The title is a line from the song Pretty Things by Rufus Wainwright. The song popped into my head while I was in the bath. You’ll see why…
As I was soaking in the hot bath (a little too hot, so it got cut short) I was sipping on my delicious coffee filled with peppermint mocha creamer. But more than I was appreciating the taste of the coffee, I was appreciating the beauty of my coffee mug. I have a thing for coffee mugs. Pretty coffee mugs. I have a large cabinet full of them. I have a few favorites and my coffee or tea always taste better when I use them. It is a fact that the prettier the presentation of something, the better it tastes. If you read my post about cupcakes you will remember this. The mug I am using today is orange on the bottom & ivory on the top. It has 2 thin blue lines circling the mug, one near the top of the orange and one near the center of the ivory. There are olive green vines and flowers that not only cover the outside surface of the mug, but also wrap around on the inside, so I can enjoy them even as I am sipping. I appreciate this extra bit of beauty the mug offers me. It does not go unnoticed, not for one single sip. This is one of my favorite mugs, for obvious reasons. I have another favorite, which was a gift sent to me by Ulrike, the mother of my German son. It is a beautiful ivory mug with handpainted blue flowers. It is lovely and has a special place in a separate cabinet. My 3rd favorite mug is from the Dean & Deluca store in NYC outside of Rockefeller Plaza (the one you see on the Today Show). It is special because it reminds me of a very fun trip with my friend Teresa …plus I love the shape of it. It has a wide base and a narrow opening. It’s just cool. Plain & simple. Oh, I also have a 4th favorite and that is the one I bought at the original Starbucks in Seattle. Somehow the handle cracked on my flight home, but that’s ok, I still love it just the same. That mug is in the original post of this blog. You can go see it if you want :)
I do not own many fancy things and I rarely spend money on myself. But if I see a mug that I know will enhance the flavor of my coffee or tea, I have a hard time resisting. We all need to have these things. Things that makes us feel better than we would feel without them. My coffee would have been fine this morning in any mug or even a plain white paper cup. But because my mug is so pretty, my coffee is better and I’m happy. It seems silly, but it’s not. You’re probably wondering why I’m even taking the time to write about something as mundane as a mug. But it’s more than that. It’s about appreciating beauty in something and letting that feeling enhance your experience.
I hope you all have something that does for you what a nice mug does for me. Hopefully you take the time to appreciate the beauty in many “ordinary” things. Don’t wait for a rainbow or a walk through a museum to see beauty. It is everywhere. Even in our kitchen cabinets.
I should SO be working right now but I have something that I absolutely must write about. GIRLFRIENDS! GIRL FRIENDS! Friends who are girls.
I have always known how important it is to have good friends. Most of us have those friends that we can call and tell the most wonderful, sad or embarrassing news to. Those friends are incredibly important in our lives! When we find out we are pregnant, decide to end our marriage or put our underwear on the wrong way and realize at the end of the night why we were walking funny all day…we need that person to call so we can have tears of joy, tears of sadness or tears of laughter TOGETHER!
I hope we all have those friends. They are hard to find. They are the ones who know us even better than we know ourselves most of the time. We call them to find out what we should eat for lunch: salad or chocolate cake? And they always have the right answer. BOTH! …and they are on their way over to join us!
So yes, we need those friends, but we also need the friends who don’t know us that well, who will tell us to eat the salad because it’s better for us and then point us in the direction of the nearest gym. The friends who don’t really know or care if we look better in the orange or green scarf, but understand where we are in our life because they’ve been there too. They have experiences and advice to share with us. And every girl…every woman…is so different, yet so very much the same!
I have great friends, both cake friends & salad friends, and I love them all dearly!! I need them all in my life! I need so many friends for so many reasons. Sometimes I like to have one-on-one time with a friend and really get personal - talk about the deep stuff, the hard-core emotional building blocks that make us who we are. And sometimes I like to sit around a table at a coffee shop with a group of women I barely know and hear their stories - their surface stories of who they are, where they work, how many kids they have, where they’ve lived and where they hope to retire. I love having so many personalities, so many voices and faces and opinions all right there together. We talk, we sip our coffee, we laugh, we share, we inspire, we learn, we strengthen our spirits TOGETHER!
Ladies, I know you are busy. We have kids. We have jobs. We have houses and dinner and yoga and laundry. But I’m telling you - make time for your girlfriends and everything on your to-do list will get done even better. Make dates for lunch or drinks and actually see each other. It’s great that we can stay in touch on facebook or send a text to say “Hows ur day?” but having personal time with friends is absolutely necessary in my book! Make the time. Call your friends now and plan coffee next week. Don’t wait for someone to invite you. Invite them! Don’t just send a text saying “wanna do coffee nxt wk?” Call them and tell them that you miss seeing them and you’d like to spend time together. Ask them if Monday at 9am at the local coffee shop works for them. If it doesn’t, how about Tuesday evening for drinks at the Mexican place down the road?
Call your friends. Enjoy your girl time! Laugh a LOT! Strengthen your spirits TOGETHER!!
I love I.U. football games. I love Colts football games. But my favorite football games are the ones right in my own yard with my kids and their friends. These pics are from a couple of weeks ago on a day I will not soon forget. What a day! The weather was perfect. Although I really like playing with sweatshirts & knit caps on, so it could have been a little cooler. And actually I didn’t get to play at all because I have a stupid ripped tendon in my right arm. Yeah, stupid ripped tendon, that’s right! I really wanted to play.
As much as we like to go out and find entertainment, the best fun of all can always come when you create it yourself. It is great to go out to restaurants for dinner and have someone else cook and even clean up after you. But if you have someone with you in your own kitchen helping you cook, dancing while you stir and singing into spoons, the dinner will always taste better. Try it. Try it a lot.
