Considering that I have lived somewhere different every fall for the last five years (and very likely will live somewhere else next fall as well), it is perhaps understandable that I have a love/hate relationship with setting up house. As an order- and beauty-loving creature, I cannot help but desire to make the space I live in orderly and beautiful (and be stressed out when it is disorderly and ugly). But when it takes half a year for bits and pieces of time to add up to a semi-ordered house, the project becomes frustrating—especially when, as in our last apartment, we might have to pack up and leave right as the pieces are starting to fall into place.

This frustration, as trivial as it is, seems to be just another echo of our Deep Frustration: everything we strive after in this life is susceptible to moths, rust, thieves, and death (along with mold, unforeseen circumstances, and our own sin). And the solutions to both seem the same: to continue striving as best we can, and to remember Who has promised to save us from this life of frustration. So I will continue taking steps to set up our home wherever it may happen to be, and I will continue trying not to forget that setting up a perfect home is not the ultimate goal toward which I should be striving.

Here is some of what I have done lately. (For a few more photos see the full set on Flickr.)

I set up our creative area (which is a corner of our bedroom):

The pockets under the window were a gift from Gil’s parents (who have apparently completely pegged my style ). I am using them currently to store my scraps of pretty paper out in plain sight. The white bookcase with all my crafting supplies and books on it is resting on two file cabinets that my Dad helped me renovate last summer; I spray painted them yellow, and he made the wooden bases and tops for them. Here’s a better shot of them:

I originally had the table and chairs from this post against the wall opposite the file cabinets, but as suspected victims of the mold-tastrophe (and, frankly, big space-hogs that accumulated clutter), I decided to bid them farewell. Instead, I set up my little blue armchair and a bookcase full of notebooks, magazines, and art supplies. This has turned out to be far more conducive to creativity then a table piled full of said notebooks, magazines, and art supplies.

Moving on to our living room/entryway… Here’s a view looking from the middle of the living room, out over the couch and towards the front door.

Next to the door is the sewing machine that I mentioned in this post. As you can see, I don’t have the typewriter on it anymore. I only recently set up those wire cubes next to it… they aren’t the most aesthetically appealing thing in the world, but they successfully keep all that clutter from being all over our dining room table and coffee table instead. So, in that light, they are quite lovely.

Now, turning around and facing the living room over the back of the couch:

The mantle decorations and the little turquoise bookcase are my newest additions to the living room. Here’s a better view of the mantle:

I pulled this together from odds and ends that I scrounged around our house to find; hence its ecclectic nature. But I am nonetheless pleased with how it turned out. (A couple of you may recognize things that you have sent/given me in this arrangement. ) Here’s a closeup of the buttons under the (backwards) canvas frame:

And here, for those of you who follow me on Twitter or are Facebook friends, is the result of the bookcase renovation Dad and I were working on earlier this summer (in this shot, looking out from the bathroom door into the living room):

I have to say, I’m crazy about this little bookcase. It was a piece of garbage when I found it at St. Vinny’s, but by adding trim to the sides, top, and bottom and painting it this scrumptious shade of blue, it is completely transformed. (And I couldn’t help but choose books to put on it by color. Because, really. Just look at it.)

So, those are all the photos I have to share for now. At some point if it’s clean enough I may take photos of the rest of our house too. I hope you are all well, and enjoying your transition into the beautiful season of fall. (Even if it feels like summer was too short!)

It’s the first and easiest question to ask an acquaintance this time of year: How is your summer going? Around these parts it seems especially on the tip of everyone’s tongue because our summer (unlike, apparently, the poor rest of the country’s) has only just arrived. The sun and (semi) warmth are very welcome visitors after this incredibly rainy year, and you can see the lift they put in everyone’s step.

But that does not necessarily make it an easy question to answer. A good friend asked me how our summer was going just last night, and I had to pause—what have we been doing this summer? It feels like a blur of workdays and weekends, unfinished projects and unmet goals, and good intentions to hang out with friends that have not yet come to fruition. The sad truth is that this, my first summer not a) facing another year of school in the fall or b) planning a wedding, feels… just like the rest of the year.

When I was a kid, summers were about building imaginary trains out of lawn chairs in the backyard and riding around the neighborhood on my bike. In middleschool and highschool, they were about catching up on unfinished schoolwork and tagging along with friends to creeks and swimming holes. In college, summers meant a whole variety of things (including shooting weddings, for a couple of those years) that all amounted to counting the days until we started classes again.

Now, I’m having to learn a new year-rhythm: Working for five days (or sometimes more) and then resting (theoretically) for two. Counting the seasons not by school terms but by changes in weather and scenery and produce available at the farmer’s market. Enjoying summer not as a break from responsibility but as an infusion of warmth and encouragement to keep going with the responsibilities that won’t let up as the year goes on.

