If you’ve been around for a few years, you know that most years, in the fall, I share a post marking another year of Articles Club. Last year, I missed that post – but it was for a good reason! Behind the scenes, a few of us were working on a very special guide, and I waited to post until it was ready. And now it is! Meet: The Articles Club Guide! Over the last eight years, we’ve fielded many questions about our beloved AC: What is an articles club?How can I start one?How can I find people to join?How have you kept this going for so long?? We are genuinely happy to answer these questions – all of us want to spread the good news of articles club! – but also, if you’re really interested in starting your own group, I don’t just want to answer a few questions: I want to dump everything I’ve learned, and all of my considerable enthusiasm for what this group has meant to my life, into your lap, in the hopes that you will, indeed, go on to start your own. That’s not always practical on a large scale. So — we made a guide! After brainstorming as a group, four of us got together and wrote out everything we know about starting and sustaining an articles club. Here’s a glimpse at the table of contents: Fun, right? We put everything together into a beautiful package and you can purchase it right here for $20. All proceeds will go toward funding our annual weekend together, so rest assured you’re contributing to adult friendship bracelets, brownies-still-gooey-from-the-oven, and a polar plunge off the lakeside cabin’s dock. (Eep! We’re going with a Parent Trap theme this year, so it only seemed appropriate. Bathing suits will be

If you’re not familiar with the history of Articles Club, you might be surprised to know how it started: with a gathering of a dozen or so strangers in my living room, united only by their love for reading interesting writing and discussing interesting ideas (and the fact that they read either my or Stephanie’s blog, ha). Over the last seven years, most of those strangers have moved on, replaced over time by a sturdier and sturdier group of acquaintances, then friends, then members of a group text (don’t laugh – the advent of the group text was a big moment in the friendship evolution!). We’ve welcomed babies, we’ve weathered a pandemic, and now – we’ve stayed in house together for the weekend. It was, as you might imagine, a delight. I’d love to share a few details, if you’d like to see! Thank you to many of the AC gals for sharing these photos! And if you’re wondering why Club is sometimes spelled Clurb, it is not a typo – just a bit of an inside joke :) Planning a weekend retreat: Articles Club currently has 12 members – that’s a lot of ladies (and husbands and kids and pets back home) to organize! So we started early. After casually discussing the idea of a weekend retreat for a few months, we polled the group in August to gauge availability of January and February weekends. (And I mean literally polled – we used Doodle.) We felt a winter getaway would be cheaper, easier to coordinate, and would give us something to look forward to after the holidays. Once we had a weekend that worked with everyone’s schedule, we split up into committees. The committees were thus: Logistics, Activities, Food, Beverage, and Surprises & Swag. Logistics researched rentals, booked the

Friends, I feel like I left you hanging! Though I knew it would take me a bit to get part two ready for you (here’s part one – don’t miss the comments, they’re so wonderful!), I didn’t expect it to take quite this long – but alas, the flu struck our house last week and took me down with it. I tested positive on Monday and was completely down for the count as I haven’t been for YEARS for two days, and have been struggling back since then. Please take it from this gal who gets a flu shot every year but just hadn’t found time to make an appointment yet – get yours this weekend!! It’s nasty out there, friends. (June’s class had ELEVEN kids home sick one day this week! Out of 17!!) So though I haven’t had the upright hours and presence of mind to finish the next part of our conversation on working part-time, I do have a round-up of the past year of Articles Club to share with you today! If you’re newer here, Articles Club is a great love of my life. A dear friend and I started it seven years ago (think: a book club, but with three themed articles, discussed over a potluck dinner each month) and it has been meeting and snowballing in delight ever since. Here is a bit more about how the group has grown closer over time, and here is a bit more about why it’s so special. I know you are all kindred spirits who also enjoy reading interesting thoughts and having thoughtful discussions, so each year I post several of our monthly article groupings so you can enjoy them yourselves or take them back to your people! I’ve done that below. The Cost of BeautyThe Art

In honor of Earth Day (today!), I wanted to share about something fun we tacked on to Articles Club this week: a stuff swap! Our beautiful table at Stephanie’s! She is good at what she does! :) What’s a stuff swap, you ask? In our case, it was a chance to trade our gently-loved items for someone else’s: similar to a yard sale or thrift store adventure, but with only the creme de la creme of items – the treasures you’d be thrilled to bring home after a long day of hunting. Ours was very casual, quick, and simple, but still fun – and it made me want to host a more full-scale swap in the future! Here’s a little bit about how it worked. Unlike a book swap or a clothing swap, this was a stuff swap, and anything was fair game. Gals did actually bring clothing and books, but there were also beauty items, home decor finds, kids’ stuff, paper products, and more. We limited everyone to bringing just ten items so it didn’t become overwhelming, but I think if the swap was the focus of your event, you could raise the limit! Some of the goodies and the gals Steph had set up a folding table in her living room, and as we arrived, we rather unceremoniously arranged our items wherever they fit. This was just fine, but again, if you were going all out, it could be fun to designate different areas for different categories or provide more surfaces/levels to “merchandise” the goods. To decide who went home with what, we started with a snake draft. (A snake draft, if you’re not familiar, goes like this: person A picks, person B picks, then person C, C, B, A.) We did two snake draft rounds and then