Page 159 - South Mississippi Living - June, 2026

SASSY BIRD INTERIORS
211 Main St. Bay St. Louis
228.344.3181 www.sassybirdinteriors.com
yard will be their pride and joy when colors began popping up through the soil. Tune up the bicycles and add color and noise to the spokes with plastic straws or playing cards clipped on with clothespins! Does anyone remember those days?
Go Green
Suggest your children host a swap party. Teach them to reduce, reuse, and recycle by sharing clothes, games, puzzles, and more with their friends. Just make sure they give away more than they keep! Make it a sleepover and visit a charitable thrift store the next day to donate leftovers.
Do a home energy assessment. It can be simple and great for your children to research. Ask them to make a checklist of items and actions that will make your home more energy efficient
and more comfortable with minimal effort. For instance, check light bulbs to see if they are LED, unplug chargers when not
in use, and set up a thermostat routine that saves energy when the family is not active. Consider timing family chores to use less energy during peak usage times when everyone else in
your community is doing laundry or cooking. Energy can cost
more during peak hours and certainly increases demand on our energy system. Learning how to make your home more efficient is valuable now and a useful tool for your children to have after they leave home.
There are so many ways to keep children active, thinking, and learning during summer vacation without leaving home. Giving them age-appropriate activities that allow them to explore
their own talents and interests is a worthwhile way to spend a day. There are also unexpected benefits to just being bored. Scientific evidence shows there is a spot in the brain that triggers imagination and creativity when we are bored.
Remember being bored as a child? We all figured out how to become un-bored and make fun happen. We made up games with friends, we listened to music while daydreaming about places we had never seen, and we pretended to be trapeze artists on the swing set. Do not deprive your children the same opportunities to grow up and say, “One summer, I was so bored I created a...”
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Holly Harrison has been a licensed interior designer for over 35 years. Shannon Stage has spent nearly 20 years in the giftware industry. Together they own Sassy Bird Interiors in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi.