Currently...

Image via Better Homes and Gardens

Loving that I get to dress up for work. After being a preschool teacher for three years and wearing nothing but jeans and sneakers, it's nice wearing skirts and slacks and jewelry. No more little ones pulling on my earrings! Bonus: I'm finally learning my way around an ironing board. 

Daydreaming about a potential trip to Europe in the next couple of years. Particularly, walking the narrow streets of York, England with my husband's hand in mine, channeling my parents younger days when they fell in love with the quaint town. 

Reading Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy. I originally went to the bookstore in search of his collection of short stories Love Begins in Winter (which I still intend to read). But a passage on the first page of Everything Beautiful made it hard to resist: 

     "She waits at the wild end of the garden, leaning on a gate in her coat-- the one she wouldn't wear. But now everything about it seems beautiful-- especially the buttons; small tusks discolored by a thousand meals. The mystery of pockets. 

     At the farthest end of the wood, where no one comes, is where her life begins and ends."

Searching for A rustic rake, to create the lovely fall display pictured above. I love how unconventional-- yet brilliant-- it is.  

Missing my college days when good friends were just a doorstep away, instead of hours and cities apart. When plans to walk to the park or bake brownies or throw a picnic together could be made on a whim instead of carefully thought out weeks in advance. Checking schedules was unnecessary. Picking a location in close proximity was easy. Spontaneous decisions were made and carried out and life just happened.

Thinking about a T.S. Elliot quote: "Love is most nearly itself when here and now cease to matter." My husband and I had a date Saturday evening, and while walking the sidewalks of downtown Corvallis I was flipping through a book when I came upon this quote. I instantly loved it and stopped my husband to share it with him. The moment was perfect: the sun was setting, a cool breeze was teasing the hem of my dress and the ends of my hair, and we were standing in the middle of a busy sidewalk sharing a special thought. It literally felt like here and now had ceased. The time had stopped. All that mattered was the way my husband smiled at me and put his hand on my back, the way the book pages felt in my fingertips, the way the words filled my soul. 

Longing for cooler, crisp weather that actually feels like autumn, instead of the 85-90 degrees we've been having all week. Boots, scarves, candles, and blankets are calling my name (while my hot, sticky first grade classroom full of twenty sweaty children is definitely not). I just have to wait and be patient and remember that discontentment springs from a lack of thankfulness for what I have. 

Enjoying mixing pumpkin in with my oatmeal in the mornings. Add a little cinnamon, a dash of nutmeg and a sprinkling of sugar... maybe even some walnuts or almond slices, and you've created one delicious breakfast. Try it!