My laptop is dying...

I gave it a weeks vacation in the hopes that that might help revive it, but after 5 years of good service it is saying goodbye. I am sitting here holding the power cord in place, transferring anything and everything to my external hard drive hoping I don't lose anything in case of sudden death.

Now the internet works, but nothing else does. Sigh.

I carefully measured and placed cork tiles on my wall precisely 1/4 in. apart only to have the adhesive provided not be adequate and every single tile fell off in the night. Now I am going to have to carefully replace them while hammering.

I just felt like having a 30-second pity party over stupid things before I got back to the reality of the life that I truly love and enjoy.

Yes, please

via Le Love via A Cup of Jo

Meiji Almond

My favorite Asian Mart Treat has gotten even better...

Meiji Almonds with bitter chocolate: I think I love you.

I'm a dark chocolate girl and would be perfectly fine never eating milk chocolate again. There was no online resource for these - fortunately I will be loading up on my next visit to my local Asian store. If only they would start stocking the massuman curry paste again...

Baby, its cold outside

The weather is starting to turn. One consolation is delicious hot chocolate and cider...

...Thank goodness for a Starbucks on every corner.

image via Starbucks.com

Pebble Alphabet by Clotilde Olyff

Reflective Tic-Tac-Toe - Shahar Peleg

Cool.

Love

It is too easy to forget that you are truly in love with someone. Its not that you don't love them anymore, you just find yourself taking the relationship and all the emotions it can contain for granted. You get lazy with the relationship and let go things that make that relationship what it is. At least that is what I have found.

I've started to put together a spot for me, and I am toying with framing some "love" prints and overlapping them on an art ledge. It could be a fun addition to a fun spot. We'll see. It might be nice to have a casual reminder that I have something worth cherishing and that to keep it that way I need to remember that I have it.

Some prints I am liking (from a very quick search):

Don't you love this print? The wording more than anything.

Anything by Made by Girl:

Especially Deeply Madly

LOVE

ABC Love

I'm trying to decide if I like this print
by I Am Still Alive. It fits the theme, but is it too much?

I'm not meaning to sound all obnoxious and "oh, I have the best relationship ever," or "my marriage is doomed." I just needed to do this to remind me of how easy it is to get completely absorbed in our daily lives and our kids and forget why we decided to make a life together in the first place.

Knirp's X1 Umbrella

We have casually discussed moving to Oregon someday, and while I don't need an amazing umbrella now, I could then. The X1 by Knirps folds to the size of an eyeglass case and can withstand winds up to 88 km/h. It also weighs less than a pound. Kind of cool if you used it all the time.

QuickSeals

I read about QuickSeals awhile back and just need to remember to try them out. I don't like dumping everything into yet another Ziploc bag, so these look very helpful.

To toss or not to toss?

I was down in my basement last week and stumbled upon my boxes of saved magazines. Boxes, as in more than one. Fortunately I had recently limited my magazine saving to home design+decor, Martha Stewart publications and food magazines (kept in a kitchen cupboard), but the amount I have is still ridiculous. We are talking easily over 100 pounds worth just collecting dust.

I've been hemming and hawing over whether or not there is any point in keeping them. Sure, there are scads of great ideas in there, but am I ever going to take the time to look through them? If the opportunity arises to design my dream house am I immediately going to sit down and spend three weeks pouring through years of magazines? Probably not.

I have finally concluded that since I have this great spot to save things, I will slowly go through these old mags and scan any must-keep ideas here. Then I will recycle my stacks of eye candy. Will I regret it? Maybe. But most likely not.

My point in posting this here is to ask if anyone out there can give me any reason to hold onto these old publications. Will I wish I had held onto these someday?

Feel free to tell me to just toss and be done with it too. It will help motivate me.

More Lovely Moss Items

I just adore moss right now.

This wreath might actually make me a wreath person. Knowing that it has the potential to last a year is enticing.

The mushrooms are taking over

All the moisture we've been getting means mushrooms of all sizes are taking over my pots. This is a baby one.

Pet & Zoo Rubberbands

These rubberbands are just plain fun!

(Plus they'd keep the kiddos entertained while hanging out with me in the office)

I think I want to go camping . . .

