Commonplace – A.M. Pine – Hearth Ridge Reflections

June/July Journals ~ Wrap Up & Set Up 📓🖊️📝 {Day 70}

June 25, 2026June 25, 2026 amyofhearthridge6 Comments

I’m loosely participating in five? July specific Booktube Readathons! I really enjoy just marking off prompts! 📚✅

I decorated some of my July pages ahead in my to-do pocket Moleskine because there’s some travel and family stuff going on. I usually decorate this one the day of use because it’s so small, but I don’t pack all my journaling supplies when going on trips! I especially love the Jane Austen stickers I saved for the start of Jane Austen July! 😍♥️🌸

Deck-a-TBR-a-Thon! Summerween! Private Eye July! Jane Austen July! Zoom in for Prompts, if interested! 😅📚📚📚

These are some summer long prompts! I made a great dent in them in June!

Two June Read-a-Thons that I had a lot of fun with! I just read what I’m in the mood for and make them fit mostly, but I do tailor a few of my choices depending on topic. Read a couple American Revolution type books with my kids etc.

June Reading Journal pages almost full!

I purchased coffee stickers and cute yellow bakery type washi so my July theme is Yellow Coffee & Flower Shop! 🤪😅😍💛🤎💛🤎💛

VERY ambitious health/mental/spiritual/relational goals for July! 🙃😱😂

What are you creating lately? I so enjoy working in my journals.

Monday Ponderings: Daisies 💛🤍💛🤍 {Day 56}

June 8, 2026 amyofhearthridge2 Comments

I love daisies.

You told me.

They’re so friendly. Don’t you think daisies are the friendliest flower?

~ “You’ve Got Mail”, Joe and Kathleen

I went on a daisy walk…

Maybe this will become a June birthday month tradition…

It was SO hot, but I absolutely loved it. My body doesn’t love cold anymore, and the sky, clouds, fragrance of the air was sublime.

Look at the birds. They don’t plant or harvest or store food in barns, for your heavenly Father feeds them. And aren’t you far more valuable to him than they are? Can all your worries add a single moment to your life?

“And why worry about your clothing? Look at the lilies of the field and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for wildflowers that are here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you. Why do you have so little faith?

“So don’t worry about these things, saying, ‘What will we eat? What will we drink? What will we wear?’ These things dominate the thoughts of unbelievers, but your heavenly Father already knows all your needs. Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.

“So don’t worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today’s trouble is enough for today.

~Matthew 6:26-34, NLT

Refuge ♥️🌿 {Day 55}

June 7, 2026June 7, 2026 amyofhearthridgeLeave a comment

Then I pray to you, O LORD.

I say, “You are my place of refuge.

You are all I really want in life.

~Psalm 142:5, NLT ♥️🌿

May Reading Journal 📖📓 {Day 50}

June 2, 2026June 2, 2026 amyofhearthridge5 Comments

My cat May decorations ended up being fun!🤩

Reading and journaling bring me so much joy 🥹 so the marriage of the two is a double dose! I don’t really plan, but just go with whatever is inspiring me in my sticker/washi stash. I had a kind of slow start to my reading in the beginning of May, my reading mood was changing, had some meh/ok-ish reads at the start. I pretty much hated Date with Danger! 🤣 The end of the month reading though was amazing! I loved all the Middle Grade reads for a small readathon on Booktube called Middle Grade May! Especially, Secrets of Shakespeare’s Grave and its sequel, Tower of the Five Orders by Deron R. Hicks. I really enjoyed the Christian historical light fantasy, The Huntress, also. Honorable mention goes to The Little House in the Highlands which is based on Laura Ingalls Wilder’s ancestors. It was a slow start but SO cute! I made some good progress on my newest bingo boards I printed off from Pinterest, also. Georgette Heyer is hit or miss for me, but I loved two of her Regency romances, Arabella and Sylvester. Overall, a great reading month.

What are you reading or creating? 😍♥️

Walking & Words {Day 36}

May 15, 2026 amyofhearthridge2 Comments

Boredom is not a condition to be feared or avoided. Instead, it is a crucial element that fosters creativity, independence, and self-discovery among children. Boredom challenges children to engage with their inner world, to invent, and to explore, thereby laying the groundwork for a lifetime of learning and innovation. We must not shield our children from boredom but instead embrace it as a powerful catalyst for growth. It is essential to resist the cultural pressure to fill every moment of a child’s day with structured activities and digital distractions. Instead, we should provide spaces and opportunities for them to experience the fruitful solitude that boredom can offer.

