find me over here

today i am so honored to be posting over at my sweet friend erika's blog, chambanachik.

erika's the kind of girl who sends you pretty vintage things in the mail, leaves you the kindest wall posts on facebook, and is just an overall wonderful person to call friend. i think she's the bees knees and i'm sure you will too. check it out here.

have a great weekend, xoxo!

seconds, minutes and hours

via

robert and i drove down the road yesterday in the balmy carolina summer air. the kind that hangs stagnant without relief of breeze. we rolled the windows down and pablo stuck his head out, catching the sunshine and heat square on the nose.

and as we drove, we tried to remember last week. what we ate for supper, how we spent our evenings. for events that happened less than seven days ago, we had a terribly difficult time recalling their details. between the day-in, day-outs of how was your day, lie on the couch, bachelorette on monday, bacon and tomato sandwiches every evening on the porch, crash on the couch in that old blanket, lunch breaks at the grocery store, midnight trips to the water bowl with  pablo, thrift store perusing, etsy selling, sleepy, tired, exhausted workdays we just lost track.

but that's the glory of it, sometimes. the forgetting.

letting the seconds and minutes pass, but holding on to the hours.

i think it's one of God's greatest blessings and one of life's greatest kindnesses that some things we forget. at least, some things lose their momentum with the passage of time. a few months ago, i ran into the boy who called me a stutterer in front of the entire lunchroom in the seventh grade. it wasn't bad, and i wasn't mad at him anymore. that sinking feeling in my gut eventually rose. and i can look at the facebook page of my sweet friend who passed away in that awful car wreck in 2007 without my computer screen fading away behind blurred, watery vision. it doesn't mean i will become friends with that boy, or that i don't miss and think about my friend every single blessed day. it just means i forgot the initial shock, and for that i am grateful.

but then, there are things i can't hold onto tight enough. memories of my mama running down the hill behind our house. my day out with dad, when i got my first cast. the time against that old honda, when robert turned to me on my driveway and whispered that he loved me. my first job interview, and the letter that followed.

i want to get to the end of my life with a storage vault of such hours. an arsenal of time. that i can slowly unlock and resavor. but maybe, after all, it's the seconds and minutes we save (the good ones at least).

if we're lucky, we'll get to the end with one good, solid hour. of a million nanoseconds of love.

that's all i can really hope for, come to think of it.

this morning, for four minutes (+giveaway winner)

this morning, i had a sliver of time. between packaging etsy sales and setting my hair in rollers and running out the door with my zucchinni bread sliding out of my hands.

i had exactly four minutes.

i wrapped my hands around my mug and sat in my absolute favorite spot in the house, propped up on the kitchen counter, looking out over the yard. a sunbeam hit me square between the eyes. i let my gaze rest on the gravel drive, then a bird running across the grass. then i shut my lids and breathed in the cool, new morning, whispering a prayer while robert and pablo slept in the room nearby.

practically 20 hours of crazy were sitting there, waiting for me. and i'm convinced that moment prepared me for it. with my legs dangling against the cabinets and seven thirty on the horizon.

it's amazing what a little sunlight can do.

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p.s. thank you ALL for entering my shabby apple giveaway! the winner is:

congratulations April! i'll send you an e-mail with all the details.

our plans, and His

sometimes, your best laid plans get washed.

sometimes, you pay out the ears for a groom and a haircut for your pup.

you put your own hair in one of those "i'm so hippie and free yet this took me quite a while to do and required more bobby pins than a real hippie probably owns" topknots.

you wear your new shoes handed down to you from your mama. the ones that didn't quite fit her feet and came along on the exact evening the tennis shoes you've had since high school decided to shed themselves  as you walked down the driveway.

you wear your favorite shades and your t-shirt with a pickle on it, and you're feeling pretty fabulous as you start out for the dirt road, just a pretty sunday evening in june.

then, the heavens open up and from nowhere at all black clouds spin into view.

