Play by Play | September 2026

This is the third of these. What it is and the rules are here.

I’m sitting in a house that is finally, fully put back together. Six months of emptied closets, cabinets laying about, construction dust and piles I had apparently stopped seeing: done. And somewhere between hanging things on walls and folding laundry I have not personally folded in two years, I decided it was time to say goodbye to our incredible nanny/house manager.

We’ll get to it.

Same deal as always. What I did, made, paid for, and broke. What I’m into, what I’m not. No affiliate links, nothing in here pays me. If you love it, tell me. If you never open it, tell me that too.

Here’s September.

1. Damn picture frames. I have wanted a collage photo wall down our basement stairway for, well, four years. My mom had frames marching down the stairs of the house I grew up in, so this is not an original idea. Three years ago I hung six pictures and stalled, the way you stall when you want to do something properly (and then don’t do it at all). cute thrifted frames. Different sizes. The perfect collected-over-time wall that I was, of course, actively trying to manufacture.

So this month I gave up on the perfect vision and phase two involved painter’s tape, old photos, drawings, postcards and things laying around in junk drawers. I’ll admit it looks a bit like something Lizzie McGuire would have had over her bed. BUT, the kids love it. Guests stop halfway down the stairs and giggle. I keep stopping too. And it is giving me much more joy than the polished version that has existed exclusively in my head for four years.

Same disease, different symptom. Two years ago I thrifted a gorgeous one-of-a-kind Sally King Benedict silk scarf for $200 and put it in storage while I waited to find the “right” frame, presumably through osmosis. This month I gave myself 15 minutes to buy the best one I could find. Etsy, $104.61. It arrived. Plexiglass. Not glass. Plexiglass. It said so in the fine print I did not read. Whatever. It’s on the wall.

2. I’m winding down our full-time nanny after two and a half years. That’s roughly $50,000 a year back. She came to us when I was still in my corporate job, with a four-month-old Dottie. She was here when I left that job, through Dottie’s heart surgery and after, and when both kids started school I did something I thought was clever: I optimized. Her job grew from nanny to nanny + house manager + business assistant. Laundry, vacuuming, dishwasher, dinner, school lunches, the event calendar, the directory, whatever I was working on. All the small stuff disappeared into the background so my hours could go toward the things only I could do.

The math was simple. I valued my time at $250 an hour. Loading the dishwasher did not clear the bar. Neither did packing a lunch. Every little thing got measured against that number, and every little thing lost.

Then lately I’d start resetting the kitchen before she arrived and make myself stop. I’d fold laundry with the kids and think, no, she’ll do it tomorrow. I wanted to reorganize the pantry myself instead of explaining how I wanted it done. More than anything, I wanted school pickup back. I got jealous of my own nanny, which is an absurd sentence to type about someone I adore and who has been wonderful to our family.

I had built a life where the person I paid got a lot of the ordinary parts of it, and it turns out I like some of the ordinary parts. Pickup. Making dinner. Folding laundry with a podcast on. Being the person who makes the rituals and the tiny bits of magic. My kids are five and two-and-a-half. I want this stretch.

She’s still here until her new job starts. So check in with me in two months, when all of it is mine. God, I will probably tell you I hate the laundry.

3. So this season I’m measuring growth, not money. I’ve spent a year and a half doing what I call “playing around”: this newsletter, social media, a women’s business cohort, the local directory and event calendar, sponsorships, online workshops, an in person event, 1:1 coaching. Somewhere around April I got very hung up on the idea that I needed a Core Product. Capital C, capital P. The Thing I’m known for that also, ideally, makes money.

I ran a bunch of experiments trying to find it and eventually realized something annoyingly simple: right now, I don’t think I can focus equally on audience growth and making money. Or at least I haven’t figured out how to do both well yet. So for this next season, I’m picking one.

Growth.

Everything else is mostly off. The local directory stays humming in the background. The main thing is this newsletter and Instagram. And the product, for now, is basically: come with me. Come with me while I try this, read this book, question this assumption, learn from this person, redesign this part of my life, make something badly, change my mind. I’m not standing on a mountain telling you how I got up here. I’m figuring it out in front of you, with receipts.

Which means I may technically be a lifestyle blogger. Possibly, god help me, a mommy blogger or influencer. I have been dodging those phrases for some time.

The scoreboard right now: 850 Substack subscribers, 1,200+ Substack followers and 4,000 Instagram followers. The only number I really need to know in this season is whether more people want to come along. Because if not… what the hell am I doing.

When I quit my corporate job, I wrote down the vision: work nine to three, four days a week, take two months off a year, kids first, make $100,000 a year in profit. I thought I’d be closer to the last number by now. I also spent most of the last year exploring instead of scaling and intentionally turned off the fastest way I know how to make money, which is marketing consulting. Details.

Without the nanny/assistant, I’ll probably grow slower. But I get to live more of the life I wrote down now instead of after the business earns permission. This month I worked nine to three most days and loved it. The line I keep telling myself is “follow the fun, and the path will reveal itself.” Some days I believe it completely. Other days it feels like I have a side blog and a suspicious amount of optimism.

4. The renovation is done, and repainting the cabinets was 100% worth it. In August I painted my kitchen cabinets Farrow & Ball Dorset Cream, had a full crisis, and paid $2,500 to repaint them. We went with Lime White. We love them. Would I like the $2,500 back? Yes. Would I repaint them again? Also yes.

