My Style | Love, Laughter, and Life

February 11, 2026
by Angie 10 Comments

Make a Friend Day!

What? It’s Make a Friend Day! How awesome it is to have friends as we travel our life’s journey!

After I ripped off the previous day from my days of the year calendar (Read in the Bathtub Day), I was excited to see today is for friends. I started thinking about things I like to do with my friends. Rubber stamp, hike, explore, share meals, find quaint teashops, travel, talk, take photos (oh, so many photos), learn new things, laugh, go on adventures, fellowship at church, study the Bible. My list is pretty long. Mostly anything I like to do, I can enjoy it twice as much when I do it with friends. My friends list also includes the ones closest to me, like my honey, my kids, my grands, and my extended family.

Pondering the joy of having friends, I thought about preschoolers and how they are just beginning to learn and practice the social skills needed to make and maintain friendships. Parents, grandparents, childcare providers, and early childhood educators, you know what I’m talking about. It takes work, grace, apologies, squabbles, conversations, and time spent repeating all those things!

If I were a preschooler making a friend, I would want to do things with my new friend. Stomp in mud puddles, chase butterflies, build giant block houses (knock them down), create masterpieces with messy craft supplies, make believe in our imaginary world, slurp drippy ice cream. And much more.

Make a Friend Day. Do you have anyone in mind? What do you like to do with friends? Let’s do this, friends!

Be Kind, Make Friends

Written by Angie Quantrell

Illustrated by Gayle West

Available at wmu.com/be-kind-make-friends/

Woman’s Missionary Union, 2024

November 13, 2025
by Angie 2 Comments

Celebrate World Kindness Day Today – November 13! PLUS #Giveaway

Be Kind, Make Friends, wmu.com/be-kind-make-friends/
World Kindness Day
November 13

Each year on November 13, we celebrate World Kindness Day, “a day to celebrate and promote positive human interactions.” We focus on showing kindness in ways big and small. Every kindness extended to others spreads goodwill and lightens the load of stress people shoulder as they go about their days.

Need more info and ideas? I found Awareness Days very helpful. I especially like the list of ideas and the #hashtags to use when sharing and talking about World Kindness Day (and kindness in general).

Some things you could do include showing random acts of kindness, volunteering, donating to a charitable cause, and teaching kindness to children and young people.

Not quite two years old, my picture book Be Kind, Make Friends, helps preschoolers and the younger audience learn about showing kindness and making friends. I’m glad to have this resource to encourage us to celebrate kindness every day! Do you know of any other resources to help promote kindness to the younger crowd? Add them to the comment section so we can all hear about them.

What will you do to celebrate World Kindness Day?

To celebrate World Kindness Day, I’m giving away one copy of Be Kind, Make Friends to someone who comments on this blog post (US only). Let us know how you would use Be Kind, Make Friends with someone in your world. Winner chosen in one week on November 20. Check back next Thursday to see who won!

Happy World Kindness Day! Thank you for being a part of this blog world!

October 27, 2025
by Angie 7 Comments

2025 Pumpkin Report

Like last year, the “new seeds” portion of the pumpkin crop was off to a slow start. I repeatedly replanted several sections of the various garden areas I have. Not to great results.

BUT the “toss out some old pumpkins and let them rot and self-seed” portion of the crop performed with glee! Pumpkin glee!

pumpkin patch after first frost, before harvest

Keep reading to find how many pumpkins were harvested in 2025!

Especially productive was the raised bed we have way out in the pasture. That’s where I left several pumpkins from 2024: a white one my son surprised me with after a trip to a pumpkin farm stand, a smaller orange one, and one of those tiny pumpkins. They rested in the bed over winter and sprouted early. Hundreds of sprouts. I had to rip out handfuls to give room to the rest. By pumpkin harvest day, the spread was huge! We actually had to curb the growth as it headed over to the horse pasture (not ours) next door. It took many hours to harvest them. And then more moving them, ripping out the vines, stepping gently to find any lost ones.

