Recent Posts By Kristin Brandt

My master bathroom is a disaster and in desperate need of a remodel. The biggest issue, beyond the chipping paint and the faint smell of mildew, is there is no storage other than one shallow drawer and a small cabinet we bought at Bed, Bath & Beyond. As much as we’d like to remodel, it’s probably not in the cards […]

Since the day I found out I was pregnant with our son, I have been buying books for my children. Today, over 9 years later, our children’s bookshelves are stuffed with books yet I’m always looking to add to their collections (despite my husband’s protests that “enough is enough”). Part of curating our kids’ personal libraries is also getting rid […]

This morning my husband and I had a bit of a disagreement over the state of organization in our household. And when I say disagreement, I mean that, rather than calmly discussing the issue, we yelled, made ugly faces at each other and slammed doors. Okay, I’m the one who slammed the doors. Emphatically. On the other side of the […]

As listeners and readers of Manic Mommies will know, I recently forced my husband to move his disaster of a home office upstairs to the space formerly known as the guest room. (Because, to be perfectly frank, no one wants to visit us. And I don’t want them here either). With his former space vacated, I decided not to turn […]

Summer may just be ending, but I’m already thinking about February. And April. And 10 random early release days scattered throughout the academic schedule. Specifically, I’m thinking about what we’re going to do with the kids, and what it is going to cost. Two years ago, when my son was in 1st grade, we registered him for half-day explorers, a […]

Last week my 6 year old daughter and I had a fun summer schedule – each morning she would come to my office for breakfast from the cafe downstairs, followed by a little time playing with the toys I have stashed in my bookcase. Within the hot pink polka-dotted bins are a variety of goodies including old toys from McDonald’s, […]

Summer is here, which for many of us means summer days with families tooling around town, down rail trails or along shore sides on bicycles. Now that my husband has “gone pro,” making his Bike Guy moniker official, I find myself having an increasing number of conversations with other parents about their own bicycles. And here’s what I’ve discovered . […]