I believe that you can find happiness in the little things in life if you just open your mind.

Do something silly that reminds you of being a child such as ride a carousel.

Life is like a carousel: sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down, but the ride is always worth it.

I had so much fun that I did it twice at different locations and it was wonderful!

Take a trip to the zoo and climb into a cage!

A trip to the zoo is always an adventure filled with fun, learning, and a chance to connect with nature’s incredible creatures. Whether you’re snapping a selfie with the tigers, marveling at the elegance of flamingos, or enjoying a day out with family and friends.

Pretend that you’re capturing the beacon standing tall!

Follow the yellow brick road along your journey through this life!

Have that race up the mountain!

Watch the butterflies flutter by and land on you in trust!

The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.

A butterfly always reminds us that there is always beauty at the end of all the pain.”: The Dodo – For Animal People

Dance as if no one is watching! Twirl those hips and just let loose!

Nobody cares if you can’t dance well. Just get up and dance,

Enjoy your favorite meal! (Wear a bib)🤪

Feed a baby cow!

Sit next to a pumpkin person on a spooky evening!

Go to an apple orchard and pick some of those yummies!

Feed those nutty seagulls that are always hungry!

They are brazen and never shut up, I can relate to that, they’re my kind of bird.

Climb to the top of the lighthouse!

I wish to spend a lifetime near a lighthouse where loneliness will be the glimmer of luminous prancing upon ocean waves… rising and falling only for my breathing. I feel that we’re all lighthouses, and my job is to shine my light as brightly as I can to the darkness.

Enjoy a lollipop watching your favorite tv show!

Life is like a candy. Sometimes it’s sweet, sometimes it’s sour, but it always goes bad.

Keep calm and eat candy. It’s a piece of cake!”

Remember that life is shorter than you think and the best thing to do is find the simple joys!

In your hardest days try to smile and trudge on by thinking of what is great in this life.

Read a book and let it help you escape to another world!

A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.

Draw or paint something creative or what you enjoy.

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life,” – Pablo Picasso 

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time,” – Thomas Merton

Take your camera and take photos of nature, lighthouses or anything that captures your fancy!

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.” – Dorothea Lange 

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

Be goofy and silly! Find the laughter in what’s around you!

“We don’t laugh because we’re happy – we’re happy because we laugh.” – William James 

If you don’t learn to laugh at troubles, you won’t have anything to laugh at when you grow old.

Basically, enjoy the life you have and find those small things to make you smile! They are all around you, all you have to do is open your eyes and mind.

“Enjoy the little things in life because one day you’ll look back and realize they were the big things.”

I am slowly learning for myself that I may not be able to do the BIG things again that I already have, ( I was blessed to have been able to at that time) and I can admit that it can be hard to find that joy when life is hard and it is extremely hard.

I have opened my mind and eyes every day and do the best I can to find even the tiniest ray of happy!

I decided to go back downtown near the lake to stroll around the lake and the shops.

I munched on a cookie butter pastry to start.

I walked around the lake before returning around to the antique shop to purchase a shell necklace that I saw the other day.

Also found some neat artwork.

I then went into 3 local shops where I found 2 pretty dresses, t-shirt, hat and bracelet and necklace.

I love the Octagon house in Watertown, Wisconsin and I shopped at an antique store today with my Mom and Aunt and I found this book!

It describes the house and the background of that time.

I have not read it as of yet due to just purchasing today but I will be very soon!🌷

A little verse written inside:

“An octagon upon the hill

Dear bride for you I haste to make

With mighty rock to turn my mill

As we our claim to land do stake.

The swallow oft beneath our eaves

Shall twitter from her clay-built nest,

Oft shall the pilgrim not take leave

Til he has supped, a welcome guesr.

Around our ivied porch shall spring

Each fragrant herb that drinks the dew;

And Eliza, at her wheel, shall sing

In russet gown and apron blue.

