Inspiring things lately.

Image: taprootmag.com

Here's a random collection of inspiring things I wanted to share...

• Taproot - a new magazine I simply.must.have.
• Stop For A Moment - a great reminder from The Family Dinner website
• A Farmer in the Dell - love the recipes on this blog by a young husband and wife farmer team.  Be sure to check out her Favorite Recipes page, including this Roasted Carrot Veggie Pasta and Cauliflower Pizza Crust that have me salivating.  Must try this pizza as soon as we get some local goat cheese back in stock at Urban Acres!
• The Dance - some beautiful thoughts on life and motherhood written by a Nashville mama.  I don't know her personally, but I used to work with her husband at Mocha Club.
• Marilyn Monroe's "diet" - love it.
• Helpful, free printables from Ann Voskamp's website - on her main menu, select "Free Gifts For You". Then download the PDF "10 Real Helps for Really Busy Moms and 10 Prayers for Joyful Parenting."  I have these framed in my bathroom.  I don't try to digest both of the entire lists every day.  Instead, I take one from each list every day.  So, if today is the 8th of the month, I concentrate on #8 on each list for that day, and that's it.

Got anything inspiring to share?

Beauty.

I'll never get tired of the green of spring. Every year, it's like I've never seen it before.

"Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful;

for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament. 

Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower,

and thank God for it as a cup of blessing." 

~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sissy, soul sister.

Have you seen the interview with Sissy Spacek in the latest issue of Garden & Gun?  Just lovely.  I've always liked her as an actress - after all, she starred in the movie Coal Miner's Daughter in 1980, and you might or might not know that I have a slight fascination with Loretta Lynn and used to belt out the lines, "Well, I wuz borrrn a coaaal miner's daughterrr..." all the time in college.  A coal miner's daughter?  From New Jersey?  My Nashville friends always got a kick out of that.

But now I'm convinced that Sissy and I are long-lost soul sisters and that we'd be wonderful friends.

Not only is she still married to her first love - a feat which is entirely rare in Hollywood - but it sounds like she has also prioritized motherhood above her fame and that she has a very close relationship with her two grown daughters.

"You become who you are and you realize, I'll never be a ballerina or a great chef.  We are, as my mother said, a product of our choices.  The world would be better if we taught our children those types of things.  Not how to wipe your mouth with a napkin so much as how to become someone worthwhile."

Staying true to her Texas country roots, she rejected living in Hollywood to embrace farm life in Virginia.  These words evoke so many feelings in me...

"I love cities.  I do.  But nature is my refuge.  A bug hitting a screen on a summer night is music to me.  The wind in the trees, the creek running full after a storm.  All of those sounds are a choir that fills me up and calms me.  It took me a long time to realize that."

Finally, she is 62-years-old and looks absolutely stunning, in a simple, natural way.  What's not to love?

Pinterest project: Repurposed wreath with fabric rosettes.

"Making these fabric rosettes is like therapy," I said to Brooke, a fellow creative soul, as we stood around the table in my dining room.  She agreed.  We'd been there for several hours on a cold, rainy Sunday, contentedly cutting and twisting our fabric in silence.

Part of my decluttering mission for this month has also included recycling and repurposing items I was no longer using.  This old broomstick wreath from JoAnn was sitting in a pile in my daughter's closet, decorated with ugly yellow plastic flowers, half of which had already been blown off when the wreath adorned my front door a few years ago. Oh, the poor things my front door had to endure before Pinterest came along.

Then I saw these fabric rosettes on Pinterest, and I thought I could make some for my old wreath.  Brooke and Paul ended up visiting for the weekend, and she brought a ton of her fabric scraps - everything from velvet to denim to Hawaiian.  So, while the boys discussed venison chili and oil drilling, we went to town on making rosettes.

We used this very clear tutorial on how to make the rosettes.  I swear it's addicting once you get started. 

And then, you just need a good 'ole hot glue gun to fasten them on.  I swear most of the world's problems could be solved with a hot glue gun.

I love how it turned out!  So much that I decided to make it an "inside" wreath.

The rich velvety blue of the last rosette on the right is my exact color inspiration to paint the chandelier in the butler's pantry (see the last photo).   Now, to find the perfect color of blue spray paint...stay tuned!

I'm a packrat.

