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Hi Reader,

My inbox was flooded after last week's newsletter where I mentioned my visit to the ER - such warm and wonderful reading.🥰 Let me just say I am doing great! I have no lasting effects from the afib episode and don't even need to take meds daily. It's just a new era of monitoring my heart and becoming aware of things I just didn't spend much time thinking about before (...and so we age, lol).

Let me also say I love this community - you are all the best!

This week has been one of my favorites for blog content! I got to share my top books of the year, January's Good Things List, and write about my goals and dreams for 2026.💜 All of these are linked below, but I wanted to mention how much I enjoy just sharing things I think you might find useful, entertaining, or inspiring and that I'm going to do it MORE in 2026!

You may or may not have noticed over the past 3-4 years, but things in the blogging world have been dictated by Google searches, keywords, and writing only what Google would like (to get traffic). And so I've doubled down on recipes - and only the ones people are searching for - at the expense of gardening, DIY, and life updates.

But those all brought me joy - and I know it did for regular readers, too. So since no one knows if Google will send any more traffic to small sites in 2026 with the increase in AI, I'm resolving to write more of what has made An Oregon Cottage from the beginning: ALL the ways we can live a simple, homemade life. 😀

Is there something specific you'd like to read more about here? Hit reply and let me know!

An Easy, Real Food Dinner Menu

You can find 4 weeks of dinner menus (and a couple of healthier dessert options) in the January Dinner Menu Ideas here. Here's a week I put together - copy and paste into your system, moving the days as needed for your schedule:

• Day 1: Soft Tacos, Easy Refried Beans, chips & salsa (fresh) or a jar of your canned salsa if you have some.
• Day 2: Easy Potato And Caramelized Onion Frittata, easy artisan bread, quick chopped salad (with beans to add protein to the meal)
• Day 3: Roasted Sheet Pan Lemon Chicken & Vegetables, green salad with Creamy Feta Dressing​
• Day 4: Thai-Style Turkey/Chicken Vegetable Curry, brown rice
• Day 5: The Best Sausage & Lentil Stew, cut vegetables & Ranch Dip, Easy French Baguettes​
• Day 6: Burgers or Quick Pizza​
• Day 7: OYO (on-your-own)/leftovers

From The Blog

​The Best Books I read In 2025​ The top 12 books out of the 115 (!) I read and listened to last year. These are the ones I think about, left an impression, and/or changed my thinking. READ IT HERE!

​Good Things List No.92​ 2 knitted sweaters, buying seeds on sale, a sunrise alarm clock, 6 book reviews and what we watched. READ IT HERE!

​My 2026 Goals & 2025 Review​ It's year 17 (!) for these goals and I wondered if I should write this again. So I listed WHAT goals are to me and WHY they've made a difference in my life. Oh, and what the new ones are for this year.😀 READ IT HERE!

A few more things

#1 - Let me know if you're setting goals and if my post resonated by leaving a comment on it here! I'd love to know what you think.

#2 - My favorite pens of all time are these classic fine tipped pens. But they have a lid that can be annoying at times. So this last week I did a deep dive into similar fine point pens (like, down Reddit threads and everything, lol). I ordered this one that's supposed to be the same (except for the "super RT" part) - no, it left irritating splotches in places. I even tried Wirecutter's "best pen ever" in the fine tip - billed as a ballpoint, it writes to me like a thin felt pen, so not the best pen ever in my book. All this has left me with this: that lid isn't really so annoying after all. 😂

#3 - My new greenhouse was delivered on Thursday!! I ended up getting a smaller size than I wanted because the place we have for it (it's an existing cement pad with electricity nearby) wasn't big enough for the next size up. I'm just going to roll with it, realizing it's better than what I had before (a plastic shelf set-up thing for starting my seeds). I'm very excited for it and you know what Brian and I will be doing the rest of this month: putting it together which I've read isn't for the faint of heart.

Thanks again for reading along - you're the best! 💜 Have a happy weekend!

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Remember it's easy to save recipes on An Oregon Cottage! Just click the heart when browsing to save your personal favorites! TIP: when you click on the link, it will take you to my site - click the heart like you see here to the left - it will be on the bottom right on the site. A pop up form will come up for you to create an account (or sign in if you already have). You need to create a password for this account (no info is kept besides your email) and then you can save all recipes and articles to this account and access it anytime to remember what you want and choose what to make!

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