Soft Launch 2026: Week 1

October 2, 20252025, Planner, PlanningCadyLy

I’m following Courtney from The Order of the Planner Stencils as she takes us through Soft Launch 2026! This is where we get our planners ready for the new year in slow steps, so we are not thrust into the new year with a blank page, feeling that we are already behind on Day 1.

The Order of the Planner Stencils YouTube Channel and link to the Soft Launch 2026 Playlist.

Courtney started this series about 3 weeks ago at this point, but I just had my 2026 planner delivered today, so I’m jumping in now and hoping to catch up!

(Quick note: I have a lot of links to vendors in this post. I don’t get any money from the links, but just sharing them in case you are interested in seeing the things I’m talking about or are interested in getting some for yourself.)

Evaluate Your 2025 Planners

The first question is how many planners are you using. Good question. I have been all over the place searching for that elusive “planner peace.” I like the idea of simplicity, but I find that if it’s not too engaging, then… I don’t engage with my planner and I miss things. However, if it is too complicated, I will not have enough time to keep up with it and – again – it just won’t work for me. I like making my weekly planner spreads look pretty, but often this requires me to back-plan in order to space everything out aesthetically. So, how do I balance functional planning with decorative planning?

For many years, I have had one planner solely dedicated to work and (at least) one for “everything else.” Frequently, I would copy my work events into my primary planner. Starting two years ago or so, I started only putting work items into my primary planner if they affected my life outside of work, E.g . if I had to do something off-hours or was on-call for the week, or if there was an event happening that would call me into the office. (Now that I primarily work from home, I have to prepare myself for the commute!)

I have been using a daily planner for work for quite some time, but this year, after religiously updating my work planner every day, I’ve found that I have been neglecting this habit and not using it as often. I don’t tend to have as many To Dos day-to-day, so a dedicated To Do list hasn’t been needed lately. For this reason, I’m thinking of ditching my daily work planner for 2026 and just using our company’s Outlook.

I’ve been fairly happy with my MakseLife planner for my primary weekly planner, but finding that I haven’t been using the goal-setting sections as much as I had thought. Also, I like the idea of having my weekly spreads back-to-back, instead of having the weekly goal sheets in between. So this year, I am switching back to using an Erin Condren vertical. And for the first time in my life, I’m selecting the neutral inside instead of the bold, colorful one (WHAT?! I know.) Since I use sticker kits every week, it’s just easier than trying to cover up a large, darkly colored hexagon cluster on the monthly spread, or have to change the color blocks in the weekly view.

One planner for 2026! Whoo!

Well, maybe not quite….

I’m still hoping to get married in 2026, so there’s the Wedding Planner that has been sitting on the shelf WAITING for a wedding date…. TBD. Pray for us!

Make a 2026 Wishlist

What do I need to make my planning game work? My first thought was that I have all the things I need already, but this isn’t quite true.

I will need monthly kits and weekly kits. I like the monthly kits to all match, so I probably want to get them from the same shop. Last year, I got them all from TheCoffeeMonsterzCo. For 2026, I might buy from PlannerKate or Krissyanne Designs.

I tried using a tracker last year to plan out which weekly kits I was going to use during the year, both to use up what I have and to avoid overbuying for a specific holiday or season. This worked more or less, but I’m interested to see how I can make this more efficient.

For my Bookworm Life planner, I will need date dots (since it is undated).

Make a 2026 Line-Up

EC Vertical Neutral Weekly Lifeplanner
EC Wedding Planner (hopefully!)
Bookworm Life Planner from PeanutButterTaco – As a note, the 2026 version of the BWL will be on sale starting October 14th on Etsy.
Junk Journal – Does this count? I put in here random memories, photos, and ephemera from my day-to-day.

Book Review – “A Merry Little Lie”

September 26, 20252025, Book ReviewsBook Reviews, book-review, books, reading, romanceCadyLy

A Merry Little Lie by Sarah Morgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a super cute Christmas story that follows 3 siblings and their partners gathering at their childhood home for the holiday. Each of the siblings has a big secret they have been keeping from their normally close-knit family, and Mom Jenny is anxious to have one last perfect Christmas before everything changes. It had all of the feels of a cozy Hallmark-style movie. I enjoyed the multiple POVs and how each character was genuinely interested in the feelings of their family members and in resolving conflict in a respectful and peaceful manner. We don’t often get to see healthy conflict resolution in the media we consume. Each of these secrets had the potential to cause some serious emotional damage, but the characters approached the revelations seeking to understand and heal instead of blame and reject.

