It has been oppressively hot and humid for most of the past few weeks so I’ve been spending all my time inside. I’ve been working quite a bit on the basement and weeding out more stuff. I’m rapidly approaching my total of 1000 things to get rid of for the year and it’s only July!

I had a guest post over at Not So Formulaic. I hope you will hop over to Ginny’s site and read:

• Twice-Exceptional Parenting is Life Changing – Buckle Up for the Ride.

I completed two reviews I think you’ll find interesting:

• Sensible High School Homeschool Curriculum
• Christian Entrepreneurship For Kids Curriculum

We had a good conversation in the comments about minimalism in response to my post Why I Reject Minimalism and Embrace My Cozy Living History.

I wrote a post on 11 Lists of 11 Things from 11 Years of Motherhood.

I’ve been working on my Amazon recommendations, getting them organized to make them more helpful.

I made a new online friend! Dean Abbott is starting a new endeavor called The Quieter Life which he introduced with Turning Toward The Quieter Life (and said something very kind about what I do here at a time when I really needed the encouragement). I’m looking forward to reading more by him. If you are on Twitter, he has some excellent quotes in his feed such as these:

You will never reach a new level of maturity so long as your thinking is driven by the need to justify or protect yourself rather than by a desire to arrive at the truth.

Living a traditional life is not about what is past, but about what is eternal.

I feel like I am being moved away from writing so much about the culture and to begin writing more about virtue, relationships and the quiet life. This feels scary and like a big risk. I once would have assumed that meant I should avoid it, now I take it as a sign to move ahead.

The higher a person’s place in this hierarchy, the quieter and more sane his life will be. Therefore, the desire for a more sane, stable, quiet life is little more than a desire to move up the problem solving hierarchy through the acquisition of skills, discipline and knowledge.

Many people have been fooled into thinking the purpose of life is to pursue a big life of fame and adventure, but happiness comes from a small, focused, ordered life of steady growth.

A lot of being a mature man is knowing what not to care about.

Is it okay if I call a man a kindred spirit? Or is that just a girl thing?

I uploaded many new activities in my printables shop including these calendar activities.

I hope you will tell me a bit about your summer so far in the comments!