Look, I know today is September 1st, and the world is aflutter that pumpkin spice lattes are coming and that college football is back. That’s great and all, but I’m holding fast to my last 22 days of summer. The official first day of fall is September 23, and I’m sticking to it. Living in Georgia helps with that, because the weather may not shift until who-knows-when…October, if we’re lucky. When it’s hot and sticky outside it’s easier to pretend that fall hasn’t come.

Labor Day used to be more of a delineator, the date after which kids would go back to school. But that seems to be happening earlier and earlier every year. One county in metro Atlanta went back at the end of JULY this year! Even when you’re not in school anymore and don’t have kids, that rhythm still somehow permeates life. It feels like something should change when the kids go back to school. But other than the traffic patterns, nothing has to for me.

People ask me, “How’s your summer been?” and I realize that summer doesn’t mean that much to me anymore. There’s no reason that I have to take my vacation during those few months, or that I have to only lay out by the pool in June. My work schedule stays the same and I can claim summer whenever I want. But what that also means is that it’s easier for summer to pass me by, since there’s nothing forcing me to make it different. When I started seeing the back-to-school sales I thought, “WAIT! I’ve barely gotten into the summer mindset! How can it be over?!”

So I’m trying to soak it all up.

More hikes and a few more backpacking trips.

Another day lazing by the pool.

Seasonal beers and fruity cocktails.

A pedicure to last through the flip flop dog days.

Time with friends (which feels like a summer thing).

Reading beachy books or whatever I want because my time is my own (though, let’s be real, when do I NOT do that?)

I’ll celebrate fall when the time comes. I’ve been thinking lately about how nice my walk to work from MARTA will be when it’s crisp and cool rather than 95 degrees and 95% humidity, and thinking about cowboy boots with skinny jeans and scarves and football. But we have 22 more days for me to call it summer, and I won’t let go just yet!

I don’t feel like I’m missing out by not having a KitchenAid mixer. Those beasts take up SPACE, y’all.

Everyone always tells me that if I had one I’d find uses for it. And that’s probably true. But I think that’s a crummy justification for acquiring more things. If I don’t have at least some critical mass of expected use cases for it, what value is it really going to add to my life?

And yet, there are some things that “everyone has” that I DO own and love, and that I coveted for some time before I got them. I have a Kate Spade iPhone case. I could have gotten a different cute iPhone case for less money, but for whatever reason I had to have the Kate Spade.

I’m fine with an indulgence if I can come up with a few justifications for it. I needed a phone case to protect the little guy, and I’d rather it be cute, and the ones that I saw other people with that I thought were cute were Kate Spade.

(I mean, seriously, could this scream “Laura” any more?!)

So I chose a Kate Spade iPhone case.

We all have our whims and pleasures in life, and we can’t help it when some of them are trendy. For me the difference lies in timing: I’ll never be the one to snatch something up as soon as Real Simple praises it or as soon as five people I know ask for one for their birthdays. I’ll hem and haw and talk myself out of it more times than not. But the ones that stick, ah, the ones that stick are the ones that I’ll gleefully shell out for. The ones that stick I either know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. The ones that stick are my KitchenAid mixers. It just so happens that for me, an actual KitchenAid mixer falls into the clutter-mentality trap of “This thing is so useful that someday I’ll find a way to use it,” which is not a good justification to bring it into my home.

You’ll get no judgment from me if I see a KitchenAid mixer on your wedding registry. In fact if it’s a fun color I’ll probably even grin at it. But I don’t want one for myself, and that works for me.

What’s something you don’t want that it seems like everyone else has?

Yesterday my co-worker John published a blog post about taking is daughter on dates. He shared the link in our internal chatroom and suggested that other dads try to do the same. I responded to him that my dad and I had “special time” every Saturday when I was growing up…we would go to the flea market, my favorite toy store, Dairy Queen, or sometimes just grocery shopping. And I seriously think that knowing he loved me that much shaped me into who I am.

And then I had all the feels.

When I was a kid, I would pitch a fit any time my parents talked about how some day I would grow up and go to college. I would get so upset at the thought of ever leaving them.

While we were driving around on our special Saturday mornings, my dad and I would listen to Nanci Griffith cassette tapes in his little blue Mazda pickup truck, and when I got older and we had them on CD I stole them to listen to on my drives to and from college. And even as a kid I couldn’t listen to the song “Turn Around.”

I feel this weird mixture of sadness if I think too hard about being an adult, in the sense that being an adult means you don’t live with your parents anymore and you’re not their world and they’re not your world. Sadness for myself in some ways (though I love my life) and a ridiculous amount of empathy for how my parents must feel, too.

There’s a book called Captivating that made its waves through youth groups and college Bible studies a few years ago. Its claim is that we as women are “haunted by a question.”

Little girls want to know, “Am I lovely?” The twirling skirts, the dress up, the longing to be pretty and to be seen–this is what that’s all about. We are seeking an answer to our Question.