Also productive were the tiny pumpkins planted (but also I left some from 2024, so it’s a toss-up which ones actually sprouted) in the sunflower forest bed. I love these, because they vine and grow up. We had them climbing pumpkins, shrubbery, and some of the pine tree (which began as a twig with roots from the Arbor Day Foundation, and is slowly taking over said sunflower forest and patio). I love discovering where these cuties show up.

I had some muscle to help haul in the heavy wheelbarrows!

We even ended up with a wagon of rejects (partially eaten) for the animal farm on the other side of the pasture.

Plus 40 in the trunk to go to church for a potluck!

Finally, here are the 2025 pumpkin harvest totals! Drum roll please . . .

White pumpkins: 17

Tiny pumpkins: 67

Orange pumpkins: 158

For an amazing grand total of 242 PUMPKINS!

So thankful for a wonderful harvest! Can’t wait until next year!

Just for fun, check out totals from last year here.

September 1, 2025
by Angie 2 Comments

Ginger Cat Appreciation Day

Happy Ginger Cat Appreciation Day! To the gingers in our lives. Be they weird or be they lovey-dovey, be they hairy and fur-shedding. To all the snugglers, destroyers of the things, sleep-on-your-head kitties. [And all the other things our gingers do!] Celebrating the gingers!

Put the weirdest, funniest, cutest, or scariest thing your ginger has done in the comments below. We will celebrate with you. Or despair. Your choice!

This post has a compilation of the four different gingers I know and love. Three different households, but alas, I’ve never owned (or been owned by) a ginger.

The look. The nap. The ready-to-attack.

Especially the leave-me-alone.

Let’s not forget how helpful they can be!

Ahem. YOU again?

Happy Ginger Day!!

Gingers in order of starring role: Reeses, Peanut, Daisy, Marmalade, Reeses, Marmalade, Daisy, Marmalade

May 15, 2025
by Angie 10 Comments

Haiku Moment: flycatchers

Flycatcher parent waiting for me to not look while it feeds the nestlings. My car antenna is a convenient perch for such activity.

mournful calls echo

as watchful parents dash, dart

flycatchers nest here

flap, crack-winged warning

startles, drives out predator

hoping for a snack

poofed fledglings appear

flapping, dropping, flight attemps

offspring launch from home

Both parents cling tightly to the fence in the wind, wishing I would go away and they could catch bugs (yay) and feed the babies. It’s hard to capture them still! Wind does not help.

flycatchers by Angie Quantrell

The clearest shot of the female (I believe). The wind is pushing up her chest feathers.

Every year for the past 7-8, we’ve had a pair of flycatchers nesting in the parking shed. It’s fascinating to watch them. And they eat flies (and all sorts of flying insects). Win-win for us.

April 29, 2025
by Angie 2 Comments

A Panda Tea Set Adventure

I so enjoy a cup of tea! I’ve even blogged a few times about tea experiences. My last tea post was about the time I read a picture book featuring Masala Chai and then made my own following the recipe in the back of the book.

All good fun. Imagine my surprise when I received an email from someone who enjoyed that post. I was skeptical. But this person represented Umi Tea Sets, which turned out to be a real tea company in China. That was the first thing I checked. Just to make sure.

I loved digging through the Umi Tea Sets website to see what types of teas, teacups, tea sets, and other tea items they offered. There is a wealth of tea information on their website too. They offered to send me something to test and share with you. How nice is that?!

Umi Tea Sets sent the cutest little panda travel tea set! It comes in a molded travel case. The complete set has a tiny teapot (the panda body) with room for 3 cups of water. Not our measurement of 1 cup, but the adorable teacup=1 cup of tea (the panda head is a teacup, 2 total panda head teacups). The other tiny pot (the second panda body) is for tea leaf storage, which easily holds enough tea for several outings. So. Much. Fun.

Umi Tea Sets even included three packets of tea leaves to try. The photos show Da Hung Pao, which is an oolong tea. Mmm.

My granddaughter is smitten with the panda tea set, so we can have our own tea parties and sip away. She likes books too, so maybe we can sit, sip, and read together. We can go anywhere, since this is a travel tea set!

Heads up to plenty of tea adventures when these pandas go along! You can learn more about Umi Tea Sets travel sets here. Or search for any other tea needs. Thank you, Umi Tea Sets!