The Day-After-New-Year's-Day

 Gray skies and a parking lot blanketed with vehicles...

a perfect day to spend a few hours at a table in the corner.

Four stacks of magazines--his and hers, read and unread.

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 Ideas abounding!

 Inspiration-packed!

....and then home to share a breakfast-type supper

with Dad, sister & brother-in-law and the love-of-my-life.
Afterwards, we cleared the table to play a couple of card games.

Now, the evening draws to an end as the long third quarter of the Rose Bowl game continues.

I'll head upstairs to read my book soon...

What a relaxing way to spend the day-after-New-Year's-Day.
(I hope YOUR new year is off to an equally fulfilling start.)

Retire, Read, Reorder

  I'm SO sure that most of you don't have old

(August 1993)

issues of magazines hanging around your house.

Well, I do.  

Not many--but a few select ones--in a few choice spots.

Most of the time, I feel slightly embarrassed about it.

But this time, I'd like to share a sentence from one.

The farmhouse seemed a retreat far from the world—

a  place where an ascetic aristocrat might retire 

to read philosophy and reorder his soul.

I think the words retire, read and reorder

are what caught my attention.

Right now, I'm just rolling them around in my mind.

Tomorrow (and for a few days) God-willing, 

I will have time to do just that.

Can't wait.

Better than blogging

 There really ARE some things better than blogging!

My husband is OBVIOUSLY one of them...

and here he is sitting at a table at Barnes and Noble.

(He would tell you that a large caramel frappuccino  is better than blogging.)

 A few hours at the bookstore

with some of my favorite magazines 

IS better than blogging to me.

 From them, I get ideas to incorporate into our yard and garden--

 like these paths wandering on the pages above.

 A comfortable blue chair and bookcases filled with books to read

are better than blogging (I think)...

 ...and I came home with an idea for storing various scrubbers and scratchers, sink-side.

Holding an actual page containing the photo of the leather couch 

was better than viewing it on my laptop screen, and

 I even came home with an idea of a place to visit on our upcoming vacation (below)!

Speaking of vacation--that's ANOTHER thing that's better than blogging.

What are some things that are better than blogging to YOU?

Note-Taking

A recent excursion to Barnes and Noble found me settled in a comfortable chair with a stack of decorating magazines.  I pulled out the calendar/date book from my purse and began to jot a note or two...or three.  I was so inspired!  Here's a sampling:

• ...a wonderful house where you feel like living, laughing, blossoming (Madeleine Castaing)
• Above all you have to love a house to make it a success; it's always a question of love (M.C.)
• (They) discover potential in the forgotten and beauty in the everyday.
• Live (their) art casually and naturally.  Not a contrived aesthetic.  (to which I added, "MY GOAL!")
• There are stories to tell all over this house.
• The room...a typical hodgepodge of artistic inspirations.
• Philosophy of design work: gentle, practical,inspiring, nurturing, purposeful.
• Don't be intimidated by audacity; be audacious, but with taste.  You also need intuition, originality, vigor...Don't get taken in by fashion.  A secret:  love your house; love makes miracles. (M.C. again)
•  Lily of the valley--mulch in spring; divide in autumn.
• For the chalkboard:  Yesterday is history; Tomorrow is a mystery; Today is a gift.
• My eyes and heart are always open to meaningful souvenirs of life.  (Rachel Ashcroft)
• It's amazing what you find if you look in the opposite direction.  (Kenneth Cole)

• Surround yourself with comfort and beautiful things. (adapted from Emma Freemantle)
• Eye-catching evidence of a passionate life.
• Note to self:  On coffee tables - bottles, books, flat silver bowl, flowers in a simple glass

Where do YOU write random notes?  

What do you DO with them if/after you write them down?

For me, NOTHING replaces hand-written notes to myself...at least not yet. 

Belonging

 (I've learned that Joan Didion is an American author best known for her novels and her literary journalism,).

This quote, introducing a section of home makeovers, jumped off the page of the September Country Living magazine the minute I read it!  

I mentally reread it THIS way and sat in wonder:  "A person belongs forever to whoever claims him or her hardest...wrenches him/her from him/herself, shapes them, renders them, loves them so radically that He remakes them in His image."

Isn't this what God does for those He has redeemed?  How amazing to have been remade. Wrenched from myself!  Shaped and loved so radically!  How breathtaking to belong forever to Him who claims us "the hardest"!

♫Jesus, my Lord will love me forever,
From Him no pow'r of evil can sever,
He gave His life to ransom my soul;
Now I belong to Him;
Chorus
Now I belong to Jesus,
Jesus belongs to me,
Not for the years of time alone,
But for eternity.♫

(I doubt that Ms. Didion had any of this in mind when she wrote her  words...but I'm curious.  I think I'd like to explore one of her novels.  Not sure I've read any of them.  Have you?)

Mostly I'm Okay With It

Yesterday afternoon we reluctantly headed for Barnes and Noble...reluctantly, because our favorite local bookstore, Borders, officially closed its coffee shop while we were on vacation.  I was happy to find some new issues of favorite magazines AND a few new-to-me ones as well!  The tables are smaller at B&N. There was hardly room for all the magazines I'd gathered, but I settled in to enjoy some "eye candy".

 I found this simple & clever way to hold a recipe.
I think I'll look for some bottles and try it this week!

It would make a sweet gift, too, wouldn't it?

At the back of the spring issue of Where Women Create,
this picture caught my eye. It reads,  

"She wanders around wondering about this, that and then the other thing 
finding she knows nothing at all.   
And mostly she is okay with it."

We may not be making so many trips to the bookstore until gas prices fall a bit.  We were well on the way to town before we saw the current price is $3.85/gallon!  At the very least, we will be combining our trips into town.

Have YOU begun to incorporate some gas-saving practices in your life yet?

As I sit here with my cup of coffee, rain is pounding on our window.  It is our first official "April Shower"...complete with lightening and thunder.  

Monday morning.  I wandering and wondering and realize
the older I get, the less I know!

Mostly I'm okay with it because I'm...

♪ TRUSTING JESUS ♪

Simply trusting ev'ry day,
Trusting through a stormy way;
Even when my faith is small,
  Trusting Jesus, that is all. 

(Chorus) Trusting as the moments fly,

Trusting as the days go by,

Trusting Him what'er befall,

Trusting Jesus, that is all.