the perfect gray?

so similar, yet so different.

sunday baking

do you like to bake? when do you do your baking?

sunday afternoons are the perfect time in our household. no rush. i can slow down and enjoy the ritual of pulling out all the ingredients and lining them up on the counter. while the goodies are baking i tidy up the kitchen. it's a routine i really enjoy.

when ben and i were dating, we sometimes baked together at his house on sundays. one of our favorites was krusteaz's cinnamon crumb cake. there was a step that ben always did—swirling together the batter with the cinnamon mix. the instructions told to take a knife and make ten circles in the pan. something about ben's diligence in counting out the ten circles and making sure they were different sizes always made me smile. :)

i'm crazy—absolutely—about pumpkin. as fall is in full swing, today i made pumpkin bread. love the smell. it made for a great afternoon snack with a spot o' tea.

all the small things

on monday, my husband came home with these lovely flowers for me. that day six years ago, we started an email correspondence, and we are where we are today because he started it. i feel so honored that he would commemorate such a simple but momentous memory.

enjoy the weekend! i'm listening to death cab and cleaning. "i need you so much closer . . . "

enough

boy did i ever need to read this. i'm not a mother but it still applies. application: if i'm anxious about work, it doesn't help to keep checking my work email at home—especially on my days off.

thank you, Lord, for giving me enough grace for today. the entry brought me to these verses:

"there is none like God, . . .
who rides through the heavens to your help,
through the skies in his majesty.
The eternal God is your dwelling place,
and underneath are the everlasting arms.
(deuteronomy 33:26–27)

p.s. the girltalk blog is great. i'm pretty crazy about the 52home project, and i'm seriously considering making 2011 the year of a photo a day (or maybe like five photos a week?). i like the concept—seeing the tedious as momentous as we work unto the Lord. see the above photo. i'm thinking about it.

junk bonanza art

remember when maggie and i went to the junk bonanza? i bought a few flashcards to frame. what do you know? i got around to framing them . . . and not even a month later! booya!

[okay, the circumstances surrounding the spontaneous framing were that i had brought home some work to do . . . and, well, i was kind of avoiding it. some things never change.]

here it is!

okay, here's the play by play.

i found the flashcards in a huge pile at the junk bonanza. $2.50 each. i sorted through tons of words, pulling out nouns and verbs and adjectives and pronouns to find something that made sense. [some of the flashcards said things like "run, alice, run!" or "see jack jump."] i told maggie that i was going to be there awhile . . . i was having an emo moment.

i was so happy to come up with "thank Him every morning." it kind of just happened. one of the flashcards is a different font. oh well. i wanted to frame them and put them in the bathroom. something to see every day.

[also, the flashcards have two sides—one side has the word with a capital letter. that worked really well for this!] 

the flashcards have been on the floor next to my bed since the bonanza. i remembered that i had an old frame, mat, and print from when we lived in the condo. it is black—that would work. what if it was the right size?

it wasn't the right size. the flashcards were too wide for the mat, and i didn't want to put them underneath it. i liked their rounded edges. plus, all that white was boring. [gasp! did i just say that?] so i flipped the print over to see what it would look like if i put the flashcards over the print. why not?

interesting, at least. wasn't sure if i liked it. but at that point, it was all stuff i already had. it would work for a while, right?

i wondered what ben would think. he liked it. i think the word "eclectic" was even used. that sold me. it's staying—just like it is. ten bucks—not bad at all. :)

p.s. our bathroom is not gray. it's blue.

the little ones

howdy, all!

first off, i'm on twitter, partly because of this article. ben set up my account as modernchemist. see you there?

i'm just here to post some images of the little ones i got to see this weekend: almost-ten-month-old nephew and seven-week-old niece! hooray!

hope you had a great weekend!

i'm still here!

the past few weeks have been a whirlwind. here are the highlights:

*i have consumed so much coffee it is rather ridiculous (yes, this is a highlight, silly!). to top it off, i just subscribed to the gevalia kaffee at home club. free coffeemaker. great dark roasts. delish.

*i've been working. a lot. this is an area in which God is continually teaching me . . . about perseverance, integrity, being a good steward of time. being a good employee. being a good wife.

*ben had a birthday! twenty-seven years old. i am so blessed to be married to him. i won't get all gushy here but i am so crazy about my beloved vernon!

i gave him a few practical things and then a cover for his kindle [he loves his kindle, by the way, and if you are waffling about which e-reader to buy i'm sure he'd love to share his thoughts and research with you.] is that agatha christie???

*we hung window treatments. more on that later.

*we hosted our first small group! it was on tuesday night. it was a wonderful time, a great group, and i am so excited to see what God will do as we study the old testament. we are praying for more people to join.

*i unsubscribed from about 30 blogs. this could be a post all of its own, but let's just say i've returned to a healthier state of mind.

um, i'm sure there are a million more things but i've got to go finish that coffee, run some errands, and build an index! until the future!