Don’t wait for a special occasion to do something out of the ordinary. Make tomorrow a special day just because it’s Friday. Make next Saturday night “Talent Show Night” at your house just for the sheer fun of it. Invite your neighbors. Tell all of your friends. Make a simple stage and string Christmas lights up around it. Be silly. Be even sillier and have “Non-Talent Show Night” where everyone has to do something they normally do not do. How fun! Imagine the laughter that will come of it.
Have fun creating your own game, show, dinner, whatever….just make it your own and it will always be better! ENJOY YOUR WEEKEND!!!
I do love apples, but if they could change the saying to “A cupcake a day…” I’d be doing a happy dance! There is just something about cupcakes. It’s your own personal little cake and you get to eat the whole thing. And the cuter it looks, the better it tastes. That is true. And when you peel back the paper and a few little crumbs fall…you have to grab them off your lap and stick them in your mouth before you even take your first bite. You can’t risk them falling in the floor. You can’t risk losing any part of that cupcake. You know you will lick the paper when you’re done, too. And the things are usually so big you can barely get your mouth open wide enough to take a bite. So you open as wide as you can, squinting your eyes, but keeping them open just enough to see that beautiful handful of sugar coming towards your face. And you breath in through your nose so you can smell it and it’s so sweet you can taste it before it even touches your tongue. Then you bite down and mmmmmmmmm the textures of the spongy cake and the gritty icing and they all come together for a moment of pure bliss…. mmmm mmmmmm! That first bite, it’s special…the others don’t quite compare. They are all good, don’t get me wrong, but that first bite of a cupcake is a moment when all is right in the world.
I bought these cupcakes from a lady who is just starting a new cake business in the area and she can make the cutest darn things. I saw her booth at the Women’s Business Conference a few weeks ago. Seeing her cakes in person is much better than what pictures can show. The spaghetti & meatballs have been a huge hit with my clients! I had another set that had pilgrim hats, sparkly pumpkins and miniature turkeys that looked like Barbie should be sticking in the oven. I’ll be ordering my daughter’s birthday cake from her soon. We are still trying to decide what do to for it. Dianne Miles is a great lady and very talented. You can see more of her work at her website for A Pinch of Sugar.
So yesterday Mira (my 10 yr old) & I were driving and she commented on how many leaves had fallen. I asked her if she really thought the season was called Fall because the leaves fall off of the trees. She said she definitely thought that was the reason. I told her that Spring must be named for the flowers springing up out of the ground, and she agreed. Then she asked me why Fall was also called Autumn. I told her it was because it starts getting cold and wimpy people like me say “It ought’em be warmer.” She got a laugh out of that. Then she asked how in the world summer got it’s name. I said because “some are” hot and “some are” not. That one got a little chuckle, not too big. I know, it was totally lame. I knew she was going to ask me about winter next and I had no idea what goofy thing to say for that one. I was thinking hard and trying to come up with something clever, but she beat me to it. She said, “I know, it’s because it was so cold and some “went brrrr.” It was a stretch, but we loved it. We decided that Winter was a silly name and Wintbrrr is much better.
And tonight when I tucked her in I was my normal goofy self, making silly little jokes and she said, “You are so crazy.” And then she snuggled me so tight. I asked her if I should stop being so crazy and she pulled her head back and looked me right in the eye and said “NEVER!!” Then she snuggled me even tighter. I’m looking forward to Wintbrrr and many more nights of those snuggles.
I just want to say that even though I posted the picture below of a Starbucks coffee mug - it just represents my love of coffee, not so much my love of Starbucks. Ok, so I do go to Starbucks because it is near my house and convenient. And I do feel all warm and fuzzy when I drink a gingerbread latte on a chilly morning..or afternoon..or evening. But if I have my choice I will always go to a local shop. Unfortunately, none of the good locally owned coffee shops or cafes are near me. If I’m downtown I always go to Penny Lane! That place is awesome. I would love to live down in that area anyway, but mostly so I could walk to Penny Lane every day. If anyone wants to give me a really good deal on one of those humongo gorgeous houses down there, give me a call. Oh, you’d have to pay my electricity bills too. Those houses (the ones I want) are seriously HUGE!
If you have a favorite local coffee shop, let me know! I’ll meet you there next week!
It has been suggested by some that I start a personal blog. A place to elaborate on the everyday anythings and everythings I enjoy talking about and/or photographing. I do love to talk. And I do love to photograph. And facebook can only let me say so much at once. So I’m thinking this is a pretty good idea. Whether peope will want to follow it or not, we’ll see. But even if it is nothing more than a lovely online personal journal for my own enjoyment is just fine because I WILL enjoy it. And hopefully some of you will, too =)
I will post on FB when I update the blog. You can also bookmark this and just check in once in a while in case you miss me on FB. I know my brain and I can tell you there will be a little bit of everything involved in this thing. Some of it will be personal. A lot of it will be random. Some of it might peak your interest and you may ask for more information. Some of it may be completely rediculous and seem like a waste of whatever time you put into reading it. Let me apologize in advance for those days because they will happen!! Just remember…I did apologize! ;)
There’s no rhyme or reason for the content of this blog. Whatever happens to be on my mind at the time is what will be discussed. It’s not a place for me to post information about my family or pictures from our weekend trip to wherever. This is just STUFF. From my brain. And my camera. Sometimes my kitchen. Although I can’t actually feed you unless you come over. Which you are always welcome to do. Just call first so I can clean!!
~ENJOY~