If I make this sounds gloomy, I don’t mean to. It’s true that in some ways this new rhythm is stymieing to the projects I would like to work on and the friends I would like to spend time with, but in others it is a great relief from the pressure of impending school deadlines. And it it is certainly not without its moments of levity or joy, or its opportunities to create (even though every weekend feels nine times too small to fit in everything I would like to). Here are some of the things besides working that Gil and I have been up to this summer:

• Reading books. Gil, for his thesis, has been reading many books on the structure of story, especially those by David Mamet, Joseph Campbell, and Owen Barfield. I have been taking a bit of a break from the heavy-duty nutrition literature I had been reading, instead currently reading The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver and The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett. (And we’ve both been reading the plentiful supply of superhero graphic novels Gil keeps flowing through our house from the library. Just in case you forgot we were nerds.)
• Watching movies. In keeping with Gil’s reading, we went on a David Mamet movie kick early this summer. His movies have been hit and miss with us. I would most highly recommend The Spanish Prisoner and State and Main. Gil would most highly recommend Redbelt, because he is a martial artist. Our latest movie kick is somewhat less cultured but a whole lot of fun: Marvel superhero movies. We’ve watched Thor, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, and Iron Man 2. Now we just need to see Captain America and we’ll be all set for The Avengers next year.
• Cozying our cottage. As part of our recovery (thank goodness) from our latest mold-tastrophe, I have been getting, one by one, to those projects that I just kept putting off—purging and organizing our closets, sorting through years-old school binders and chucking most of the contents, and finally setting up my creative corner. I have also, with the help of my dad, been renovating a little bookcase I found at St. Vinny’s earlier this year. I hope to have photos of it soon.
• We’ve also both been working on personal projects; trying to write more, draw more, exercise more, etc. And I have been mulling and mulling over my thoughts about nutrition as all the reading and talking about it I have done meet the day-to-day act of actually eating food. It is a complex and (I think) important topic, and as soon as I can figure out in what form to do so, I hope to share some of the “mulling” I have done.

So… that is our summer thus far. I hope that whatever “season” of life you are in, you are finding ways to enjoy this summer too.

(Unless you live in the southern hemisphere. In which case, well… I hope you enjoy summer when you get to it.)

Our first year has been filled with work and school and “fun” adventures like moving and fighting mold (and our fair share of skirmishes, I’ll be honest), but all in all the vast majority of the problems we’ve dealt with this year have come from outside our relationship and not from within it—for which I am very thankful. I would marry him over again in a heartbeat.

Last weekend, we used our camping supplies (many of which were wedding gifts) to camp out on property belonging to some very gracious friends of ours. So on the morning of our anniversary, we were in the forest once again:

Here are our silly camping faces:

Campfire coffee with raw milk (YUM):

A campfire cutie:

We came home Saturday and spent the weekend watching movies and eating the rest of our S’more fixings. Oh, and ordering a Dehumidifier, which is currently sitting in our house doing its duty. (It filled its full 30 pints on our first day using it! Yikes. But it makes me glad we have it.)

And, finally… no, I didn’t quite finish my thank-you notes on time. I am deciding to forgive myself for this. I hope, if you are one of the (gulp) many who will hopefully be receiving your thank-you notes in the next week or two, that you will forgive me too.

I wanted to share one of my favorite photos, which I have never posted here:

(view larger)

I took this almost two and a half years ago, during a season of transition and re-evaluation in the middle of my Gutenberg career. (It was, actually, just before Gil and I started getting to know each other. Hmmm.)

Those familiar with this walk will have recognized it immediately, but that red, pointed-roofed building in the background is the school I called home for four years, and that wonderful gnarled-wood fence in the foreground belonged to a Jewish family who lived down the street from it. That family recently moved (and they took their fence with them), and soon Gutenberg students may not live in that red brick building either. Time clips along, and people and their belongings move in and out of these places we call home.

Yesterday we drove by a building in which our church met when I was a little girl. I’ve driven by this building often, and not often thought about it. But yesterday I happened to catch a glimpse in one of the windows, and suddenly I could smell the carpet on the staircase—I could taste the nerves as I waited backstage for my part in a children’s play—I could feel the weight of those red hymnals on my lap and the pride I felt at raising my voice in song (more clearly and beautifully than anyone else’s, I hoped). Years melted in that glance.

This photo, that experience, and the effort Gil and I have been putting into making our current home home, have left me with half-baked, percolating thoughts about home, and what it means, and these strange ties that we have to buildings and objects in this life. We can’t, after all, take it with us—and yet spaces have this strange power to bottle up our memories within their walls and hand them back to us when we come back to them.

Anyway. Half-baked, as I said. Do with them what you will. And please feel free to add any of your own thoughts (baked or otherwise)—I look forward to hearing them.

