It has been a week, also a month, a few years, and everything is a lot. I asked the reviewer team to share some of their favorite serotonin-boosting happy places online, from Instagram feeds to YouTube Channels to physical locations we love.
My latest online happy place is Cloud Gardener UK on YouTube. Jason Williams lives on an 18th floor apartment in Manchester and has the most incredible balcony garden. He was recently accepted into the Chelsea Flower Show to highlight his container garden. I’ve followed a few of his tips and they’re wonderful. I love, love, love this channel .
One of my happy places offline is Ooh La La Bakery in Wheaton, Maryland. It’s relatively new, and the Viennoiserie and patisserie is exquisite. I love getting pastry for everyone on weekends. For me, pan au chocolat is a food I most often eat on vacation, and to have it on a random weekend gives me such a boost.
Shana: Paula Sutton’s Hillhouse Vintage content brings me a lot of joy. It’s lovely to see an older woman living her best #cottagecore life, complete with fancy cake, pretty dresses, and happy plants in her garden. And she just exudes kindness and compassion in a way that never fails to make me happy.
Sarah: I love Hill House Vintage so much.
Lara: My online place for happy vibes is @mommyfarmer on TikTok. Currently there are baby goats and the daily updates are adorable.
Then there’s @coasterandbuttercup the story of a horse and their emotional support goat. Love it!
What about you? Where do you go for a boost, online and off?
I have three daughters in their twenties. You can imagine my fears for their futures this week. My happy place right now is the latest season of “The Great Pottery Thrown Down.” I’m in awe of the creativity of the participants. And when judge and master potter Keith Brimer Jones gives a potter the “Keith cry,” it’s like a contestant on GBBO getting the “Hollywood handshake.”
@DDD I aspire to make a lot of men cry, honestly, but it’s different when it comes to Keith.
My Zephrine Drouhin roses. I’m not a good plant mama but these are pretty hardy, smell beautiful, and best of all, thornless, so we planted them right by the porch.They’re named Zeph and Pip in honor of characters from Killjoys, a late lamented TV show in the Q. household. One of the best things in the world is sitting on my porch with a hot cup of coffee on a beautiful spring morning and literally stopping to smell the roses. Maybe with a few homemade cookies.
Fanfic, in generous amounts. Both reading and writing.
Also silly Cary Grant movies. He’s a master at not just charm, but scene stealing.
And of course, tomorrow is Mother’s Day in the US which is the start of my personal gin and tonic season. Best enjoyed in a hammock or bath with a book.
Sending good vibes to anyone who needs them.
Was it the Bitches that recommended NORMAL GOSSIP podcast to me? If so, thank you! Low stakes stories that made housework a pleasure this past week. Just what I needed! (Does it say anything about me that “omg I can’t believe she did that!” is a happy place for me?)
@DDD and kkw- I would argue at this point that a “Keith cry” is superior to the Hollywood handshake as it comes from a place of greater sincerity.
Throw Down has eclipsed the recent seasons of GBBO as comfort viewing for me now. I adore all aspects of it (yay for kiln-goddess Rose and her bow ties!) and every time I watch it gets my creativity flowing. My husband actually looked up the cost to buy me a wheel and kiln so I could try my hand at it. Ummm…. Yeah it’s not cheap so that may have to wait until we’re done paying for kids braces.
I’ve found additional comfort in classic movie musicals lately too. Hello Dolly!, Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Oklahoma, Guys and Dolls and West Side Story are all on various streaming platforms right now.
Paula Sutton’s photos are gorgeous, but they show a level of perfection that will ever escape me.
I love Jason Williams’s balcony garden that bit more because he shows what can be done in a tiny, challenging space. Also, for showing the wonky bits too – makes it all feel a lot more achievable. If he can grow tomatoes 18 stories up, I can surely do it in my tiny garden!
My happy place is British comedy panel shows with low stakes, banter and laughs.
Would I Lie To You – I just saw a new clip on YouTube. Did Bob Mortimer put a toaster on his bedside table? It absolutely doesn’t matter but the storytelling and banter is so much fun.
Also Taskmaster, The Big Fat Quiz of Everything, 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown.