One other uh-oh: the bathroom grout came out too white and looked wrong against everything, so I tea-stained it myself (AKA Dottie and I made Earl Grey tea, grabbed children’s paintbrushes and painted the grout.). Who knew that was a thing. It’s not I made it up and did a little test first.

At the beginning of the month I was wobbling on the whole renovation. Was it worth it? My worst fear: Had we gotten wrapped up in keeping up with the Joneses? Now that we’re living in it, I’m delighted. The house flows better. It uses the space better. There’s more color, more us and the broken bits are fixed. Craft supplies together, games together, books together, a proper closet. My brain is quiet in here.

5. $375 on old things for the house. $100 for a hundred-year-old handmade quilt off Facebook Marketplace, which I washed and hand-stitched the holes in myself. $275 for a mid-century table lamp, also Marketplace. $0 for a giant mirror somebody left at my house, which I sanded and roughed up

About 95% of what’s in this house is used: thrifted, from a neighbor, Marketplace, Craigslist. Partly because I like a house that looks collected and a little odd, partly because I’m from the Midwest and paying full price feels vaguely offensive.

I’ve also noticed I’m making things again. Fixing the quilt. Sanding the mirror. Taping things to walls. I did almost none of that last year, and I’m convinced I have some kind of pre/postpartum creative cycle because this happened with both kids. My evidence is vibes.

One thing did not make it. I started crocheting a tank top with yarn that had been sitting in the house for two years. It went very badly. That is what I get for ChatGPT-ing a crochet pattern and then proceeding with full trust. I cannot make myself unravel it, so it currently sits in a basket looking sad.

6. $258.59 on four bras, and I kept all four. I’ve needed new bras for a year and have been overwhelmed by the approximately 7,000 options available to modern women. An Instagram ad finally got me. I ordered four from EBY fully expecting to return three and kept every single one, which made it very apparent how little my old bras were doing for me. All wireless. A mix of sexy and practical.

Confession: The old bras are still in my drawer. I’m not sure why I’m resisting. Maybe admitting it to you will make me do it today.

To recap the underwear situation: Costco last month, still going strong. New financial philosophy: splurge on bras, save on undies.

7. $62.48 to dye my own eyebrows, and I nailed it. Red hair means it’s hard to find a color match and salons are pricey. I bought a BAEBROW light brown starter kit and an auburn capsule, mixed them half-and-half and somehow got the exact color right on the first try. Fifteen minutes at my sink instead of a salon appointment. Twenty days later they’re a touch lighter and still look great.

This started in July, when I complained about my brow gel and one of you told me to try mustache dye. And I was suprised to find out it wasn’t a joke and is a thing. Two months later I am applying henna to my own face. You people are a bad influence.

I’m still going to try the mustache dye next. Fellow redheads: the comments on my instagram post turned into a small underground society of redhead eyebrow secrets.

I also repurchased my old Anastasia tinted brow gel in Auburn, $22, and I don’t know why I ever tried anything else.

8. I’m out on TV, apparently. I started five or so things this month and bailed on all of them. The one I finished: Practical Magic, to prep for the sequel. I did buzz through most of Lil Dicky and Benny Blanco’s new Friends Keep Secrets, which is kinda a podcast and not exactly a podcast and they don’t seem to know what to call it either.

Costco discovery of the month: La Colombe coffee, 12 pack for $21.55. Just sweet enough. So good. And what a deal.

9. I reread How to Raise Successful People by Esther Wojcicki and realized I have apparently plagiarized half my parenting philosophy from a book I read while pregnant. The core of it is that kids are more capable than we give them credit for. I’m also reading Living with the Monks by Jesse Itzler, which is basically telling me to stop making everything about output.

So the current philosophy in our house is: let them fail, let them try, stop making every hour productive. Which means I’m teaching a five-year-old that failing is fine while building a business that has not become what I thought it would become yet. Subtle.

On the kids’ side: The BFG for the second time and a great deal of Magic Tree House. Dottie, meanwhile, is in a ripping-books phase. gah! Tips welcome.

10. First bonfire of the year, and I forgot how much I love a fire in the woods. Rory and I cleared out the overgrown plants with rakes and then spent the evening foraging for branches and feeding tiny sticks into it. Rory took the job verrry seriously. More of this please. Hoping to make it a weekly thing, maybe make some meals out there.

11. I am still on ten pills a day. Since apparently this is now part of my personality. Health-wise I feel really good, which is perhaps why my “sweat three times a week” goal has now missed for the third month running. I’m officially retiring it instead of dragging it behind me indefinitely.

12. Last month’s other goal: ten hours on the $8,000 AI course. I did five. I told you I’d do it Tuesday nights after the kids went to bed, which was a lie I told myself out loud, in print, to eight hundred people. I am an early bird. I have never once wanted to learn something at 9 p.m.

So I’m not changing the goal, I’m changing the setup. Half my off day, during daylight hours, is now blocked for the course. Same ten hours, less delusion. I’ve learned a lot from it so far and am still not sure it was worth $8,000. Ask me in December.

Two things before I go. In August I asked what you’re halting and got almost nothing back. In July I asked for the worst thing you bought and you flooded me. Noted. Easy questions from here; I’ll keep the existential labor on my side of the page.

So: what have you outsourced that you secretly want back? Mine is school pickup. Hit reply or tell me in the comments. I’ll share a few good ones in October, first name only, with your okay.

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And Jenna Elrod wrote her own September Play by Play after reading mine: two stomach bugs, 13,000 words of her novel. If you ever write your own, send it to me. bc YES I want to read it.

See you on the trails or in the letters,
xx Gina