Author: Mackayla Turley

Putting out our Christmas decorations is something I look forward to every year. Thanksgiving night, after the children have gone to bed, I put out our stockings, hang my festive aprons, and clip past years’ art work to the dining room grids. If I’m flirty enough, sometimes I can talk my husband into quietly, sneakily put up the tree (full transparency: it didn’t happen this year – we were all sick Thanksgiving week). Doing it then allows for the full effect to hit my kids when they wake up to our Black Friday tradition of decorating the tree together. If…

We were supposed to visit a neighbor’s home for this year’s Thanksgiving feast, but they were scheduled for overtime. My local besties both already have plans – one in Arkansas and the other in Vegas – and both kindly invited us to join. However, my kiddos overheard hubby & I discussing options and were throughly overjoyed at doing our own Thanksgiving – so that became the plan. I haven’t hosted a traditional Thanksgiving meal since undergrad, and I knew this experience would be drastically different than hosting 20 dorm-residents that had stayed behind for work. On those occasions, I had…

Christmas advertisements have been clamoring since mid-October with one goal in mind: getting you to spend your hard earned money. The messages are all the same under the glitz and glitter: what you have isn’t good enough and you’ll be happy if you buy this. Halloween comes with decorations, candy, costumes, scary movies, spooky books, boo baskets, and crafts. Christmas comes with ornaments, garland, trees, accessories, gift sets, ugly sweaters, cookies, cakes, candies, gift bags, wrapping paper, bows, excess galore. Thanksgiving gets one measly fall aisle for a week or so if it’s lucky. There’s a reason for it -…

With 2025 rushing to it’s close, new goals seem to pop up out of thin air. This column is written to remind you: you can choose anytime. You don’t have to wait to improve your health. You can assess what’s working for you and what’s not and adjust at anytime. You can decide drinking isn’t worth the headache and give away that unopened birthday bottle of wine. You can notice you’re out of breath playing with the kids and schedule a daily family walk to improve your fitness. You can take the stairs or park further away every chance you…

One of my kiddos is allergic to artificial dyes. I know, I know, many of you are rolling your eyes at the crunchiness of it. A few of you may be nodding in agreement, facing similar struggles. He’s one of the oddly “lucky” ones that have a physical reaction to it, he gets hives and a rash anytime red40 passes his lips – a traceable, measurable reaction to track instead of trying to define levels of hyperactivity. This isn’t an article on wacky, misguided food additives or why whole foods are best, though both of those topics are worth writing…

Everyone’s motherhood has hard moments. Decluttering your house, setting up routines, building a village, and finding hobbies to recharge all help, but nothing can really detract from the mind-shattering trial of a three year-old’s tantrum. Ear-splitting screaming at six in the morning after a sleepless night can make even the calmest mama struggle (I hope – I’m not claiming to be the calmest mama, so this is just my assumption). There’s no real hack to avoid children pushing your buttons, ripping open old traumas, and finding all your dormant triggers – the best you can do is deal with them…

My house is loud. We have three noisy, joyful, wonderful children who know how to work my Alexa’s. On top of that, our home has hard flooring everywhere (on purpose – I like being able to really clean them) and I don’t believe in wall art without function or purposeful joy, so our walls echo if you hit the right decibel. As I’m typing this column, my children are yelling “GHOSTBUSTERS!” every time the song calls for it. I’m sure this noise level would appall many other parents and grandparents out there. But here’s the thing – noise is only…

This was a summer of travel for me. I took my youngest to California, we did three family trips to Utah, I visited my college best friend in Washington, and hubby + I went on a couples trip to Tennessee (thanks to the best in-laws in the world for watching our three littles). Throughout these trips, I looked for my three favorite things: local coffee shops, cheap thrift stores, fun plant nurseries, and found them in abundance. What I didn’t find was shocking. Sometime in the past six months, I have lost my dislike of Pahrump. It may be controversial…

It’s no secret that happiness has a market. I’m not saying it can be bought, but the pursuit of it can definitely be sold. There are courses, articles, self-help books, self-care routines, and endless methods advertised for enhancing happiness, and many of them are specifically marketed to moms. In a way, it makes sense. Moms are often the emotional thermostat of their families – influencing the feelings of the entire household. I don’t think struggling moms should focus on increasing happiness though – I think they should do the opposite. If you’re struggling with being short-tempered, negative, or grumpy in…

This was our family’s first year gardening. The kids and I had fun learning and spending time together. We built the beds, learned about composting, installed worm bins, and planted most of the veggies together. It was a blast, but there was a lot of things I’d like to remember for next year. Our family likes cantaloupes occasionally, but not enough to eat twelve a week. I gave away a ton, but still ended up tossing a dozen or so as they went bad before we could get to them. Next year I’ll plant two cantaloupes, not five.On the opposite…