Recent Posts

close up of a wool tapestry weaving showing mountains and sky

Project: Tapestry Weaving on My Lap Loom

Diving into fiber arts, I warped my tapestry loom and set to work. Here's what I made and the weaving skills I'm working on.
book cover of Sprawl Repair Manual by Gail Tachieva

How Do We Fix Sprawl? Book Review: Sprawl Repair Manual by Gail Tachieva

Suburbia sprawls endlessly. Cities are insolvent. Entire neighborhoods slump into disrepair. How can we fix it all? This practical manual details a difficult, but doable, way forward.
the cover of the book Paved Paradise by Henry Grabar, looking like red and white parking sign

Book Review: Paved Paradise: How Parking Explains the World by Henry Grabar

More space in America is dedicated to parking cars than to housing people. How did our built environment become this way? Why is parking so frustrating, the center of every zoning debate, and the key to reviving our towns?
close up of embroidered flowers on black fabric

Modern Quality: Where Do We Get Beautiful Things?

If you go to any major store, most of the stuff you can buy is cheaply made and ugly. Why? Quality and beauty make us happier and healthier. Where can we find them?
a curly-haired toddler in red and white stripy pajamas digs a hole in a grassy lawn with a metal shovel; a tree sits in a pot beyond so it looks like the toddler is helping dig a hole for a new tree

The Iterative, Incremental Method for Improvement

When you look at your life, you might see big problems. Big problems need drastic solutions, right? Not necessarily. Through observation, action, evaluation, and iteration, we can improve almost anything in our lives!
the glassy water of the spokane river winds through banks of rounded river rocks, pine trees standing tall on the far side of the river and in the distance around the river bend

Seven Principles to Guide Development in Kootenai County

Our county faces rapid suburbanization and dramatic change of character as farmland is devoured by big development. Here are seven conservative principles we can use to guide the county’s future.
randy and jacqueline walking away on a path in a park toward trees and grass

Ideation, Evaluation, and Iteration: How We Plan Our Lives

How do you design a product, project, business, or your own life? Here are the keys you can use to make options and not get stuck on an 'anchor problem'.
the cover of the book Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

Book Review: Designing Your Life: How To Build a Well-Lived, Joyful Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans

How you can use a designer mindset and iterative improvement to build your way forward to a coherent, satisfying life.

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About

We're Jacqueline and Randy, a blogging duo with backgrounds in tech, robots, art, and writing, now raising our family in northern Idaho.

Our goal is to encourage deliberate choices, individual responsibility, and lifelong curiosity by sharing stories about our adventures in living, loving, and learning.

Learn more about us.


Connect:

whoo@deliberateowl.com

Start here

Curious about our life and journey? Here are some good places to start reading:

Jacqueline and Randy leaning their heads together smiling at the camera

A Blog About Education, Lifestyles, and Community

A brief history of how the Deliberate Owl came to be and why we're writing a blog about us, our lives, and how we're living out our values.
Priests in red and gold celebrate a traditional Latin Mass

Discovering the Traditional Catholic Mass

How I discovered the traditional Latin Mass a few years ago, why that discovery changed everything for me, and what was wrong with the Novus Ordo Masses I'd attended.