Fascination

I am amazed that some things can be so adorable. Henry's moppy hair has the perfect composition around his face, the hair off to the right adding interest. Look at the little cluster of fur stretching up his muzzle to guide you to his black nose pointing at the door handle, it moves the eye through the photograph with ease.

This is the scene every morning because opening the door for the first time in eight hours means opening up a whole new world to the dogs.

They go charging outside to see who, what, where, when and why. Did a raccoon make into the yard? Are there too many sparrows at the birdbath? Is the neighbor awake yet? Are the persimmons ripe enough to eat?

After these pressing security checks, which last all of about five seconds, suddenly I am interesting again. Or they're looking to me for excitement, I'm never sure which idea is going through their brains... actually I never have any idea what they are thinking.

Wandering through the garden we stumbled upon this treasure. A spider busily repairing his web from what looks to be a pretty busy night.

Do you ever wonder how some things can be so amazing? How does this tiny creature construct something so marvelous?

And I can't be bothered to put away my laundry.

A reward

It's not fun to get up early, especially when you know you're going to spend the first hour ironing and packing clothes not lounging outside drinking coffee until you have the shakes.

Well this morning I found a nifty surprise as I walked in to the living room on my way to the kettle to facilitate even one cup of morning coffee. Hanging flower baskets casting a fanciful silhouette on my curtains.

Late night snack

Last week I picked up an issue of Fine Cooking magazine that had arrived a few months ago. At the time of its arrival all mail that was not incredibly important or ridiculously threatening went into a large pile in some hidden corner of my house. So now I have started going through all the back mail and life that had been put on hold while we planned for our wedding.

I discovered a recipe that is sure to be a household if not family favorite. Lemon cheesecake topped with, an already family favorite, lemon curd.

It was easy to make, not messy, no cheesecake water bath, fast, and best of all... delicious.

A Project for Sunday

Because of the fact that we worked so hard before our wedding, we have not been doing any projects around the house. Well, until today. We were given three Bansky photographs from Thomas' Aunt Penni and Uncle Simon.

They arrived from England matted in white but unframed. We went out and bought frames, put the photos in the frames, but oops! The standard metric matte size is about 1/2 smaller all around than our 20x24 inch American frames.

Luckily, Thomas gave me a matte cutter last Christmas. We thought we could get off easy and not have to cut mattes, but it turned out not to be that simple. I went back to the framing store, found a red matte that matches the red wall in our living room, ordered it, waited a week, went back to the framing store and collected our matte.

So today, framing. We measured and measured, stood back to think, measured some more and finally settled on a 3.5 inch boarder around each picture.

Then we put the the border in the frame, followed by the matted photograph and then the backer board.

And here's what we have! We're thrilled with the result! Graphic, bold, anti-authority prints. Perfect.

Lazy, sunny Saturday

Today our plans are nothing. To do nothing. We spent so many weeks working to prepare for our wedding that we feel we get a few calm, lazy days to recuperate. We didn't take a honeymoon so we have nothing scheduled on the weekends of August. We still may go on a vacation but we're not planning anything just yet.

For now we're enjoying all the hard work we put into our garden. I love to wander around and soak it all in. I still can't really believe it's our home.

Here's a little treasure I found today. A dahlia flower that is fading but one petal has been suspended by a spider's web.