Summer Dinner...

Yeah it is too a dinner!!! When you are at your friend's cottage and you are by a big fire...what else is there to possibly make for dinner other than Smores? And what better to wash them down with than a lovley red wine? Sometimes it is good to reduce your culinary tastes to being five!! Wishing you all such a dinner before Summer is good and gone!

Chocolate Cake...

John and Ella say no more

paparazzi!!

A little after dinner

meditation from my yoga girl!

So tonight we had shrimp scampi, roasted green beans (thank you Betty they were yummy), and Moosewood Cookbook's Vegan Chocolate Cake!!

The Chocolate cake is super easy and super yummy as witnessed by the lack of pausing seen above! So love dinner and dessert on the porch! Been a long time since I took a time to make a dessert! I have been inspired by reading Julie and Julia to get back into the kitchen...mind you I will not be pulling out any Julia Child recipes!! No brains, livers, etc...for me, I would never stomach it! But playing around with fresh herbs and veggies while they last would be a welcome change to the runaway train of eating out I have found myself on. Now what to do with all those grains that I can't always identify in the pantry...recipe suggestions anyone???

Fifteen years...

Happy Anniversary to my best friend...

It has been fifteen years since we made this life of ours together official...let me tell you I cannot fathom how it could be so long when at the most it feels like a month. Life is just such a whirlwind, it is like it stops spinning for a moment and there it is...you get a glimpse of where you are then it just starts back up spinning around you again... But one thing I know in all the whirling is that I am truly blessed. I have got to spend my time in this life with my best friend. The one person in the world I can always talk to, the one person who gets me, the one person who always makes me laugh...I couldn't be more fortunate. He brings me peace and makes a very good resting place for my very busy head. May we have each other for another lifetime of adventure and giggles!

Summer luncheon...

Although today it is raining, we have had a lovely mild summer. Cool, fantastic front porch days...and my most favorite summer lunch, tomato, mozzarella, fresh basil and balsamic vinegar...oh and why not throw in some balsamic and olive oil with whole grain baguette...makes me sad to think we are cramming in all our summer fun now. Trying to get in all those things we "said" we would do and all the places we "said" we would go...sigh...just never enough time! So enjoy your days! Get a little more Summer in!

Away...reaching...faith...

These two lovely ladies have been gone almost a week. They went on adventures with their Grandparents in Indiana. It is so hard letting them go away. Especially, when you are left in the space they normally fill. They fill our lives with stories, questions, adventure, frustrations, growth, and most of all laughter. So when they are gone (which isn't often!!) it leaves our home with a completely different energy and it takes this Mama a few days to ease into that feeling. Ease being a nice way of putting sadness and tears. As mothers, we all dream of a break. You know of days of lounging and self indulgence...yet when those days are gifted to us it feels like something is missing and it takes a bit of fumbling around to stop trying to fill it all up and settle into the abnormal quiet in our home. I had visions of reading ( a lot) of wine and chocolate and romantic dinners with the Irishman...but I have not found those moments (more due to working during the week really than not seizing the moments) but it is the romantic notions of what to do with the time...and then here we are two days from their return and I sit just trying to breathe it in and soak up the peace...but that peace still doesn't feel complete without them here...who knew that my peace in the world was no longer a quiet place but one filled with shouts, questions, snarky comebacks, running, singing, and shuffling...

Now onto the other thing that has been occupying my very busy mind... I have been looking at some big life change. I am a huge chicken in the world of change. I do not take chances. I do not take large leaps of faith. I like it ordered. I am a worst case scenario planner. I cling to the security of what I already know. I do not gamble. Yet I am looking at a big leap. I have been told "Oh you will never do it..." Which, in the the past I think would have been very true!! But something in me has changed too...I am starting to believe I may just be able to take the leap. That I really am good enough to succeed. That I have the power to get what I want and need in the world to fill me up on all levels of my world. That I really can put us all in a good place for growth and discovery. I would be lying if I said this didn't make me scared though. I mean all the huge things that come with it all...you know big life change doesn't come neatly wrapped with a lovely bow and gift wrap!! It comes in faith and belief and listening to all the inner voices that say what you may not want to hear because sometimes those voices are shouting for you to let go of your comfort zone and try it!!

The Irishman and I are not flighty folks who put too much stock in signs and cosmos interference. But right now you would have to be blind, deaf, and dumb to think the world wasn't trying to pave this path for us right now. And quite frankly it FREAKS me out!!! Randomly and everywhere we turn...on labels, on TV, in overheard conversations in stores and parties...it is there... I really feel that if we turn our back on it all the universe will give up on us completely...throw up it's hands and say "I sent you the boat..."

So, I am trying to make sense of it all. I am trying to start taking the steps to follow the signs. And I am woken early in the morning thinking of the magnitude of it all. My thoughts are full with what ifs? and how do I's? And now that I have let in the possibility of it all how do I cope if it doesn't happen? How do I get through that feeling? I don't open up to hope easily so when I do it could be a hard fall if all the steps and daydreaming and making lists in my head end up being for nought. And with this possibility how do I not live my life at arm's length till it all sorts itself out? And what this comes back around to is me being so very bad at living with balance. Keeping all things even and level and peaceful inside myself have never been a personality strong point for me. All or nothing kind of girl I think, which as with everything has its pros and cons. I am a work in progress! So my head is full and my heart is hopeful, and I am a ball of emotions of all sorts. I will just keep listening to the voice and see where life takes me. I still have to work on the faith part of the equation though. The idea it will all be okay and work out just as it should is so hard for me but I will keep working on it. Think that may be why my "word" for the year was LET GO!!!! Sigh...