simple joys of the day

bringing the outside in!

experiencing our first bit of snow

relishing in the long-lingering spices and bold complexities of Starbuck's Christmas Blend.

wrapping Christmas presents (and having a huge chunk of my shopping done!)

reading Francine Rivers' Lineage of Grace series

making Raspberry Pinwheel cookies (recipe here)

wearing this sweater

bath and body works wall scents' new fall flavor: leaves

p.s. thanks for all of your creative ideas - the corn meal container is in the recycle bin (that was landon's creative idea).

calling all creative minds...

reduce, REUSE, recycle

I know that many of us recycle but i think the reduce and reuse part of the campaign toward a better earth are often forgotten. I am definitely one to feel good about myself when i recycle my plastic propel bottles. ha! landon reminds me that water flows freely from our kitchen faucet and i shouldn't 1.spend the moolah, and 2.create the waste of a gazillion plastic bottles. yeah, i need to ponder the REDUCE idea a little more. (did you know you can buy propel in a powder and just stir it into a glass of cool water - eureka! now landon and i are both happy)

So i've been trying to be re-using things around here. I think we've made major improvements. We use cloth grocery bags so we don't use plastic, we use cloth napkins as well and i try to clean (haha -WHEN i clean) with cloth rags.

I save the old toilet paper rolls and slide my folded appliance cords into them to keep each cord with its host instead of entangled (my grandmother's idea). It's great in my drawer full of curling irons, straighteners and hair blow dryer!

I've decided to save glass jars (from peanuts, jelly, salsa, spaghetti sauce, etc...) to put left-over soup or whatever in. Also, i've noticed that they keep my coffee fresher than the bags that come with the coffee. So i get my coffee beans ground at Starbucks and then put them in their own glass jar marked "espresso", "whole beans", "decaf espresso", "french press", etc... it's great.

I've converted a metal tin that we received from the boy scouts popcorn fundraiser into our cookie jar - i've just covered it with some pretty paper.


But i can't for the life of me decide what to do with this thing. Surely it's worth keeping for something. It's air-tight and 24oz. What shall we do with my Quaker Yellow Corn meal container? Now, the most creative people that i know in the world read this blog every now and then. I'm not even kidding - you ladies and gents can surely come up with a really resourceful idea for this. Please help!

"The wait is over"

AWESOME!!!!

Star Trek 2009

Shoe girl

I am not a shoe girl.
Most women i know have so many shoes - too many to count. And isn't it a reputation that women in general carry - to be shoe-obsessed? My mom loves shoes because they look pretty and you don't have to get naked to try them on. My sister buys shoes because they are on sale for $30.00. They'll probably hate me for portraying them this way - but i'm not too far off, right? They tease me, though.

If i have any stylish shoes in my collection (which i do!) it's because they were forced upon me by my mother and sister. And i seriously am grateful. I was planning to wear chacos on my wedding day. Right before the big day mom and nell came to me with desperation in their eyes and presented me with a pretty pair of champaigne colored dress shoes with heals - "at least for the ceremony". They matched with the champaigne sash on the train of my dress and i was having so much fun on the big day, i completely forgot i wasn't wearing a pair of my beloved chacos. once i was out of college, mom and nell presented me with heals and suits for interviews. I knew they were right - that i had to adopt these into my "professional" wardrobe. i wasn't really thrilled with the heals - thought they were uncomfortable and fugly, but i've gotten a lot of compliments on my "cute shoes" and have only Mom and Nell to thank. If it weren't for them, i probably wouldn't have a decent job and would have tripped on the hem of my wedding dress while walking down the isle.

Apparentely, I have "ugly" shoes. I have about 10 pair of shoes that i wear year-round. And i've had most of them for the last 8 years. Apparently i have no style when it comes to shoes. I'm forgiven, though, because at least they are good quality shoes. I really only wear a few different brands of shoes and they are all well made and silly-expensive. And in my opinion, they go with everything.
Birkenstocks

Earth shoes

and need i even mention....? Chacos

Of course, i have each pair in brown and black (or at least grey) because i have some sort of fashion awareness. I wouldn't dream of wearing brown shoes with jeans and a black sweater. Well, actually, i would wear my birks...well... regressing here.