Sea glass is often admired for its symbolism of transformation and renewal, making it a popular metaphor for life’s journey. Quotes related to sea glass often explore themes of aging gracefully, finding beauty in the imperfections of life, and the power of the ocean to reshape and refine.

“Life’s little treasures are only visible to the ones who are open enough to see them.”

Sea glass generally symbolizes renewal, transformation, and healing. It’s a metaphor for life, representing how broken or discarded things can be transformed and become something beautiful and valuable. The ocean’s action in smoothing and rounding the glass over time is seen as a metaphor for weathering life’s challenges and emerging stronger.

I want to age like Sea Glass by Bernadette Noll 

I want to age like sea glass I want to age like sea glass. Smoothed by tides, not broken. I want the currents of life to toss me around, shake me up and leave me feeling washed clean. I want my hard edges to soften as the years pass—made not weak but supple. I want to ride the waves, go with the flow, feel the impact of the surging tides rolling in and out.

When I am thrown against the shore and caught between the rocks and a hard place, I want to rest there until I can find the strength to do what is next. Not stuck—just waiting, pondering, feeling what it feels like to pause. And when I am ready, I will catch a wave and let it carry me along to the next place that I am supposed to be.

I want to be picked up on occasion by an unsuspected soul and carried along—just for the connection, just for the sake of appreciation and wonder. And with each encounter, new possibilities of collaboration are presented, and new ideas are born.

I want to age like sea glass so that when people see the old woman I’ll become, they’ll embrace all that I am. They’ll marvel at my exquisite nature, hold me gently in their hands and be awed by my well-earned patina. Neither flashy nor dull, just a perfect luster. And they’ll wonder, if just for a second, what it is exactly I am made of and how I got to this very here and now. And we’ll both feel lucky to be in that perfectly right place at that profoundly right time.

I want to age like sea glass. I want to enjoy the journey and let my preciousness be, not in spite of the impacts of life, but because of them.

[Humble,simple,simile – and my love for sea glass collection makes this poem hit home everytime I read it]

A lot of you despise me,
And I don’t understand why.
I am not ugly or deserving of your hate.
I survive every day on the streets,
That used to be fields and seas.
There are no tasty seeds,
Because you turned beaches into buildings.
I eat what you throw on the ground,
Because I have no choice.
Water is harder and harder to find.
Do you know what it takes to survive in a world that is not mine anymore?
Please don’t scare me or hurt me,
Just let me live –
Live in your world that was once mine..

Words by Amey James of The Happy Pants Animal Sanctuary Charity

bekindtoallkinds 🩶

They are beautiful in my eyes and deserve to live in peace.

I enjoy hearing their sound and watch them fly and dive into the water.

Don’t consider them as vemin, they are fellow living beings just trying to survive in a hell of a world, same as the rest of us.

When you walk through the doors of Villa Louis, you step into the life of one of Wisconsin’s most historic families – The Dousmans. Located on the beautiful banks of the mighty Mississippi River, this National Historic Landmark offers a panorama of Wisconsin history, from the advent of the first fur traders, to the War of 1812, through the splendor of the Victorian era. 

Over 2000 years ago, Indigenous peoples lived on the grounds we now attribute to Villa Louis. For centuries, Native Nations of the upper Mississippi gathered upon the island to trade among themselves until the fur trade brought French-speaking traders in contact with Indigenous tribesmen and women. 

The trade also attracted free Black settlers to Prairie du Chien. Additionally, officers and agents of the United States brought enslaved men and women to the prairie, some of whom lived at Fort Crawford and other structures that once stood on land that is now part of Villa Louis State Historic Site. Research and restorations continue to fully expand the story of these early residents and events.  

Early 1800s

The First Dousman house, “The Brick House on the Mound,” was built between 1843 and 1844, and later razed to build the mansion that exists today, in almost the identical space.