There were several different twists in the story. One, I predicted pretty early on, but then was led to reject my prediction – a pretty clever redirect by the author! The main point of the story was that keeping feelings bottled up, swept under a rug, or creating little white lies to “protect” others is never going to lead to anything but isolation and hurt feelings. Being open, honest, and emotionally mature is always the best way to go.

This felt very authentic – coming from someone who is used to having large, chaotic family holiday get-togethers with plenty of drama. And of course, all of the adult sibling squabbling, which always seems to crop up, no matter how old you get.

I would enthusiastically recommend this to my friends, especially as the nights get colder and longer and the holiday season approaches. Bake some cookies, make some hot chocolate, and settle in for a enjoyable night!

View all my reviews

I was able to read and review this book before it is released thanks to Netgalley! It is scheduled to be released on October 7, 2025. Below is a sample of the book from Amazon.

Sims 4 Nature’s Calling: Week 2

July 6, 20252025, Games & Gaming, Sims 4, Video Editing, YouTubeNature's CallingCadyLy

Last week when I started playing the Nature’s Calling event, I just took a million screenshots, and then chose a select few to illustrate my blog post. This week, I’m playing around with some video editing.

I’ve screen captured myself playing the Sims 4 Nature’s Calling event for Week 2 and put it on my personal YouTube channel. I’ll embed that below, so you can watch it if you are interested.

I haven’t done any serious video editing in quite a while (and that was in Final Cut Pro, and I’m using Adobe Premiere now), so I’m back to newbie skill level. I’m hoping that this will inspire me to edit and post more of our travel videos (since we have a 3 1/2 year backlog already!). My edits are pretty minimal in this video, although I did learn how to do my closed captioning, so I’m pretty excited about that.

Here is a link to the video I watched to learn how to do the closed captioning. Both for your benefit, and my future reference. You’re welcome!

I also got to hear all of my “so,” “like,” and “um” words…. Sooo, that’s great….

I’m sure my narration will get better the more that I do it and am aware of what I’m saying.

I played these quests a bit later in the week – because life – so the Week 3 quests should be available in just a couple days. Let me know in comments if you’d prefer I share my experience via screenshots like in Week 1, or if you prefer the video walkthrough from this week.

The screenshot method is certainly a lot quicker to do, but I feel that the video option is a bit more… personable. (And by my unpolished presentation, you can be sure that it’s not AI generated!) I captured just over an hour of gameplay (after capturing and then losing about 1/3 of the gameplay because I didn’t know what I was doing). Next, I recorded my voiceover where I narrated the gameplay events. This took the same length of time, since I did it all in one take. I used Quicktime for both the screen capture and audio recording. I think it worked pretty well, considering that it’s a free app that came pre-installed on my Mac. Editing the video in Premiere took several hours, but I got it down to about 40 minutes. It took another 40 minutes to encode. Then, I was ready to upload it to YouTube. It was 1 am at this point and said that it would take 3 hours, so I went to bed. I ended up waking up around 5 am and couldn’t resist working on it some more. I finished all of the background video settings in YouTube Studio and published it. Then, learned how to do the captions and added those. After finalizing things on YouTube, I linked it on my Facebook page, and came here to make this blog post. It’s just about 7:30 am now, so post-upload editing took me 2 1/2 hours. I’m confident that I can get my production times down as I get more competent!

I hope you enjoy, and thank you for your feedback!

Sims 4 Nature’s Calling: Week 1

June 24, 20252025, Games & Gaming, Sims 4CadyLy

The Sims is by far my favorite game. It’s the only one that I’ve played with any regularity over quite a span of years. I’ve nearly collected all of the expansion packs, game packs and stuff packs (who can keep up with all of the kits unless you’re a Sims YouTuber or Twitch streamer?) and love finding out new ways to play the game.

To celebrate the upcoming Enchanted by Nature expansion pack (dropping July 10!), EA just launched a new in-game event called Nature’s Calling, and I jumped in as soon as it dropped today.