The book goes on to talk about how the world, and in many cases, our fathers, have given us the wrong answers to our question, and that everything we do is part of our striving to find someone who will tell us that we are lovely, not that we are too much, that we are lovable, and worth loving.

I’ve read Captivating a few times and, not to say that I am perfect and I don’t sometimes struggle with self-doubt, but the first time I read it I honestly couldn’t relate to much of what it said.

Because thanks to my dad I felt like the answer to my Question was, “Obviously.”

Obviously you are lovely, and lovable, and worthy of being loved, and I am proud of you, and you are just enough, you’re not too much.

The answer is yes.

It’s been awhile since I did a Sunday Snippets link dump!

• I respect a lot of what Michael Hyatt has to say, and I liked this post comparing life to a symphony orchestra with all of the parts playing together.

I often think life is like a symphony orchestra. Like an orchestra, our lives are divided into different parts or areas, each with their own focus. Where an orchestra has strings, brass, woodwinds, and percussion, our lives have work, family, faith, fitness, and so on.

• I have friends that are starting to have kids, and obviously I want to give them a book as a baby present. But which one(s) to buy?! Here’s a fun list from Book Riot.

• I was feeling extremely scattered last week, and one morning when I knew I didn’t have anything immediately pressing, I sat down at the coffee shop in my building instead of at my desk and spent two hours just organizing my emails. And you know what? Even though I hadn’t accomplished anything, per se, I felt much less scattered and much more able to focus on more productive things. It’s advisable to give yourself a catch-up day.!

All the things that would normally be squeezed out by larger, more important tasks get their own special day (or maybe part of a day), so that I don’t have items forever piling up and stressing me out on my to-do list.

• This gif of a dog “swimming” is really cute. And summery. Atlanta Public School start back tomorrow and I feel this slight panic that summer is over and somehow I haven’t done enough summery things! But let’s be real, it’ll still be hot in Georgia for months.

• A cute bookish mini-quilt that, let’s be honest, I know I’ll never be enough of a sewer to make.

• This is technically a link, but what I’m really saying by posting it is that you should go read this book. Seriously. I read it in under 24 hours. I didn’t love Rowell’s first book, Eleanor and Park, but I liked it, and I’m definitely in her target demographic, so when I spotted this one for $1.99 as a Kindle e-book I snagged it. This is the best book I’ve read in recent memory. It was cute and juuust unbelievable enough so as to be utterly charming. If you like Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks movies do yourself a favor and check out Attachments.

We’ve been in our new place for two months now and, thanks to the housewarming party we had recently as a deadline, feeling pretty settled. I want to try and get some art on the walls, and maybe a rug or two, but I don’t feel rushed on those. In getting set up here I’ve tried to put value on the little things (one of my disparate thoughts on moving) and to invest in some nicer furniture pieces. Here are some of the things I’ve been very pleased with (no perks or official endorsements here).

• Our dining table from CB2.

Y’all, the wood is so yummy. Pictures don’t do it justice. I feel happy sitting at it every morning when I eat breakfast.

(For good measure, I’ll add that I really dig our chairs, too.)

• This pouf is really fun.

Do yourself a favor and read the product description on Pier1’s website. It’s hilarious! We donated the armchair we had that had a matching ottoman to The Furniture Bank of Metro Atlanta, but I know sometimes I like to put my feet up. Neither of the chairs I ordered from West Elm had a corresponding ottoman option, and I didn’t want to go too matchy-matchy or risk having opholsteries that looked weird together, so I went out-of-the-box and ordered this. I like that it can move around easily. Usually it lives in the corner by the book shelf and holds my backpack, but I can grab it as an extra seat or to use as an ottoman with no problem.

• I hemmed and hawed over a desk and eventually settled on this one.

I thought I needed a desk with a lot of storage but I keep wishing the options were cuter, and I eventually decided to go with what I liked and deal with storage if I needed it. This one ended up having plenty! I think it’s really misleading that they call it a bedside table. It pretty much seems like a regular desk to me.

• Sink organizer from The Container Store.

Does it surprise anyone to know that when I went to pick up a few things from The Container Store I kind of wanted to move in? Anyway, it just pleases me to have a place to set the sponge. Our kitchen, and in fact the whole condo, is so open that anything not contained reads as visual clutter. I even bought a second matching soap dispenser for the hand soap!

My modus operandi in decorating our new place has been to buy things I like and assume they will go together because I like all of them. So far it’s playing out swimmingly. I also was inspired by the already-orange wall in our place to bring in more orange, and I really like it! I never would have imagined that I’d be bold enough to do that. I’m also embracing my love of other colors and just going for it. This space is big enough that none of it is overwhelming, and I just get to enjoy pops of color everywhere I look!

I went on a rug-buying spree over the weekend, so keep your eyes peeled: I may just have an entire post on rugs once they’re all in place!