Though, i must admit that a pair of green or magenta flats to add to my collection of functional, expensive, long-lasting shoes is appealing now and then.

family video

Landon and I have certain things that we do that sort of are a waste of time on the internet - but we each enjoy them thoroughly. Mine is reading your blogs and scanning the latest crafts on etsy. Landon enjoys watching videos through youtube and ebaums world. So just about every evening i hear him laughing in the other room and he calls me in to sit on his lap and "watch this!". Last night it was this video. Food for our souls.
This short (2 min) video was put together by some of Landon's childhood buddies who are now filmmakers in New York (some of you know them - the Callner boys!). It is absolutely hilarious. It's shot on the property of Landon's childhood home. His parents still live there (his duncle is the guy with the shotgun). Can't you just imagine the kind of messes Landon and his siblings and friends could have gotten into growing up here?

We miss our Southern home and those there that we love.

I don't get this

Just sort of freaks me out. I guess that "surface" piercings are getting more popular these days. Hey Anna, why don't you say you take Crystal to Your Flesh Tattoos and have her pierce her back skin instead of her nose?

Falling from Fall

Fall fell far away. I fear that winter is here. Well, i actually love winter. Though here in Illinois it's a bit rough. Winter brings bitter bitter cold days (last winter Landonw as sipping a coke outside while he was talking on the phone with Pooks and after 15 minutes it was frozen solid...not kidding).
I woke one morning this week at 3:30 to find my windshield frozen over with ice and all the leaves that were on our mulberry tree dead on the ground - still fighting green. That was it. That was the end of autumn and the beginning of Illlinois winter. Here come cold, cloudy, wet days.

The snow here is longlasting. We love snow. We really do - there's not much you can do in winter without it (around here anyway). Even today Landon got out our skiis and made his plans to wax and oil them, i know as soon as we get our first good snow, we will be out in it.

Sweater addict

I am a sweater lover. I remember my first autumn away from colorado in the sunny state. 75degree "autumn" days and i was sweating in my sweater (weird, never noticed that "sweat" was in the word "sweater" - i named my teddy bear joyer because he brings joy, just like sweaters bring ....? sorry 'bout that - been awake for 12 hours now and haven't had lunch - makes me a little loopy - anyway...) and onlookers knew why, "are you from washington or something?" they would say (seriously - got this question all of the time!). "Colorado," i would reply. And they would give a sympathetic nod of understanding. Yep. Time to don the sweater. I needed it for my psyche and for my heart.

Growing up, the top things on my Christmas wishlist were CDs and sweaters. This year, ever since the leaves started changing, i've been wearing sweaters here in Illinois. Though, i am lucky - the weather here actually makes sweater-wearing VERY necessary.

Sweaters are so sweet, cozy, beautiful, and meaningful to me. Really, they are. Some of my sweaters have been handed down in my family - from my grandmother and my mother. I LOVE to wear these! Many of my sweaters have been gifts, and i often think of the gift giver when i pull the cuddly softness over my head and pup my hands through the sleeves. And when i wear my sweaters i remember special occasions that correlate with them (but us ladies do that with pretty much everything in our closet or jewelry box, don't we?).

And when Landon wears sweaters, wow - somebody better sweep me off of the floor! For some reason, it is just the hottest thing!

Last year when Landon was doing laundry (Landon does laundry!?! j/k babe) he shrunk 2 of my fav. sweaters. i was very bummed! any tips on how to unshrink them? my sister is an internet navigating queen so she found like 5 remedies for me. let's see.... i soaked them in water with hair conditioner and then stretched them back to normal size and layed them to dry. yeah, i donned one of them the other day and the kangaroo pouch could have doubled as a support bra. ha! i wore it anyway.
The cosby's

... for thought

Watch out ladies! A recent study that questioned 300 women about how much coffee they drank per day, women who drank three or more cups of coffee per day had breasts that were 17 percent smaller than women who drank less than three cups per day.

hm...

simply amazing

I'm loving listening to the Annie Moses Band. When I found out that the "worship band" at several of our ACSI conventions was going to be a "family band". I cringed. But these guys are absolutely incredible. They are a family of 6 kids and all of them play string instruments - 3 are graduates of juliard. The parents compose the music and they are just incredible. If you don't want to listen to this whole song, at least go to 4:15 where the violin and viola duet - it is amazing.