I’ll be visiting one of my happy places tomorrow because there is a fiery ball of light in the sky for the first time WEEKS and its halfway between me and the bff who will be childless for Mother’s Day. For all my Northern Illinois peeps, Hazel Marie’s in Plainfield is the best place for ice cream. May’s flavor of the month is “Exhausted Parent: bourbon spiked espresso ice cream swirled with bittersweet chocolate chunks”. How could you not?
https://www.hazelmariesicecream.com/menu/
Oh, I forgot the bit about getting a boost! I’m enjoying my garden greening up, and I’m trying growing veg yet again. Sending a prayer to the garden gods that I may have more than half a portion of green beans and one tomato, although slugs are attacking the beans, and the toms have got two inches high then stopped growing so that’s looking unlikely right now. I still enjoy the process though.
In other plant news I germinated some aloe polyphylla seeds a few weeks ago and they’re adorable – each seedling looks like one tiny leaf just sticking right up out of the soil.
Oh, and the results of the local council elections in the UK. The Conservatives found that being perceived as corrupt & heartless while dealing with a huge rise in the cost of living weren’t vote winners and got something of a spanking. It won’t predict how people will vote in the general elections, but it still warmed my cold, shriveled soul a little.
@Jill Q – I looked up Zephirine Drouhin and it looks really lovely. I’ve got a list of roses that I’m going to put in if & when I make enough room and that’s now on it.
@Big K it might have been us – I LOVE that show!!
I finally bit the bullet and quit Twitter because of Elon Musk. It’s not exactly a protest – I highly doubt my 60 some follower count will register a blip – but in guard of my mental health. It has long been toxic, but I’d curated a little space that made me happy and up on the latest memes, but that’s not worth the harassment free-for-all I foresee it becoming.
Anyway, that means I’m missing out on my usual small happy places, like feeds of dog pics and pretty art, and I’m kind of in withdrawal a bit. Twitter was my last social media. Now I hardly know what to do with myself lol.
In lieu of anything else, here’s some podcasts I’ve been enjoying lately:
Bunny Trails Podcast – in each ~30 min episode the hosts examine a common English phrase or idiom, how it entered into the language, and how we use it today. It’s interesting, short, and is a nice haven from drama and politics
You Must Remember This – this season of the podcast about classic Hollywood is on erotic films of the 80s which is not my favorite topic, really, but Karina Longworth is a fantastic podcaster and she always has interesting insights. She covers a wide range of topics in her previous seasons.
American Girls – a podcast about the American Girls series. The two hosts remind me uncannily of me and my best friend sometimes, and it never fails to make me laugh. They’ve gotten into characters that were well beyond my time with American Girls, and have now just finished the Marie-Grace and Cecile books. Even if you weren’t an American Girls reader and/or doll-haver, I always find they have fascinating things to say about history, feminism, race, book culture, queerness, all kinds of fun things, really.
Because Language – a podcast about linguistics based out of Australia. I’m not a linguist by any stretch, but I’ve always been interested in it, and they make it really accessible and fun. Start with a mailbag episode if you want to get a feel for the show, those are always great fun and the questions are fascinating.
Coffee Break Spanish – this is one of my favorite Spanish learning podcasts, it makes for really great listening practice if you’re interested in an intermediate level. The main host is Scottish (so I actually understand him better when he’s speaking Spanish!) and he’s joined by different cohosts across the seasons. They speak European Spanish, and I’ve actually noticed my accent shifting when I’ve listened to too many episodes lol. But anyway, the best part is there are a LOT of episodes. So if you’re interested in Spanish listening practice, I recommend it. I think the Coffee Break brand does French and German and probably a few other languages as well.
So that’s it. Some of my distractions.
I love Zephirine Drouhin roses, not least for the name! Coincidentally, I am currently reading the latest Sebastian St. Cyr book, When Blood Lies, and there is quite a lot of stuff in there about rose breeding and rose gardens, including the famous rose gardens at the Chateau de Malmaison, which were created by Josephine Bonaparte. For those not familiar with them, Bourbon roses are antique varieties with a very strong “old rose” fragrance. These are type of roses that Josephine would have had in her garden at Malmaison.
If drop everything to listen to a podcast counts, I must mention Hit Parade, which I discovered here through a podcast recommendations list and have been listening to pretty much ever since. I love the artist deep dives, the comparison shows, and the host always draw connections between musicians which I wouldn’t have thought of, but always make sense. I also love You Must Remember This and second that recommendation. My other favorite music podcast is Cocaine & Rhine Stones which covers country music history, and is so in depth he even has a post show segment on which sources he uses for each episode. He lists You Must Remember This as an influence. I’ve been showing all of these podcasts to my mom on our walks.