When Hercules Louis Dousman (1800 – 1868) passed away, a newspaper obituary at the time noted that a biography of the man— commencing with his arrival to the upper Mississippi region— would not fall far short of a history of Wisconsin and Minnesota, so involved was he with the region’s development. Through his various enterprises as a fur trader, lumberman, land speculator and frontier entrepreneur, Dousman would acquire a fortune.

In the mid-1840s, he and his family began developing an estate on the banks of the Mississippi River at Prairie du Chien that would evolve into Villa Louis. Its vibrant hues and rich textures reflected the family’s rise to wealth and leisure living. Throughout its evolution, the property was always considered an elegant and stylish Victorian country home, and much attention was paid to the grounds surrounding the mansion and outbuildings.

1868

Upon Hercules Dousman’s death in 1868, the estate passed to his son, H. Louis Dousman, and his widow, Jane Dousman. In 1870 they contracted with Milwaukee architect E. Townsend Mix to build a new residence in the fashionable Italian Villa style. The old House on the Mound came down, though some parts were recycled into the new building.

The elder Mrs. Dousman lived there while son Louis tended to his family, business and social life in St. Louis. When Jane died in 1882, Louis chose to move back to Prairie du Chien and start a new business — a stock farm for Standard Bred trotting horses.

Mid 1880s

To prepare for his new life as a country gentleman, Louis and his wife, Nina Sturgis Dousman, initiated an extensive expansion and remodeling of the Prairie du Chien property in 1885. They built stables, barns, a race track and other buildings pertinent to the stock farm. They also enlarged and redecorated the house and the adjacent office. Dousman hired a Chicago-based designer from the famed William Morris Company of London. The result was a thorough reworking of the mansion, exemplifying the design principles of the British Arts and Crafts Movement.

Late 1880s

The remodeling of the estate and the launch of the stock farm business were barely completed when 37-year-old Louis suffered a fatal health crisis — believed to be a ruptured appendix. At the time of his death, his five children ranged in age from two to 10 years and his widow was just 33. Within a few months of the funeral, the horses were sold and a new and lasting name had settled on the estate — Villa Louis — in tribute to H. Louis Dousman. 

Nina Sturgis Dousman remarried in 1888. The new couple relocated to New York City, but their’s proved to be a troubled union, ending in divorce in 1891. In the late summer of 1893, the Dousman family returned to the Villa Louis, where they remained until 1913.

1930s

In the 1930s, mindful of their family’s important place in Wisconsin history, Virginia Dousman Bigelow and Violet Dousman Young, granddaughters of fur trader Hercules Dousman, undertook a restoration of Villa Louis. The property was handed over to the city of Prairie du Chien for operation as a house museum in 1935.

1950s

A decade later the family renewed the offer — at a time when serious interest in local history was just beginning to emerge. This time the Society expressed enthusiasm. On January 1, 1950, the Society took title to the property and buildings, though court proceedings left the matter unresolved until April 1952, when Villa Louis opened to the public.

1990s

The Dousman heirs also donated a large collection of furnishings and accessories original to the house as well as thousands of letters, business records, photographs and other archival documents. The family’s original donation was subsequently enhanced by significant donations from their heirs and purchases from their heirs’ estates.

The extensive documentation provided by the Dousman heirs served as the basis for a documentary restoration of Villa Louis that began in 1994. With more than $2 million dollars provided by a mix of private- and public-sector funding sources, the restoration is now complete. Today the Villa Louis is the finest example of a British Arts and Crafts interior in a rural setting in the United States.

Go and enjoy learning more about this beautiful place of history!

Hiking is a bit like life: The journey only requires you to put one foot in front of the other again and again and again.

And if you allow yourself opportunity to be present throughout the entirety of the trek, you will witness beauty every step of the way, not just at the summit.

“HIKING IS A WAY TO CLEANSE THE MIND AND ESCAPE THE NOISE OF EVERYDAY LIFE.”

Listen to the sound of the water rushing over stones to soothe your soul.

Look in wonder at the furry creatures you meet on your journey as well as the winged version.

Open your eyes and ears to the sounds of nature in all it’s glory!