Welcome to Clickery, a weekly feature where we share things we like because maybe you’ll like them too.

Jen’s Links

It’s back to school! The long weekend becomes not-so-much when you need to at least attempt to put the kids back on a normal schedule to get ready for school. We typically spend Monday shopping for school lunch groceries, organizing drawers and closets, and prepping backpacks. And then we try to get them to bed early — and we all know how well that works out.

My sister, Anna Mayer, is an amazing children’s photographer and we’ve featured her before. This week, she was on a morning news show in Milwaukee sharing advice on taking a great first-day-of-school photo. Fortunately for us, she also wrote it all up on her blog as a tutorial, with really helpful do-and-don’t examples. It all makes so much sense — once she points it out!

And for the I-pinned-it-then-tried-it files, here’s one that works. We were out of town last week during the worst of the heat wave here. It was 95+ for five straight days and my planters looked like this when I got home:

The secret? Wine bottle watering system. You just fill up a wine bottle and shove it into the dirt. It drips out slowly to keep the soil damp. (I didn’t bother with any support for the bottles. I also put two bottles in the biggest pots and moved all of them into the shade.) Since these pots take at least one watering can full each every day, I may just leave these in there!