Packing for our holiday trip this year, I realized: we have some cheap luggage!

It seems we usually buy 1 or 2 pieces in our favorite shapes & styles... every couple of years.

I recently found these fun facts about cheap luggage...

This is fairly deep...

...insanely honest

...and very true.

For the New Year, why not take a few moments to evaluate your hopes & dreams? And use this as a guide to help you achieve only those things that are truly important in life...

I've actually held off on posting this, because I wonder if I don't divulge too much on this website sometimes.

As a rule, I prefer to write about things that I've personally experienced -- with the hope that it will help someone else in some small way.

My theory is: If I wondered about how something works or how something's done, then chances are someone else has wondered the same things.

That is what fuels my desire to keep writing these sometimes overly-personal stories... like today's.

After a friend of mine told me that she was experiencing something similar and did I have any tips, suggestions, little-known facts that she might need to know, that was all the motivation I needed to share my experience of having a laparoscopy to remove cysts from my ovaries, caused by endometriosis.

I have affectionately subtitled today's post:

Check out this cool system of hanging photographs using wire, pulled taut across a span, from floor to ceiling, with small hardware holding the photos in place.

This would actually be a great system for hanging just about anything in a modern yet informal kind of way.

Think... kids' artwork, Christmas cards, awards, concert tickets, and more!

As many of you know, we have a 5-year-old niece who is Autistic. She's as sweet as can be.

Thanks to years of help from the Cleveland Clinic, she has made dramatic improvements -- and she continues to do so, on a daily basis.

But I changed my way of thinking about Autism last Christmas when Jim's parents shared with everyone a photocopied list of "10 Things Every Child With Autism Wishes You Knew".

I was watching HGTV the other day... probably an episode of "I Want That" or something similar. And I remembered seeing an interesting new product called the Purse Pal.

What's cool about it is the fact that not only does it give you a place to put your purse -- so it's always within your sight and up off the floor -- it also gives you a place to put your other things like your hat, your scarf, your gloves, and your shopping bags when you're out & about.

Plus, it's small and compact, so it's easy to tote along whenever you're out shopping or traveling.

That one product intrigued me enough to want to check out HGTV's database of unusual products & ideas.

I found some even better one-of-a-kind items!...