🌿 Week 1, Quest 1: Whispers on the Wind

The first quest, Whispers on the Wind, had two required and one optional tasks. The optional tasks in this event require specific content to have been purchased for your version of Sims 4.

⚠️ Don’t skip the optional task! Once you complete the required objectives, the optional one disappears. Do it first if you want the bonus reward.

📌 Tasks:

✅ [Optional] Place a Romantic Blanket from the Lovestruck Pack on your home lot
✅ Spend time outdoors
✅ Visit any park

I bought the blanket first, and put it on the lot, then had my Sim, Linden Zamia (a plant name, of course), make herself a nice garden salad picnic and enjoy it outside (fulfilling another task).

After her picnic lunch, I had Linden go to the Isle of Volpe Park in her home neighborhood of Henford-on-Bagley. This completed the Whispers on the Wind quest and I received the Reclaimed Woodworking Table, 5,000 Simoleons, and the Odonata Glasses.

🌿 Week 1, Quest 2: Attuned to the Echoes

The Quests tab on the Rewards pop-up showed the next quest available this week: Attuned to the Echoes.

📌 Tasks:

🎣 Fish from a pond (It took me a minute to find the fishing sign by the river, and apparently a river works – doesn’t have to literally be a pond)
🌥️ Cloudgaze or stargaze
🪑 Sit on a park bench and “listen to the wind” (The picnic table by the river worked to fulfill this one)
🗣️ Ask a Sim if they “hear the whisperings” (Luckily, a nearby Sim was grilling)
🛠️ Place the Reclaimed Woodworking Table on your home lot
🪵 Craft two sculptures on the woodworking table (Linden’s handiness skill is … a work in progress)

Fishing alongside the river — Fishing in the river

Linden sitting at a picnic table in the park — Fishing in the river

When listening to the wind at the picnic table, I received this notification:

Linden using her new woodworking table — Linden hard at work making sculptures. It’s all about the skill gainz!

Once all of the Attuned to the Echoes tasks have been completed, I received the following rewards:

Handiness Vol 1
Reclaimed Wood Wall
Instant Hygiene
Touch Grass Weekly, Issue #1

⏳ What’s Next?

Once the weekly quests are done, the event window shows a countdown until the next quest set unlocks. Good news: if you’re joining late, you can still access previous weeks’ quests, and there’s a two-week grace period after the final week to catch up.

See you next week for the more Nature’s Calling quests!

— Jenn

The Birds are Back!

March 14, 20252025, Home Life, Michigan, TroyCadyLy

For several years, we have used the Merlin Bird ID app to identify different birds while on our walks. This morning, I heard a different bird (from our usual robins and house sparrows), and it said it was a red-bellied woodpecker. I stepped out on the porch and quickly found the little guy on a tree in our front yard!

December 2024 Reading Wrap-Up

December 31, 20242024, readingCadyLy

Link to StoryGraph’s stats for my reading in 2024.

New Year’s Vacation 2025: Day 1

December 26, 20242024, Road Trip, Trips/Vacationsnational-parks, nature, travelCadyLy

It has been over 8 months since we last visited Donald’s parents in person in Florida, so we decided to take a trip down after Christmas, since the holidays worked out well to allow Donald to have the most time off while using a minimum of PTO.

We didn’t put any pressure on ourselves and took our time getting out the door, but we were on the road by 10 am. Our plan for today was to head to Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, and then head towards New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia (although we weren’t sure if we would have enough time to see the park before it closed today). We fueled the car, and then fueled ourselves with lattes from Percent Coffee and McDonald’s.

Our first stop was the Boston Mill Visitor Center at Cuyahoga, our 15th National Park! It was very interesting in that this National Park seems to focus more on the industrial importance of the area between Cleveland and Akron vs. nature/geological attractions. This visitor center is built right next to the Cuyahoga river and a railroad, and we were quite surprised to see a ski resort right across the street with people skiing.

Donald standing in front of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park sign

The interior of the visitor center was impressive, with large wall murals and information about the area. We stamped our Passport books and gathered some literature, but didn’t stay too long, since we had a lot to see and a long way to travel before the end of the day.

