This coming week, I celebrate three milestones. It’s our 30^th wedding anniversary, my 60^th birthday, and my 5^th “blogiversary”. This, combined with my recent retirement, has me thinking about the different ways of celebrating milestones.

Welcome to the 72^nd edition of The Sunday Spark, a series with weekly thoughts and highlights, nuggets of learning, and a decluttering challenge for the week. In addition to celebrating milestones, this week I look at Australia’s takeout coffee cup ban, paperback books, and night table decluttering.

Warning: This post contains old pictures that may case bouts of nostalgia!

On my mind this week: Celebrating milestones

2024 has been a year of milestones for me. At the end of June, I moved on to a new chapter after a long career in the retirement business. This coming week, I celebrate three more important events in my life. It’s our 30^th wedding anniversary, my 60^th birthday, and my 5^th “blogiversary”.

Reflecting on these events prompted me to look up the word milestone in my Collins Canadian Dictionary. The dictionary defines milestone as a “stone marker showing the distance to a certain place” or a “significant event”. It’s interesting that the first definition looks forward and recognizes the milestone as a step in a journey that’s still in progress, whereas the second has a tone of recognizing something that has already happened.

How do you celebrate milestone birthdays or anniversaries? I’m always interested to see how people mark these significant events in their lives. Some people go all out, renting banquet halls or fancy hotels, and throwing extravagant parties. If that’s your thing and you enjoy being the centre of attention, more power to you!  Personally, I prefer a little less fuss.  

My milestone birthdays

The first big birthday celebration I remember is my 21^st. My grandmother took family and friends out for dinner at her favourite Chinese restaurant, the Tien Sun. Then we had a party at my parents’ house. But one of my vivid memories of July 13, 1985 is watching Live Aid, one of the biggest concerts in history.

Fast forward nine years to my 30^th birthday. I thought I’d come up with the perfect solution to avoid drawing attention to my birthday by planning our wedding for four days before the big day. After all, we’d be on our honeymoon on the actual day. It turns out I was wrong. When we got back to our house after the wedding ceremony, my friends had installed 30 pink flamingos on the front lawn.

When I turned 40, we did have a party at my in-laws’ farm. I’m not sure how that happened. It was fun but definitely not the type of celebration I usually go for.

For my 50^th birthday, I decided to avoid the fuss by booking a trip to England, Wales and France. On my birthday, my sister and brother-in-law treated me and the girls to a lovely lunch at their favourite Italian restaurant. We were joined by my nephew and his partner. It was just the type of low-key celebration I enjoy.  

And anniversaries

We had a small wedding with under 50 guests, so I can’t imagine throwing a bigger party to celebrate any milestone anniversary.

For our 10^th anniversary, my mum stayed with our daughters while we went away for an overnight stay at a resort in Goderich on Lake Huron. For our 25^th anniversary, my husband and I went out for quiet dinner. We did plan a trip to Hawaii for the following year but that was 2020 and we all know what happened then.

My plans for this week

As you might expect, we’ll mark this week’s milestones with similar low-key celebrations. But that doesn’t mean these milestones aren’t special. As a cancer survivor, I know that each birthday and anniversary is a gift to be treasured.

Looking at these old photos was a fun trip down memory lane but, as I celebrate the past this week, I’ll continue to embrace the forward-looking spirit of that first dictionary definition.

The next chapter in the story is just beginning….

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Three highlights of the week

It’s important to celebrate big milestones and simple pleasures in life. Keeping the trend going, here are three highlights and simple pleasures of the week gone by:

• One of the nicest things about my first week of retirement was having more time to sit on the deck and watch the activity around our bird feeders. Regular visitors include bunnies, squirrels, chipmunks and even skunks. The highlight this week, though, was spotting a baby cardinal enjoying a snack at the feeder. I love that we have a family of cardinals living in our back garden to remind us of loved ones who have left us.
• We had rotisserie chicken from Costco for dinner the other night and I used the chicken carcass to make a pot of soup. It was delicious.
• On Friday, my sister Lorraine came over and we had a lovely visit and catch up on the deck.

Things I learned this week

Life is all about learning. Here are some nuggets I picked up this week:

Western Australia bans single-use coffee cups

As a Canadian, I’m always dismayed at the sight of those iconic red Tim Horton’s coffee cups strewn about the landscape. Takeout coffee is big business, but it generates a lot of waste. Considering our municipal recycling program accepts these cups, it doesn’t take much effort to dispose of them in a responsible manner.

This week, I learned that Western Australia has banned single-use coffee cups made out of non-compostable material. Coffee shops can sell compostable cardboard cups as long as the lids are made from either paper or a by-product of sugarcane called bagasse. Sorry Tim’s, but I think Canada needs to follow suit.

(Source: Happy Eco News)

Paperback books have a long history

When you think of old books, an image of an ornate leather-bound hardcover likely leaps to mind. I was surprised to learn this week when researching an upcoming blog post that paperback books have been around since the 1800s.

(Source: Days of the Year)

This week’s decluttering challenge – Night table drawers

In 2024, I’ve been revisiting the 52-Week Decluttering Challenge I completed in 2021. This week’s challenge was cleaning out my night table drawers. Although this time wasn’t as lucrative as the time I found $250 tucked away in an envelope in a drawer, I did manage to declutter 10 items. You can find the details, along with my tips and learnings, in this week’s decluttering post.

If you’d like to join the challenge, visit this post to download your free checklists and jump right in with this week’s task.

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I’d love to hear what you think about any of this week’s topics. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts and ideas.