this weekend + giveaway winner announced!

happy friday, friends! i'm so excited for these next two days. they mean late night movie runs, coffee with friends, and (my favorite), sleeping in on cool, clean cotton sheets. we're supposed to have a block party on saturday night, but with the tropical storm looming, this does not appear to be a likely endeavor. but we shall see! either way, i'm excited to rest up, and spend some time with these beautiful people:

p.s. the shabby apple giveaway winner is miss jessie! congrats, dear!

Shabby Apple Giveaway!

i'm so excited to share a $50 shabby apple giveaway with you guys this week! shabby apple is an online dress  boutique that specializes in vintage and retro dresses, like this pretty spring floral number. i'm a fan of the line for their modest, sophisticated lines and throwback flair. wouldn't this nautical striped skirt look great on an evening beach stroll, cup of coffee in hand? i am also swooning over their shirt dresses, like this spearmint polka dot one, which are perfect for the office, and transition great from day to night.

to enter, you must be a follower of this blog and complete the below steps:

required:
1. "like" shabby apple on facebook (required)
2. leave a comment telling me which shabby apple item is your favorite (required)
please include your name and e-mail in your comment.

optional for additional entries:
*for these, please comment with a link to your social media share. thanks! 
3. tweet about this giveaway
4. post about this giveaway on your facebook page
5. blog about this giveaway

*open until this friday, june 7, to U.S. residents only. thank you!

summer on the breezeway

 

there's a little room between the kitchen and the garage of our home that my grandma christened "the breezeway." i like to think of it as the early-morning-coffee-with-the-sunshine-spilling-in-way. or the late-evening-salads-before-walking-way. it's the perfect little space for breathing, i've found. as because it's not quite outside but not quite in, pablo goes crazy over it, running from screen to screen looking out at bunnies in the lawn. one night in april, we sat and rocked on the glider and listened to a prairie home companion as a late spring storm spun outside and sprayed its droplets onto our ankles. pretty soon, it will be winter again and the breezeway won't be as comfortable, so we're soaking up this little nugget of time every chance we can.

recording, dictating and remembering

 

 

in an effort to record and dictate all that is beautiful and lovely and simple and small around me, and also in part to discourage annonymous spam comments that appear to arise when you neglect your little corner of the web for a bit too long, i am determined to write more regularly. if only for myself to read, or my sweet mama.

because there are things like cardinals perched on old swingsets and beans sprouting up through fresh dirt that are so beautiful and tiny and precious that i want to share them. or things like the time this weekend that i saw a tail creeping along the old back steps outside the breezeway and we discovered the black snake that has  plagued nanno's land for years, only to meet its final destiny on the sidewalk beside the wild onions. or how on thursday night i sat feet away from sam beam singing "passing afternoon" in a garden in virginia, my bare feet right in front of him and the knees of my sweet (and indelibly cool) parents pressed gently against my back.

we planted our garden last week and i can see it from the back bedroom window and it brings me deep joy. not because it's fruitful quite yet (in fact, the family of deer who live in our woods may turn it into nature's buffet table), but because it reminds me of the time last weekend when i, ankle deep in dirt and compost, shoveling until my little arms were sore, looked across the yard and saw robert on the mower, and felt entirely grateful for the act of movement, of bending down to push and pull the earth, then molding it into rows for our seedlings, my gloves caked in clay cooking in the may sunshine.

i remember every time i put on my favorite dean martin record and dance in the living room with pablo how quickly time flies and how grand of a thing it is that we have things like blogs to record our memories. i gave my right ring finger a callous in elementary school because i wrote every single thing down in a burgundy floral journal marked "read and die" (a bit extreme for entries filled with heart doodles and misspelled words). now the callous is gone and all i want to do is share my writing. funny how a little time and perspective creeps up on us day by day, isn't it?

so here's to a week of living, really living, the little moments, and throwing shouts of praise back to Heaven for each one of them.

around these parts

 

 

 