Outside of the visitor center main building, there is a viewing platform overlooking the Cuyahoga river. Our eyes were immediately drawn to the colorful mural under the overpass for the road. Just to the right, there is another cute, little bridge allowing for non-vehicle traffic to cross the river.

We then headed to Brandywine Falls. They have a nice boardwalk down to a viewing platform. Even though it was a mild day, there were some icicles clinging to the rock of the falls.

Next, we saw the Everett Road Covered Bridge. We parked in the small lot adjacent to the path leading to the bridge, and regretted it as soon as we stepped out of the car. There was some crop planted in the adjacent field that was pretty, but had quite a foul odor – no idea what it was!

We had a late lunch at Taco Bell. This was a must-stop for me, since Ohio is the only state where Taco Bell serves their Chili-Cheese burritos, which are my favorite! Thankfully, Donald indulged me and my heart was happy!

At this point, we knew that we were too far away from New River Gorge National Park to make it there before the park closed (and wanted to spend more time there), so we decided to stop for the night somewhere close to the park, and we would visit it in the morning before continuing south. We passed through the West Virginia capital of Charleston after sunset – we didn’t see a lot of the city, but did see the beautiful capitol building.

We stopped for the night in Beckley at 8 pm. We grabbed some dinner from the Chick-Fil-A drive-thru, checked into our hotel (Tru by Hilton), and ended our long, but fun-filled day.

November 2024 Reading Wrap-Up

Thanksgiving 2024

November 28, 20242024, Family, Holidays, Michigan, TroyCadyLy

Days off together are uncommon and special, so Donald and I like to make the most of them when we can. This Thanksgiving day, Donald woke up before me and put on the America’s Thanksgiving Parade (from Detroit). I had mentioned that watching the parade(s) in the morning was a childhood tradition (and to this day, Mom still loves to watch the parade as she gets the Thanksgiving meal started).

We were running low on groceries (I need to grocery shop more routinely), but Donald was still able to make us coffee and a cheese omelet for breakfast.

We had a slow, peaceful morning watching the parade. It was fairly bright outside with some blue skies peeking through, so we opened the door to be able to enjoy the view from the couch. Even just our storm door was pretty good at keeping the cold out, which we were thankful for since it was in the upper 30s for a high today.

Stuffed animals looking out the front door

We got ready and headed over to Mom & Dad’s for Thanksgiving dinner. We got to nibble on crackers and cheese spread as an appetizer — I really love the Chicken in a Biscuit crackers with the sharp cheddar spread! While we were hanging out, we upgraded Dad to YouTube Premium, so he wouldn’t have to deal with ads any more. I think it was the best present we could have gotten him!

Dinner was ready just after 4 pm. It was a pretty typical Thanksgiving meal for us: roasted turkey, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole (although this year, the topping was a bit different – a pecan praline), low-carb Hawaiian rolls, asparagus, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, and stuffing.

After dinner, Mom washed the dishes and then read a book in the living room, Dad and Donald watched some YouTube videos of people playing guitar. A bit later, Clint, Donald and I played a round of Marvelous Heroes.

We left after midnight to head home, having filled our bellies and hearts with goodness. We are thankful for a lot of things, to be sure, but we are most thankful for the people in our lives. We hope you had a lovely Thanksgiving with friends and family as well!

Love, Jenn & Donald

Front Storm Door Installed!

November 22, 20242024, Exciting Adventures of the Everyday, Home Improvement, Michigan, TroyCadyLy

The view we have all been waiting for! Our finished street view! We painted our house yellow earlier in the summer/fall and on Thursday the security door was installed. It’s a quite sturdy steel door, painted blue on the exterior and white on the interior. We also installed a new storm door with full view glass (so you can see the pretty deep blue color of the door more), and a built-in retractable screen. On those rare perfect spring/fall days where it’s warm out, but not hot enough to have the AC running, we would like to be able to open the house up to a nice cross breeze and some fresh air.

I think…. this means that we are finally ready for winter?! Pretty close to it! Donald is still feeling a bit under the weather, so once he has recovered from his cold, I’ll ask him to bring in the Christmas decorations from the garage and we will start decorating the house for the holidays!

How early do you start decorating? What are some of your favorite holiday traditions?