you start walking fast, then a little faster, almost to a power walk (because even in the most dire of circumstances, running must be avoided)

and you realize you're still a good half mile from home and the rain is pounding furiously

then, you look down and see your fluffy, manicured, pampered, prissy pooch

soaked to the bone with his held thrown back

taking the water square in the face

jumping up and down and wagging his tail harder than you've ever seen
happy as a lark

deliberately jumping in every.single.puddle on the way home

and you realize that sometimes
God's got better plans in store than yours.

on brothers and milestones

my little brother leaves for college this weekend. between beach trips and summer school and a busy schedule and the crazy/hectic/beautiful life of a teenager, i haven't seen him much these hot months. but i still call him every night and i'm still planning the long trip east this weekend to move him in. the same way i did for my sister, and they did for me upward of ten years ago.

and it's wonderful. it's such a gorgeous thing to grow and go and move and experience new things. but it's got me thinking about life and children. about the cycle of it all.

because no one ever tells you how to love a child. they tell you how to make your own hair bows with ribbon and a hot glue gun, how to sneak vegetables into a casserole, make all the voices on sesame street, bury pets discreetly, and make a halloween costume from a bed sheet. you learn how to pack a baby dress without crying and to drive away from the preschool with only one eye left lingering, sobbing and hot, still searching for her face pressed against the window. you become a doctor, blowing kisses on a skinned knee when the training wheels are taken off too soon. you are counselor and culprit, bank and hotel.

until one balmy summer, you find yourself in the middle of a little college town wondering how in the world it came to all of this. how the one person you know better than anyone is getting smaller and smaller in the rearview and you think as the pit forms in your gut if you really loved her the way you could have. if you didn’t have to learn all those things and take on all those roles. if all you had to do for eighteen years was lie in bed and cocoon her against your chest, rocking her back and forth as she grew in the nook of your elbows, her knees against her belly at first, then jutting out and resting against your own, until eventually you are two well-rested persons who have not really lived, but who have loved to their core.

it's times like these i think on such things. and lo, when that day comes that we are faced with this time, i hope i handle it with half the grace and optimism my parents have. because while no one teaches you these things, you do indeed learn. that's the mercy. and the learning and loving make a padding for the leaving.

love you, clint.

{A SHABBY APPLE GIVEAWAY}

hi friends! today i’m teaming up with the gorgeous clothing site shabby apple to present a chance for you to win $50 credit toward any purchase in their shop. i’ve fallen for their modest cuts, clean lines and throwback glamour. the giveaway will be open until next tuesday, june 26. to participate, you must be a blog follower and enter a comment following the simple rules below. open to u.s. residents only.

mandatory entries:

“like” the shabby apple page on facebook

optional, additional entries:

leave a comment telling me which shabby apple dress or item is your favorite

tweet about this giveaway (post link in comment)

blog about this giveaway (post link in comment)

(a winner will be announced wednesday morning.)

*Also, through july 20, enter coupon code “vintch10off” and receive 10% off any order at shabby apple!

A REPEAT EXPERIENCE

there's this odd little thing about me. a quirky little catch in an otherwise normal, standard personality.

i really, really, for the life of me, can't read any book or watch any movie more than once without getting utterly, despicably bored. when i devour something for the first time, i do it headfirst and slowly. deliberately. it took me months to get through extremely loud and incredibly close. i paused and rewound "the last kiss" a million times before finishing it.

these experiences-these deep dives into culture and escape and hollywood and different worlds, they are all so much for me, that to do it again somehow diminishes the first time.
but i think i've found an experience i wouldn't mind repeating.

we're driving from our little town in north carolina all the way across this beautiful country to canon beach, oregon this october. to see it again. the second time in less than three years. the first time we saw it, we got there at sunset and ran down under a thicket, and emerged on the shore as the sky was in flames of amber and haystack rock was looming in the distance, touching the heavens. my breath literally escaped me.

it's too far. it's illogical and costly and time consuming to go there again. you people who live in the northwest are so, so blessed to call such a gorgeous place home.

but we're going. mostly because i want to see it again, and partly because i want to see mount rushmore, and this way we can do both.

what about you? what could you read, listen to, watch or see again?