The day after I took this photo, I awoke to a crash from the kitchen and a sad-faced husband who nodded when I asked, “Did you just break something I love?”

Sometimes my focus becomes incredibly narrow and negative, and the morning of the shattered bird mug preceded a number of days in which that was the case. And ugly days they were, too: overlooking blessings, and balking and moaning about insignificant problems, and staring at my laundry for hours before actually doing it kind of days.

I’m sure you don’t ever have days like that.

(Please tell me you sometimes have days like that.)

I always wonder what precipitates these ugly moods. I’ve been doing a lot of learning and thinking about nutrition lately (expect more on that topic in the future), and I can’t help but think that my rule-breaking dips into refined sugars over the past weeks have had something to do with it—but whatever the cause, no-good rotten mood days are a forceful reminder that I am Very Human.

On the day I took that photo of the bird mugs, we had a special little visitor.

His name is Ronan, and Gil and I had great fun watching him for a few hours while his mama took a much deserved break.

Ronan was such a champ; he never fussed a bit, even though he didn’t know us very well, and he was so curious about everything in our house. (Which is apparently not very “child-proof”; who knew our spice jars were at perfect baby-grabbing height?) And not to put too much weight on nutrition (if that is possible), but Ronan’s mom Sara is on a very similar nutritional wavelength to ours, and I couldn’t help wondering if that had something to do with Ronan’s great behavior. OR he could just be a good-natured little dude. Or maybe a little of both.

(Ronan and Gil were buds. I’m starting to amass quite a collection of photos of my husband with other people’s babies.)

In any case, whether because I was over-sugared or just because I’m a broken human being, our delightful visit with Ronan did not keep me from throwing myself headlong into a hissy fit for the next few days. And that’s life. It is never as idyllic as photos of coffee mugs with steam coiling out of them make it look like it should be. And the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, even things as small and silly as one of your favorite bird mugs. And good days will usually follow bad ones. And so they have.

(On a related note: I can’t help but feel slightly convicted by this video. I’m a product of my times, apparently, but I do love designs with birds on them.)

(Press play: just some lovely music to go with photos of a lovely musician.)

Once upon a time, I used to take pictures of people. It’s a practice I’d like to get back into. I’d also like to begin sharing some favorites I’ve re-discovered (and in some cases, re-processed) from past sessions that have never yet seen the light of day on this blog.

These portraits are of my dear friend Mckenzie, who asked me to take photos for her junior cello recital. We drove out to a nearby ranch/orchard one sunny spring afternoon two years ago.

I always regretted not posting any of these photos, because the light and the greenery and the colors were all playing together perfectly that day. And Mckenzie (and her music) shone beautifully, too.

Much has happened in each of our lives since we took these photos; in many ways, they do feel like they belong to a past life. But it was a chapter worth remembering, I think, and I am grateful for people like Mckenzie, who gave me the opportunity to capture a tiny bit of what made it special.

When I was little, my brother and I would often make fun of my mom for taking such care to make sure the house was clean when she was expecting guests (clearly we were very respectful children). “But Mom,” I remember saying on more than one occasion, “they won’t care whether the house is completely put together.” This impenetrable argument never seemed to carry much weight with her, however, and she would still make me clean my room.

And now, in the inevitable way of things, I completely understand. It’s true, guests might not care about, or notice, the exact depths of cleanliness you achieve before they arrive (certainly, any friend who I really consider a friend would forgive me for an imperfectly clean house). But cleaning, straightening, and tying up loose ends, I’ve discovered, is an integral part of preparing to welcome someone—it’s a way of clearing your head, and your space, so that both can focus on the person or people you are welcoming into your life for a short while.

It is also a fantastic excuse to finish projects that have been sitting on the “to-do” list for too long. I used Molly’s arrival as an excuse to finally display something on the wall above our couch, which has been sadly bare since we moved here in February. To do this, I turned to some of my favorite tools: packaging twine and mini clothespins.

I pulled a few favorite photos (some old, some new) out of my overflowing photo box (another project, to be sure), and played with ways to suspend them with the clothespins. After a few failed attempts, I ended up doing this:

A length of soft brown ribbon suspended between two tacks in the wall, with photo-clothespinned lengths of twine hanging from it. And some strips of my favorite wrapping paper. Oh, and some clipboards, for good measure. It’s a bit… oh, I don’t know. Kitschy. Homespun. But it fills the space, it’s color-coordinated, and it lets me look at some of my favorite images every time I come into the living room. Why clipboards, you ask? I don’t know. I just like them. I’m sure I’ll find something wonderful to clip on them at some point.

And now I had better go to bed. This week has provided many happy reasons for staying up too late—a blessing indeed, but I think I should try to catch up on some of that sleep. Goodnight.

