Hi friends.
We’re four weeks into September already and while I’m not really sure how that happened were doing alright aren’t we!
The week can sure be a blur of activity so I’m always glad to make it to Friday and share a few good words and reads with you lovely people. It’s one of my favourite things to do.
I hope we all find simple ways to relax and celebrate life this weekend
I hope this helps too – – – –
A Good Word
Maybe you too find yourself grateful and grieving, wanting and satisfied, overflowing, and empty. Too much, not enough, just right, ebbing and flowing like the waves that kiss the shore. Answers and questions, work and play, the light rolls over it all. Here or there, beauty everywhere sliding in widows free and true. May the light find you as you are, and may you know you’re beautiful too.
A Good Look
“Take your time and be everywhere you are” John O’Donohue, Beauty
This loveliness from Amy White
A Good Idea
from Jennifer Dukes Lee
Take a deep breath.
Close your eyes.
Imagine yourself in a place that brings you peace and a sense of calm.
What does it look like?
Chances are good that many of you imagined a place near water — whether that is a gently rippling lake or an ocean where you can taste the salty spray in the air.
Neuropsychology reveals that being near, on, or in water lowers the heart rate and decreases stress.
Here is a Habit of the Unhurried: Find your way to water. It is inherently calming, good for your soul, and helps you live the growing slow life you were made for.
You deserve it, friend.
Let God lead you beside still waters.
A Few Good Reads
This reads for those of us welcoming the warmer weather (at last!)
Clearing the Winter Pileup: A Quick Surface Reset
This is the time of year where I realize I have a layer of extra things in our home.
I think it’s natural to have a little stuff build up. Like an animal gearing up for hibernation or the plain truth that most of us are inside our homes more this winter than ever, many of us have extra stuff at our fingertips.
But our surfaces can bear the burden of holding extra stuff all winter and one way I take back the house is to do a quick simplification of our surfaces.
All it takes is thirty minutes to Edit, Gather + Reset.
First you’ll clear off everything decorative from your selected surfaces and gather them all one surface. I always leave the lamps.
This is the edit and Gather part. Two steps done!
– – – keep reading
And this ones for those of you getting all cozied up and ready for the cold
LASAGNA GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH
Let that thermometer drop a few three degrees and you’ll find me inside (with the air conditioning still on) in a sweater, with a cozy sandwich to match. Yes that is correct. The calendar reads fall and the forecast calls for Lasagna Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.
It’s not often (read: never) that I make myself an entire pan of lasagna. I know it’s certainly what Tron (read: my own personal Garfield) would like, but an entire pan of lasagna just feels like a daunting amount of leftovers. I can commit to a small skillet lasagna or lasagna turned into a ridiculously melty sandwich.
Sure, we can’t go wrong with buttery grilled bread with cheese, but we can turn the dial to 11 with herbed ricotta, mozzarella and roasted cherry tomatoes.
Have your sweaters out? At least maybe you’re thinking about them. Let’s sandwich!
A PANDEMIC PROJECT AS A RELATIONSHIP TO HOME
We bought our mountain house knowing she was a fixer-upper, and you always move in with grand plans—the immediate changes you’ll make, the elaborate remodels that turn “good bones” into a dream home. But once the boxes are unpacked and you start actually living in the house, it’s surprising what you decide you can live with.
Okay, the puke-colored walls have to go; but the 80s vinyl vanities in the bathrooms, not so bad. At least everything works!
(Until it doesn’t.)
In last week’s Times Sunday Review, Pamela Paul wrote a hilarious recap of how her relationship with her home has changed throughout the pandemic. “My house has engaged in what I’ve taken as a silent form of protest—sheets tore, towels ripped, paint peeled, wooden planks in the floor buckled and came unstuck, nails akimbo.” She joked that, in quarantine, her house had gotten sick of them, and likely the inverse was also true.
I can’t blame the boiler leak or the basement flood or the plumbing issues on quarantine per se; but certainly we’ve spent a year wearing and tearing our home, living what seemed like more than a day’s worth of life in rooms that might have otherwise sat empty for a twenty-four-hour cycle.
So it wasn’t exactly surprising when, one cold morning, I stepped in a puddle of water in our master bath with no clue as to where it came from. It wasn’t our plan to renovate that bathroom first—whoever would see it besides us and the occasional guest? But the house had other plans. Sort of like the house had plans in the basement, previously covered in some cheap poop-brown carpet, suddenly washed away by a boiler flood our inspector had told us would certainly never happen – – – keep reading
That’s all for now friends. Enjoy the reads and have a beautiful weekend, rest up, do something you love xx
Water Into Wine 
I must say I do enjoy my walks by the lake. Every day there is colour or a different mood. Not just visually but smells and sounds.
Regards Inge
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A nature bath I think they call it
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