Greetings! Thanks for stopping my Peppermint Alley. I’m glad you’re here. and would love to hear from you too.

September 2020: I have rewritten this page many times over the past years that I have quietly kept this little corner of the interwebs open. When I started, I was a school teacher with two little babies wanting to connect with friends/family spread across various continents. I think in retrospect, my world was changing so quickly, and I needed some spot to remember myself as an individual entity. I have never done anything to overly share this site, it’s been more just my personal virtual playground.

My home bases are Philadelphia during the “school year” and rural Northern Michigan during the warmer months. I’ve spent 1-2 months in Mexico over the past few falls too.

Eleven+ years later, I am on the brink of turning 40 and I’m pretty okay with that. Those babies are now 14, 12, and 6. I’m pretty satisfied with who I am and how I show up in the world. Mostly I try to be the sort of grown-up I would have wanted in my life when I was younger. And I try to live the kind of life I think I will be happy to remember when I am older.

Pre-pandemic I would have said that I mostly facilitate learning and co-run a small business called Staging Journeys that makes youth theater and takes families on world-schooling trips to places like Mexico and Peru. A lot of those things aren’t so possible right now and that’s okay. I certainly look forward to whenever we can safely get back to those things. (And also the luxury of hugs.)

Still true: I love paper goods…stationary, cards, stamps, zines… One thing that has remained relatively consistent is that I write a mostly monthly non-news newsletter, called the Peppermint Alley Press. You can sign up for it here. I like slow mail, I like the romantic excitement of opening the mail box and finding an actual letter or personal something. So I am putting some of that out into the world.

Also still true from my very first “about me” entry in 2009:

I tend to see home as something not involving a physical building.  I get homesick for people, seasonal foods, experiences, and moments of beauty more than for our house, a specific bed, etc.  So in this virtual “home” space on Peppermint Alley, I hope to capture the thoughts, pictures, and activity of being at home in my body and in the world.  I’m also the sort of person who loves to have drop-in visitors…the sort of friends who stop by with chocolate or drop in for coffee or spend a week (or month) with a tent pitched in my backyard.  I don’t know how much that sort of friendship still exists…maybe it’s because we are more busy or we live further apart… But I sure hope that stop-in friendship is out there somewhere…So stop on by… bring a favorite recipe, sample fresh biscotti, play with us, sit on our porch, leave a comment, share a story…Consider yourself more than welcome to make yourself at home.