All posts by: Brenda McDearmon

The Only Resolution I've Ever Fully Kept Here we are, almost a full month into the new year! Have you made some resolutions? Did you spend some time formulating the goals you want to reach in the coming months? Me, too. However, while most of the bullet-pointed items never come to fruition, one thing I resolved has really stuck. Here's the story behind the only resolution I've ever fully kept.

Water Hoses and Western Wear When I began dating a boy in high school whose dad farmed a little, I bought a pair of

Note: This post was first written when we lived in Austin and had just moved to a downtown apartment. I've recently updated it with some new content after I revisited the subject of decluttering cards and letters.

The Number One Comment The number one comment I hear when we tell people we've moved downtown goes something like this. "We could never do that - we have waaaaaaaayyyy too much stuff." I thought the same thing. Until we did it.

It's a Transitional Process For us, moving downtown was a

[caption id="attachment_29810" align="aligncenter" width="680"] Photo - The King Center[/caption] Ways to Celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day I remember a few discussions with my parents about separate water fountains and signs that directed white people to go one way and black people to go another. Their words made me think of a black girl on our high school basketball team who had the admiration of everyone in the school. I thought of her as a star student in every way, and if I had gone to another place to get a drink of

Not too long ago, I had lunch with a super savvy young woman. Over a delicious salad made with slices of ripened pear and spicy arugula, I asked my new friend if she had ever heard of a focus-enhancing habit called Word of the Year. Turns out, she was way more than aware of it, and I couldn't wait to hear more.

Word of the Year Ideas for 2020 Since 1990, the American Dialect Society has been gathering once a year to vote on list of words (or phrases) that became commonplace in their usage during the

Happy New Year, my friends! Welcome to the tenth installment of my favorite posts to write this year! This is #1 of Top 10 2019! I’ve really poured my heart out in this list of my favorite experiences of the past year, and while I'm a little sad that this is it until next year, I'm also having some other pretty good "feels." Do you journal? Well, the experts say there are lots of benefits in writing stuff down. From better mental health to unlocking right brain creativity, they say it's good for us to journal. Interestingly,

Happy New Year, my friends! Welcome to the ninth installment of my favorite posts to write this year! My list of Top 10 2019! I’ve really immersed my whole self into these posts, and I’m now feeling quite sad that this is #2 of Top 10 2019. That means there’s only one left to go! What an adventurous year it's been here at Texas Over Fifty. I love looking back over all the photos on my phone. There are so many! Some of my favorites are the pictures of first-time experiences, and I be sharing a whole list of those with you

Happy New Year, my friends! Welcome to the seventh installment of my favorite posts to write this year! My list of Top 10 2019! It's been an action-packed, adventure-filled year here at Texas Over Fifty. I think I’ll write another post soon – All the Things I Did for the First Time in 2019. There were plenty of those, and lots of other things that were fun the 2nd, 3rd or 4th time, too. If you’ve spent much time at all here at Texas Over Fifty, you know I'm all about being intentionally adventurous. Thinking of ourselves a

Happy New Year, my friends! Welcome to the sixth installment of my favorite posts to write this year! My list of Top 10 2019! It's been an action-packed, adventure-filled year here at Texas Over Fifty. We've had a great time being intentionally adventurous around the great state of Texas, seeing lots of new places and faces. But ...  what you'll find in my list of Top 10 2019 is not so much what I saw as what I saw in someone. It was these experiences that will go down in the annals of time as the true memory-makers of the past

Happy New Year, my friends! Welcome to the fifth installment of my favorite posts to write this year! My list of Top 10 2019! It's been an action-packed, adventure-filled year here at Texas Over Fifty, and I've had a great time seeing new things while intentionally adventuring around this great state where we all get to live. But ...  what you'll find in my list of Top 10 2019 is not so much what I saw as what I saw in someone. These were the true memory-makers of the past 365 days, and I'm enjoying this time of sharing all of