For starters, this is definitely the way to shoot an ad to appeal to consumers. Who doesn't want to find themselves in this setting on a very deserted island? Sign me up, please.

I am finding this big teepee by Gandia Blasco very enticing. Of course my imagination is not including the reality of the munchkins and scads of toys piled up inside. My imagination involves lots of piramide lights and well, the top image.

It's not like I enjoy it anyway . . .

I have decided that I could spend the entirety of each day doing nothing but cleaning my home (superficial and deep) and it would actually look about the same as it does now when I do regular superficial cleaning and occasional deep cleaning. Kids and life just don't make for a home staying perfect for more than 35 seconds.

Conclusion: Accept that this is life with little munchkins that are home with me all day and keep things pleasant and not chaotic (already have). Now if I can get hubby to do the same. . .

Tornado Watch

We are on a tornado watch, which means that even though I am tired to the point of starting to feel sick I am not wanting to go to bed because that really loud thunder and unbelievable lightning could mean trouble. Not so likely where we are at (oh so glad I don't live in the Midwest, we are more Mideast), but it still makes me nervous.

So, in honor of frightening weather (and in gratitude for weather radios), check out Weather Photographer Jim Reed's website or the site for his Storm Chaser Book. It is amazing what the weather can do.

Something to try

Figure out how long you'd spend on something if you were doing it at the last minute. Then give yourself only that amount of time (try setting an alarm), but do it right away instead of putting it off.

-Excerpt from Julie Morgenstern's When Organizing Isn't Enough

I might need to read this book. This is great advice.

Scheduling future posts?

I just discovered Blogger's new option of "scheduling posts," and I think that it is quite simply the greatest thing ever. What a great way to save things all at once without having to go into publish overload!

No one likes checking a blog that isn't updated frequently. Even though this blog is solely for me, I still understand and respect the no update frustration, so here is the answer!

And oh how helpful this will be for tutus & turtles . . .

Fantastic Essay

My Mom emailed me this essay and it is something else I want to save, but I am not sure how copyright rules go. I will paste everything I have and hope this works. It is definitelyworth reading.

This I Believe

I believe that we need to be kinder to ourselves. We need to treat ourselves with the compassion we share with friends and the gentleness we show to children. This spring I became particularly aware of how hard I can sometimes be on myself and how so many people I know share this trait.

A close friend and I used to take walks together, often bemoaning the five pounds we eternally wanted to lose, but never did. This Spring, we finally lost that weight.

My two-year-old son was diagnosed with an aggressive non-metastic tumor; her husband with stomach cancer. In essence, we lost our appetites.

Neither of us was overweight. On the contrary, we are healthy women who never really exceeded the recommended weight limit for our 5'3" frames. Yet, like so many women, we were constantly critical of ourselves, most notably, our physical selves. This eternal drive to lose “the last five pounds” was simply a manifestation of that endless quest for perfection, and with that, an underlying dissatisfaction with our naturally flawed selves.

Our bodies got lighter as our hearts became heavier. I attained that desirable number on the scale, but what I really wanted was to roll back time.

I wish I had worried less about those five pounds. Here are some of the numbers that were more worth focusing on: the pound of butter on her husband’s homemade perogies in the winter; the liters of champagne we drank for each New Year; the traditional 4-pound Prime Rib we used to celebrate every birthday; the 25 pounds of pregnancy weight I gained that yielded 7 lbs of perfect joy-not once, but twice.

I want to give thanks for all the pleasure I took during those moments that nurtured me into the extra five pounds I used to own. They represented happiness and peace.

By the end of the summer, our stories were resolved. We all avoided the dreaded chemotherapy that loomed in the possible future for us. For my son, his tumor went into spontaneous remission. For our friend, his tumor killed him.

I believe we should be kinder to ourselves, less critical of our flaws and more thankful for the ability we have to create and enjoy pleasure in our uncertain lives. Every scar tells a story, every pound bears witness to a meal well savored and shared, every wrinkle reminds us that we are living a long life.

Contributor:	Annabelle
Location:	Moab, UT
Country:	United States of America
Series:	Contemporary