Ugh.  As I've been working through Project Simplify and the book Organized Simplicity the last few weeks, I've realized something about myself that's painful to admit:

I'm a packrat.

I might not be this bad, but it's close, especially when it comes to keeping letters, notes, bits of paper, and other sentimental memorabilia.

Let me illustrate.  In the process of attacking the beast that is our guest room closet, I found a smooth wooden box that I made in 7th grade shop class.  And here's a list of some of the "treasures" I found inside...

• A letter I wrote to my "future husband" in 1994.
• An entire key ring full of soda can tabs.  Why??
• Name badges from Centrifuge summer camp.
• My True Love Waits commitment card.
• An entire set of Lee Press-On Nails.  French manicure, of course.
• DCTalk after-show access pass.
• Several notes from my friend Beth, addressed to "Christine McIntyre," signed from "Beth Wahlberg." 
  
• My best friends' autographs.  Ya know, just in case one of them was famous someday.
  
• And the crown jewel of them all: a folded-up piece of notebook paper that has written on the front in pink pen, "New Kids' phone #s (that don't work)."  HAHAHA!

As you can see from the contents, I think it's pretty safe to say I had a very strong New Kids On The Block phase in middle school.

So, here's an actual conversation Steven and I had as I carefully sifted through the contents:

Me: Oh my goodness, you're not gonna believe what I just found.

Steven: What?

Me: All the New Kids On The Block's HOME ADDRESSES!  Do you think I should keep it?

Steven: Babe, seriously?

Me: (grinning sheepishly)  Ok, ok, I'll toss it. 

Out of the corner of his eye, he catches me trying to slip it back into the "keep" pile.

Steven: BABE!  Throw it away!

Me: OK, but what about THESE?  I saved all the pages from all my date books for the past 11 years.  This way, I can look through them and see what I did every single day!

Steven: WHY would you want to keep that?  Can't you just look through them now for 3 minutes to remember and then throw them away?

Me: Yeah, I guess so.  (start flipping through them, acting like I'm doing what he suggested)  UGH.  I'm sorry.  I just can't do it.  I can't get rid of them.

Steven rolls his eyes as I put them back in the "keep" pile.

See what I mean?  I need serious help.

That little wooden box was just ONE of the items I've been going through, but to my credit, I do have an entire garbage bag full of trash (the Lee Press-On Nails didn't make it) and another huge bag of papers to be recycled.  Various items have been added to the "give" and "sell" piles.  I've organized all the "stuff I really want to keep" into two small neatly-labeled plastic storage boxes.  

As my life is becoming more organized, I'm learning that I don't necessarily need a piece of paper to remind me of a special moment I already carry in my memory.  

And I guess I'll just have to give up on trying to get Joe McIntyre's mom on the phone for now.  Sigh.

Pinterest project: painted river stones.

There's something so comforting about holding a smooth river stone in the palm of your hand, isn't there?  After gathering several river stones that were scattered on a sidewalk in my neighborhood, I was inspired by this idea on Pinterest and decided to make my own.  I thought they'd be the perfect natural materials for my daughter to play with and learn from.  And a fun project for mama, of course!

I didn't spend a cent on these and used materials I already had at home.  Even if you don't have the materials, the cost is very minimal!

Materials needed:

• Smooth river stones in various shapes and sizes
• Non-toxic craft paint in various colors - comes in small bottles at Michaels, Hobby Lobby, or JoAnn
• Small paint brush
• Black Sharpie
• Small container of Glossy Mod Podge - get it in the glue aisle at Michaels, Hobby Lobby, or JoAnn
• Foam sponge brush or bigger paint brush to apply the Mod Podge

Now, start painting!

For the background designs and words, you can follow the ideas on the orginal artist's blog, or make your own!  I did a combination of the two. Once the paint was dry, I simply used a black Sharpie to write the words, which made it a ton easier than trying to use a paintbrush.  The Sharpie ink dries quickly, and then you just put a coat of glossy Mod Podge on top and let it dry.  They end up very durable and scratch-proof.  Love 'em!

We keep them in a little wooden bowl on the coffee table, and Luci Belle plays with them several times a day.  I want to make another entire set of the entire alphabet - with one letter on each stone, to help her eventually learn to spell.  How cute would it be to make a set of these as a gift for a little girl's birthday?  Also love this idea of putting them in a bowl by the front door and letting guests take whichever one inspires them.  Perfect.