I have a little writing desk next to this door. Actually, it is an old Singer sewing machine–the kind that is folded away inside a wooden table with drawers on each side and ornate iron scrollwork for legs. It used to belong to my grandmother, who would probably have approved of the fact that I put a typewriter on top of it. She, like me, was more of a writer than a seamstress—though not unable to sew when the urge struck her.

I set the typewriter on top of the sewing machine so that I could use it on those days when computers are getting me down, and I set the sewing machine next to the door so I could look out at the lawn, and the trees, and my little potted plants, which, by the way, are the perfect antidote to a technology-overdose.

This is the first year I have ever “grown” anything. It’s the first year I have fallen in love with little starts at the farmer’s market or nurseries, the first year I have so-carefully nudged them out of their plastic cartons and nestled them with gloved hands in their prepared bit of soil, the first year I have hovered over them day after day checking for water levels and signs of health—and probably, the Negative Nellie in my head says, the first year I will KILL ALL OF THEM. I just have to shush that voice when it crops up, though… no matter what happens, it will have been a learning experience, and so far they are all just FINE.

The pot most visible from my post at the sewing machine holds my strawberries. Oh, my beautiful strawberry plants–what were blooms in mid-April are growing enticingly more and more strawberry-like by the day. Of course, my landlady has informed me that the deer who frequent the property will most likely eat them any day now. Well, there’s that voice again. Oh, and now it’s also reminding me that just buying a pint of strawberries at the farmer’s market yields more strawberries than I may see all summer, at about half the price of the strawberry plants. Hush, voice. Don’t you know that part of what I was buying was experience? Can you really put a price tag on that?

I sometimes wonder, as I’m sitting at my desk, what my strawberry plants think of this very, very wet spring/summer we are having in Oregon. Because there they are, reaching heavenward, protecting their developing fruit, and every other day the sky just opens up and dumps on them. For all I know, they love these storms. But I can’t help thinking, that if I were they, I would not like to sit around outside with my arms outstretched while God poured buckets of cold water on me. I mean, at least if I did that I would have the option of coming inside and drying off—they just have to sit there and take it.

Then again, maybe that’s in their favor. They don’t have the illusion of shelter to make themselves think they are safe from the elements–or to think that their existence is in their own hands. We humans, on the other hand, build ourselves bigger and bigger shelters against wind, rain, and God—until our shelters become so elaborate that it takes earthquakes, tsunamis, and tornadoes to remind us that wind, rain, and God are not yet quite irrelevant.

But, I remind myself, strawberries don’t think (probably), and when I reach the point that I am genuinely concerned about their feelings I know that I have been sitting at the sewing machine too long. Which is just as well, because by then it’s time to move on to some other task around the cottage–like making dinner, perhaps. Or perhaps, if I have the luxury of a few hours with nothing to do, lying on the couch where I can see out this door, and then taking a nap. (This doesn’t happen very often. But when it does, it’s heavenly.)

While Gil worked on his finals for school (Finals! Ha, I vaguely remember those.), I went down to Alton Baker Park and captured things I found beautiful with my iPhone:

Then I went to a local craft store and picked up the supplies to make my first stamps/prints. So fun! (Thanks to Geninne for the inspiration and instructions on her blog.)

Gil and I went to catch the end of the Oregon/Oregon State civil war game at my parents’ house, and I worked on my project:

I’d say it was a success! I look forward to finding more ways to use these stamps and making many more. (I also got an 8×10-ish linoleum block, but that feels a bit more daunting. We’ll see how long it takes me to work up the courage/inspiration to carve it.)

Here we are, at the verge of fall becoming winter. The days, it seems, rush by just as quickly now that I am working as they did when I was in school. I tricked myself into thinking that there would, at some point, be a respite–a point at which I could step back, relax, breathe, and perhaps even achieve that apparently mythical feeling called “being caught up.” But no, time has continued to slip right away underneath me, leaving behind many unfinished projects around our house and inside my head, not to mention our wedding thank you’s (!).

It’s tempting to despair at this state of things, as there is little in this life that I long for more than that “caught-up” feeling. And I often do despair. (And by that I mean: pout, whine, tell myself stories about how my life is terrible, etc.) But sometimes, by the grace of God, I instead take off my frustrated blinders and realize how abundantly blessed I am and how comparatively little most of the things I spend my days worrying about matter.

And so, in this week set aside for giving thanks, I find that I am truly thankful. I am thankful for my family and friends, without whom I know I would be completely adrift. I am thankful for my work, even when I find it hard to enjoy (but especially when I don’t). I am thankful for moments of beauty, like the ones above, that step quietly into the middle of everyday tasks and lift my spirits. But most of all, I am thankful for the Creator who has given all of this to us, and who has pointed us toward a place where our desires will no longer be thwarted.