Weekend Meanderings No. 110 | Joyful Noise, the Faroe Islands and a Cornish Farmhouse With a Thousand Books

A week full of music, family and the particular joy of watching people live their best life

This week was one of those weeks that fills you up. I started the week with two things on the calendar and somehow by Friday I had been to a concert, a dinner, a phone call with a friend and the Special Olympics. My heart is full and I am a little tired.

It started Monday evening with Joyful Noise, a singing club that is part of the Arc of Moore County, which supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and their families. My niece is a member. We went to their yearly concert and I am not sure I have the right words for what it was like. Uplifting does not quite cover it. Joyful is exactly right, not just the music but the volunteers, the families, the pride in every face. One of those evenings that reminds you what really matters.

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Then a mid-week dinner with friends we have not seen in a few months. Lots of laughing, catching up, and good food, the kind of evening that gets going and you realize at some point it is very late and nobody has moved. Thursday a long phone call with a friend. Last but not least Friday, the Special Olympics, watching my niece compete. There is nothing quite like watching people live their best life. 

Armchair Wanderlust

Buckle up, armchair travelers, because this week I am taking you somewhere you have probably never thought about going: the Faroe Islands.

Eighteen fragments of rock in the middle of the North Atlantic. Fifty-three thousand people who chose to stay in what the documentary calls the most impossible corner of Europe. The film explores what it calls the Isolation Paradox — how a place this remote, this unforgiving, creates community that is deeper and more real than anything you find in a city. Ancient turf-roofed houses next to a modern digital revolution. People who are not surviving the elements. People who chose a life that means something. I watched it twice.

In the Garden

Bunny Guinness this week, and if you do not know Bunny you are in for a treat. She is one of the best garden designers working in England and she has a wonderful way of explaining why a garden works, the textures, the sightlines, the way a space invites you to stay. This week she shares the design of a sheltered garden built around a 13th-century stone undercroft, all about accessibility and plant choices and creating somewhere you actually want to be. Intimate and beautiful.

On Homing and Homeworthy This Week

A beautifully restored 1750s farmhouse in Cornwall on Homeworthy this week. The owner is a journalist-turned-Pilates instructor and a book lover, which you will see immediately. Thousands of books, vintage pieces collected over time, layered and warm and completely personal. The kind of home that tells you who someone is the minute you walk in. I watched it and realized that you can never, ever have too many books. 

Also, Callie Coles’ house is for sale. If you are on Instagram and you are not following Callie, she is famous for her ponies and various other animals who wander freely through her kitchen, and her house is every bit as wonderful as her feed. Worth a look.

Podcasts Worth Your Time

Three this week, all of them excellent.

First up, Candice Bergen interviewed by her daughter Chloe. If you watched Murphy Brown and I did, and loved it, you will want this one. Candice Bergen has lived an extraordinary life and the people she has known and worked with and the stories she tells are fascinating. Something about being interviewed by your own daughter brings out honesty, humor and love. 

Table Manners this week features Kristin Scott Thomas, who I would happily listen to talk about anything for any amount of time. She is warm and funny and completely fascinating. They cover growing up with four siblings, her mother’s cooking, leaving drama school to go to France as an au pair (which is, if you think about it, how she became the actress she is), auditioning for Prince, and her new film My Mother’s Wedding, which she directed herself. Her directorial debut. The woman continues to astonish. 

And Emma Thompson on GQ, going through her most iconic characters one by one. The scene from Love Actually alone, her reaction when she discovers what Alan Rickman has done, alone in the bedroom, pulling herself together before she goes to the Christmas concert, she talks about it here. “There is no woman who does not know what that is like,” she says. 

A Skill We Stopped Teaching

Sam Hamper explores how the act of drawing serves as a meditative tool for developing true attention and observation skills. By looking closely at the natural world, participants can anchor themselves in the present moment, shifting away from passive consumption toward a deeper, more intentional engagement with their surroundings.

A Little Something Different Here on the Blog

I want to share something with you because you may have noticed a change and you may want to know where this is going. I have been blogging for fifteen years, and I am aging along with the blog. In a few months I will be sixty. Apparently I am in midlife, although my mind has me somewhere else, and my body some mornings lets me know in no uncertain terms that no, I am in fact aging. 

What that means for Pinecones & Acorns is that I am writing more. More as in longer, more personal, more about the things that women our age actually think about and talk about with friends and family. I will still have Monday Musings, Friday Favorites and Weekend Meanderings every week, the Sweet Treats series with Sheri, the Seasonal Table with Cindy, and recipes sprinkled through. But alongside all of that you will find more posts in the longer format, the things I think and feel and find interesting, written for the women who are traveling the same road.

If that is your thing, I am glad you are here and I invite you to join in the conversation in the comments. 

What filled up your week? Tell me in the comments.

Don’t forget to visit Juliet at Make Mine a Spritzer and Kim at Northern California Style — we always have lots to share.

If you enjoyed this post, I would love it if you shared it. You can find me on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterestand X — I would love to have you along.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends.

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