1. on the way to study scripture by the lake. pablo had just woken up, so excuse his bedhead.
2.  springtime, everyone loves you already. you can stop showing off now. 
3. hotel room in the middle of the afternoon, in the middle of nowhere, north carolina. getting ready to see a community play that ended up blowing us away.
4. one of many pit stops on the way home this weekend. cliffs of the neuse state park. a playground in the fifties, it sits empty in these cool spring months. perfect for frolicking and wasting time.

i love weekends, and getaways. and weekend getaways. life is moving slow these days, and that's good by me.

on mondays, this sometimes hits me hardest

there was a drudge this morning. a physical slowness that hit just about the second my eyes adjusted to the sunshine spilling in across the covers. the heaps of winter afghans and blankets piled onto our bed in the middle of april in a futile attempt to save money by turning off the a/c unit, which works well on humid, sticky weeks like the last, but not so great when spring dallies a bit too long with winter and nights get down to near freezing.

i awoke and immediately prayed my morning prayer, that the Lord would open the doors to His will for my life today. that i would live as He saw fit today. that today, He would place the people in my path that needed someone to journey with, if even for a second over the water cooler.

there was no burst of excitement, unlike this weekend, filled with celebrations both big and tiny, the sweetest little pocket of rest. rather, there were papers, spilled coffee and car maintenance issues to wrestle with. then i read these beautiful, heart-stirring words, and realized that here, today, was indeed a blessed miracle of the most holy sort:

My eyes will never know China’s jade green Li River. I’m never going to see those black-haired boys

under straw brimmed hats fish off their bamboo rafts with the ringed cormorants, the mist rising behind over the karst formations, surreal and dark. I am never going to be ascending the Loita Hills of Kenya to witness the dance of gazelles migrating up by the millions from the Serengeti. I am not going to be swimming the sapphire waters of some South Pacific grotto, or sitting up late listening to the wind whisper through the Sequoia woods, or spending my golden years scaling the summit of emerald Machu Picchu.

I run my hand across the thick of the terry towels. I’m a farmer’s wife. I’m the homeschooling mother of six children. There are no fancy degrees, titles, diplomas hanging on these finger-smudged walls. Are there places that must be known, accomplishments that must be had, before one is really ready?

Isn’t it here? Can’t I find it here?

These very real lungs will breathe in more than 11,000 liters of air today, and tonight over our farm will rise the Great Hexagon of the blazing winter stars-Sirius, Rigel, ruby Aldebran, Capella, the fiery Gemini twins, and Procyon, and in the center, scarlet Betelgeuse, the red supergiant larger than twice the size of earth’s orbit around the sun.

And at the same time,I will embrace the skin of a boy child that my body grew from a seed. The low heavens outside the paned windows fill with more snowflakes than stars, no two-stacked crystals the same; the trees in the wood draw in collective green breath to the still of January hibernation, and God in the world will birth ice from His womb, frost of heaven, bind the chains of the Pleiades, loose the cords of Orion, and number again the strands on my head (Job 38:31; Matthew 10:30).

Isn’t it here? The wonder? Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it? Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence for our blurry soul-sight to recognize grandeur? The very same surging magnificence that cascades over our every day here. Who has time or eyes to notice?

-from one thousand gifts by ann voskamp

there is magnificence here, blinding, if we clean our vision enough to let it permeate. today, i am clearing the smudges of dissatisfaction, impatience and anxiety. will you join me?

a weekend wish

it's supposed to be overcast this weekend in our little corner of carolina. we've got plans to spread compost dirt in the garden, attend a wedding for some sweet friends, and crash the local greek church spaghetti dinner on sunday.

hope your weekend is beautiful and blessed. i hope you get to help someone, catch a sunrise, and laugh terribly hard over the next two days. for those little moments are what makes the week ahead bearable. those little nuggets of escape--parentheses on a string of weekday mornings, coffees, meetings and deadlines--those make it worth it, after all.

diving into now

 

i was awakened this morning by phone calls from my sweet family. a chorus of the voices i love to hear the most serenading me from right down the road, then from miles and states away. robert made me my favorite egg, cheese and mustard sandwich and i curled my hair. for today is my birthday, and as such, celebrations both little and big must ensue.