~Ginny Yurich

Quote for reflection 🌿 {Day 30}

May 3, 2026 amyofhearthridgeLeave a comment

♥️ “He is Love itself, you know.” ♥️

“The languor of Youth” 🌲{Day 27}

April 30, 2026 amyofhearthridgeLeave a comment

THE languor of Youth – how unique and quintessential it is! How quickly, how irrecoverably, lost! The zest, the generous affections, the illusions, the despair, all the traditional attributes of Youth – all save this – come and go with us through life; again and again in riper years we experience, under a new stimulus, what we thought had been finally left behind, the authentic impulse to action, the renewal of power and its concentration on a new object; again and again a new truth is revealed to us in whose light all our previous knowledge must be rearranged. These things are a part of life itself; but languor – the relaxation of yet unwearied sinews, the mind sequestered and self-regarding, the sun standing still in the heavens and the earth throbbing to our own pulse – that belongs to Youth alone and dies with it.

Brideshead Revisited, p. 79

Thinking on this quote as I navigate young adult relationships. I’m prayerfully trying to put myself back into “their age shoes” to respond with love, compassion, and a listening spirit.

Monday Ponderings 🦋 {Day 25}

April 27, 2026 amyofhearthridgeLeave a comment

A few simple things to aim for this spring/summer! Prayerfully asking the Lord to help me focus on relationships and rightly ordering my affections. Do you have anything planned or something on your heart? ♥️

Happy Monday! ♥️🌲📚

…in truth Thou art…{Day 24}

April 26, 2026April 27, 2026 amyofhearthridge1 Comment

We seek the place where Thou art, for there would we also be, for in truth Thou art the end of all the searchings of heart which perplex us.

~ from Scale Howe Meditations

Monday Ponderings {Day 19}

April 20, 2026April 20, 2026 amyofhearthridgeLeave a comment

Merrily Gareth ask’d

‘Have I not earn’d my cake in baking of it?

Let be my name until I make my name!

My deeds will speak: it is but for a day.’

So with a kindly hand on Gareth’s arm

Smiled the great King, and half-unwillingly

Loving his lusty youthhood yielded to him.

Gareth and Lynette, Idylls of the King, Tennyson

‘Damsel,’ Sir Gareth answer’d gently, ‘say

Whate’er ye will, but whatsoe’er ye say,

I leave not till I finish this fair quest,

Or die therefore.’

Gareth and Lynette

I’m slowly getting into my buddy read of Idyll’s of the King and I was struck remembering this lovely picture book version of this part of the poem. The Kitchen Knight retold by Margaret Hodges is lovely, largely due to the illustrations by Trina Schart Hyman!

Happy Monday, friends! Our weekly quest has begun! Go forth boldly and without fear! 🙏🏻♥️😍

Quote to Remember 🩵

October 16, 2025 amyofhearthridge1 Comment

I sometimes think the worst thing a young person can feel is when you can find no answer to the question of what you are supposed to do with this life you’ve been given. At moments you’re aware of it balanced on your tongue, but not what comes next. Something like that. I can now say that another version of that happens in old age, when it occurs to you that since you’ve lived this long you must have learned something, so you open your eyes before dawn and think: What is it that I’ve learned, what is it I want to say?

Niall Williams, This Is Happiness, p. 13-14

Consider: Second Chances 🌿

April 2, 2025 amyofhearthridge4 Comments

If the old earth could wash herself and begin again so often and so humbly, why could not a man do the same?

A City of Bells, Elizabeth Goudge

What are motherhood, art, our very life but second chances, beginning again, over and over? ‘Second-chance’ is a term that the book industry labels romances that have the same couple making another attempt at a relationship. This is a very narrow definition. We take second-go-arounds at multiple things DAILY. Our faith walk, being kind, loving on those tough to love, and asking forgiveness over and over again. There are so many wonderful stories and art that when you dig deep, focus on a chance to begin again. I want to focus my attention on a few of these with an expectant heart for what truth the Lord wants to show me. I’m not sure how this will play out as I have so much swirling in my heart. A couple of stories that really jump out to me are Marilla, Matthew, and Anne’s from Anne of Green Gables, Valency from The Blue Castle, Jocelyn from A City of Bells, and Mary from The Scent of Water. All these people have been given a chance to start again or at least begin to truly live. I actually made a huge list of stories from books and films that mean a do-over and fresh mercies to me. I was so surprised by how many of my favorites fall into that category!