Celebrating my love.

My husband is a man I highly respect.  He's been through some of worst circumstances in life and has risen on the other side with such a beautiful humility and a sincere desire to help other people.  He loves me and our daughter well.  He hears me and knows me and sees who I really am, sometimes better than I see myself.  He can be rambunciously silly or reflectively serious; he can make any dish seem gourmet; he has the softest hands and the warmest eyes.  And he just turned thirty-three.  It's not everyday that the love of one's life turns thirty-three.  So several days of celebration were in order!

It started with a double-date in the Big D with our friends Josh and Audrie Patterson.  We met at Tei Tei Robata Bar for an early dinner. 

Josh & Audrie

Tei Tei was completely authentic...with menu boards in both Japanese and English, and an uh-dorable little Japanese man in his 70s (on the left in the white Nike bandana) who was serving up his native specialties with such diligence.

It's not even possible to see how cute he was from this photo.

Steven deemed the meal "one of his top 10 of all time" which if you know him, is really saying something!  It might have had something to do with the mini popcorn crab.  Everyone at the table except me was crunching on 'em like they were potato chips.  Blech.

Right before leaving, Audrie and I both had quite the interesting experience that capped off our dinner at Tei Tei.  On an innocent, ordinary trip to the ladies' room, we each noticed the unique Japanese toilet that had an assortment of buttons.  One button had a diagram of a person sitting on the toilet with water spraying "the front."  Next to it was a similar button with water spraying "the back."  Little did we know that once the spray started, you had to push "STOP" or...it wouldn't stop.  Oh geez.  So let's just say we each left the restaurant giggling, with shocked and embarrassed looks on our faces, and a nice cleaning.

To finish off our date, we went next door to the restaurant The Porch, which has one of the absolute best desserts in Dallas: the Gooey Butter Cake.  Imagine the tastiest, chewiest sugar cookie made into a pie crust, covered with buttery yellow cake and topped with vanilla bean ice cream.  Drooooooooool.  I wish I could say I had photos of it, but we all four shared the dessert and gobbled it down in less than 2 minutes flat.

I'd also had quite a bit of wine by this point.  Tee hee.

He is darn cute.

All in all, a fun evening!

~ ~ ~

The next morning, we had brunch for Steven at a very crowded and popular restaurant in our neighborhood called Smoke.  Love their style - the walls are covered in wood pallets and funky artwork, and their dishes are so creative.

We were joined by some of our very favorite people: Tommy and Linda, and Justin and Autumn.

Here are the adorable new parents, Tommy and Linda.  Linda had just popped out a baby, NATURALLY AND AT HOME, 5 days before this.  Are you kidding me?

Tommy & Linda

BuddiesJustin & AutumnBrunch was delish - light and airy biscuits, and fluffy ricotta pancakes...

And of course, since there was bread involved, Luci Belle enjoyed herself.

I love our sweet friends and family.  Thank you, Lord.

I'm also honored to have spent over 8 years of my life so far with this man.

Here we are 6.5 years ago the day before our wedding...

And here we are now...

Not.too.shabby.  Not too shabby at all.

Hiking with my girl.

The weather has been beautiful, which means 'tis the season for hiking excursions at the Cedar Ridge Preserve.  Oh, I so want to be a Colorado-livin' baby-wearin' mountain mama.  My friend Sharon moved to Denver recently and gets to be one for real!  Lucky.

So, here we are just outta the car, my Boba carrier secured.  As you can tell, I'm a wee bit more excited than Luci Belle...

It was a lovely, warm day.  So picturesque as spring was beginning to burst onto the scene...

My first view of the trail always causes a huge exhale.  Everyone should have green, wooded space nearby, in my humble opinion. 

Off we went...

The forest was very purty.

We saw local treasures like Trout Lilies and Texas succulents.

Then, I felt a little less bobbing on my back and realized that my passenger had nodded off to sleep!  Don't you just love toddler drool between the bra straps?  I do.

I hiked a little longer, and she awoke in time for a stop in the butterfly garden for a snack. 

We had a tasty snack of homemade almond butter, apples, banana, and dried apricots.  Well, mama liked the apricots.  I offered them to her, and she said, "NO!  Yucky!"  {Dried apricots dipped in almond butter = even better!}

Yes, apples dipped in nut butter are the perfect end to any hiking excursion.  Don't you think?