On TV, mom, dad, and I have all finally been watching Downton Abbey, and are in season five. Actually, the past several weeks have been a Julian Fellows binge because we watched Belgravia and the Gilded Age before Downton.
If you like Golden Age mysteries, there’s a fun podcast called Shedunnit. Lists of Christie & Sayers but also less well known writers and even newer books. The host has a lovely soothing voice, and the 20-30 minute episodes are perfect for a short break or to listen to while cooking or cleaning.
I somehow ended up on Reddit, and r/CrossStitch is a wonderful, upbeat and supportive community. Very diverse, no negative comments at all, and gentle suggestions to help newbies improve their work. I love seeing what everybody’s working on. Other boards I love are r/ImaginaryAwww, which features cute paintings of mythical creatures, and r/AdorableDragons, which is pretty much what it says on the tin. (The creator of Dragons With Jobs pops up here frequently.)
I also follow a ton of Webtoons: Lore Olympus, Cursed Princess Club, suitor Armor, a Ghost on the Roof, The Kiss Bet, Like Wind on a Dry Branch, Shadow Bride, Secretary Out of Order, and the Witch and the Bull, to name a few. And I start every day with Breaking Cat News by Georgia Dunn on Gocomics. BCN is my happy place.
STBT! This site! it is a serotonin boosting place for me, truly! my Instagram feed (which I kind of dip in and out of) which is composed of lots of food peeps who are very low key, ordinary people, doing good stuff, and often give me dinspiration! A lot of lovely spiritual-focused blogs.
My own 100 day writing journey, and the way it’s helping me feel happy, and relaxed, and focused, and contemplative and curious.
Maria Popova’s Marganalia/Brain Pickings.
Shows: GBBO. AND WOOSTER AND JEEVES! Hulu used to have it once upon a time but now I just youtube it. It is just. . . my happiest relaxation!
On Being podcast. I love, love, love Krista Tipett. I was just listening to her 2015 interview with mary oliver again, and felt so incredibly . . . hopeful and joyful, just listening them talk. The one with Jane Hirshfield too left me feeling full of serotonin. Krista Tipett is just amazing. In case you haven’t heard her, I highly recommend you try one of the episodes out. She has more than 100 of them if I’m right. . . she has been doing this since 2005 I think. the site is onbeing.org
offline: Mary Oliver. David Whyte. John O’ Donhoue. John Muir. Reading Mary Oliver’s Poetry Handbook, and deciding to read through works of poets whose one or two poems captured my imagination. Dorianne Laux is the one I’m currently reading. I loved her “On the Back Porch,” so decided to get her book.
Also . . . I wanna say mid-century british authors. Kinda like Barabra Pym, but maybe more . . . gentle? Fluffier? Elizabeth Cadell is the one I have in my current reading pile. But also authors like D.E. Stevenson. Miss Read. Kinda like Betty Neels but with a wider focus, I feel.
Can I also say sleeping? Like really re-working my schedule to get the amount of sleep that MY body needs? I had a spate of weeks recently where I could sleep only 7-8 hours and it was just a disaster. I was perpetually grumpy, and irritable. Finally deciding to stop doing whatever needs be done, no matter what, so that I can be in bed by 9:30 has . . . it has been life-altering. (I get up by 6:30. Yes, I need 9 hours of sleep as opposed to the 7 that a lot of adults I know are happy with). I am just better equipped to deal with EVERYTHING once I am well-rested.
I’m also going to check out that pottery show!
I’ve been watching bird cam videos on Facebook. Seeing eagles Jackie and Shadow raise their offspring Spirit, or kestrels Mr. & Mrs. Kes raise their brood, or the barn owl duo who are raising a pair of adopted chicks has been very therapeutic.
I joined Twitter recently and while I’m not sure I’m going to stay, right now I’m enjoying a lovely account called Canadian Paintings that has proven to be an effective timeline cleanser. As well, Courtney Milan posts about tea almost every day and I just stop and gaze at beautiful cups of steamy liquid and feel my blood pressure going down.