramona loves the library bc it has chairs that look like animals and she lugs them around from book bin to book bin. she’s not too interested in the books until we take them home. i usually just grab the nicest looking book on the shelf (who ever said you can’t judge a book by it’s cover?). one of these recent impulse grabs was where’s walrus?
a walrus escapes the zoo during nap time and proceeds to explore the city, blending in with the people he’s around while the zookeeper attempts to catch him. the story’s end is a feel-good one. ramona cannot get enough.
what books are your favorite to read with your little one?
on sunday, the three of us went exploring by bike. traipsing over to the other side of 38th, we wound through the business district and found ourselves along the railroad in the sunnyside neighborhood. though there are residential homes just one block over and a great panoramic of denver behind us, this area made us feel like we were in the middle nowhere. at 43rd and inca is an old foot bridge that has it’s original wood stairs (most likely from well before when scarecrow was filmed over here!). it looks like it’s fenced off –probably bc rickety-looking structures like this usually are– but it’s open to the public and is a great shortcut for getting to and fro sunnyside and globeville.
we’d heard about this place when researching the development plans that are happening along inca for the 38th and inca lightrail station slated for 2016. it’ll most likely be torn down and rebuilt w something a lot less, well, awesome looking. the whole bridge spans over a dozen rail tracks and, as mentioned, gives a pretty great view of downtown denver. we were in the stairwell when a train came zooming by, the conductor giving us a friendly hello w his whistle after he passed. it was exhilarating being not ten feet from it (as well as terrifying; i held on to miss mo so tight!).
if you bike denver or are into exploring interesting pockets of this fine city, i’d highly recommend heading that way. especially before that whole area is redeveloped. (scroll down through this blog post for a photo of the wooden stairwell and ideas of where to explore once in globeville).
welcome