i started thinking as i got dressed about all the things i hope this year holds. materialistic and maternal dreams alike started popping into my head. but then i kissed my husband and pup goodbye and promised i'd see them tonight. and the sunrise hit the pavement and cut through the crab apple tree and i was reminded that now, yes right now. now is good.

things i've learned since this time last year

 

 

this weekend was a lazy, hazy delicious dream of a break. the only weekend we have free for the next few weeks. there are weddings coming up, the ever anticipated trip to the middle of nowhere for the mount olive pickle festival, and concerts on grass lawns.

but this weekend offered a reprieve from responsibility, and fairly seasonable weather. warm during the days and what i like to call "light sweater weather" in the evenings. it was the commencement of my birthday week, which is always one of the best, best weeks of the year!

this time last year, i was practicing, panting and shaking nervously in anticipation of my master's thesis defense. i was driving an hour away during my lunch break for last-minute speech therapy visits and driving my friends and co-workers crazy by rehearsing my speech aloud every free moment available.

but this year is different, a bit more relaxed. and i've learned some things in the interim.

great things move slow. they take patience and perseverance in measures typically beyond what we consider humanly possible. but bend with it. fall into the wait and find that it, too, has a very specific sort of beauty. what is God saying during this time? we can't add a single second to our life by worrying, and fretting about an event will not spur it to occur any faster.

we all need a phone drawer. a place to drop that beautiful burden of an instrument the second we get home. because the life span of people and puppy dogs is infinitely less than the life span of technology, which will only grow and develop and become more youthful as we benjamin button-it into a more refined state. on the other hand, you've got living, breathing, speaking and barking, flesh and blood dependents who are, for a lack of a prettier phase, dying every day. and as much as i adore instagram for its ability to make me feel like a photographer, and as much as i care about e-mails and even this little blog of mine, i've got to find a balance to counteract the oppression of the screen, and the mindlessness it forces me into. for me, this means allotting one evening a week as screen-free. with the pretty weather and longer days, this is completely do-able.

where your treasure is, there your heart is. and you deem something your treasure by the time you assign to it and the passion with which you approach it. i've learned to choose my treasures better this year, weeding out faux riches for the real gems. but it's a journey, and one i can only wish to travel my whole life through.

so 26, huh? too late for that quarter-life crisis john mayer sung about. or is it? every day is a bit of a crisis, to some degree. a time of danger. but i'm learning how to pack my armor. that counts for something, i suppose.

10,000 new pets

 

 

 

 

this was a love affair that started two years ago, at the davidson county fair. armed with boiled peanuts and the notion that there was nowhere more magical to be on a friday night than with dirt on our shoes and a country song wafting through the denim short-clad crowd.

the local honeybee association had an exhibit. set up between the homemade pot holders and the wedding cake decorating contest, the latter of which was behind a glass cabinet, fruit flies trapped behind the pane.

we saw the queen bee, proudly marked with a crimson dot. a scarlet letter of a different sort, i suppose. we saw the not-so-ironically named female worker bees, and the drones. and the delicate, back-and-forth dance of intelligence they all did, working together more harmoniously than most adults with fully developed brains and college degrees tend to do.

and we stewed about it for years. thought about the possibility of setting up a hive of our own behind the little cottage, beside the blueberry bush where they could forage all day for nectar, traveling to the bespeckled shrub the same way we did every time we grilled out. we let two summers go by. we tended a garden. nanno passed away. we moved into his home and tore up the carpet to reveal the glorious hardwoods. i graduated and we put down pine needles.

then last friday, we finally installed a hive of our own. ten thousand new pets buzz about in the yard. and we're learning. robert situated the queen between the frames, pressing her between the wood for support, failing to create a platform made of nails as we learned in the documentary we watched one night as the snow fell. we fretted about her for a week until it was finally time to check on the hive yesterday and she was safe and sound, released from her candy cage and fluttering about near the honeycomb.

last night, at an hour more attuned to morning, we were beginning to drag ourselves to bed, when we remembered the storm about to barrel through. robert wanted to go strap down the hive to make sure it didn't fall down from the promised winds.

i sat on my knees in my nightgown, pressed against our headboard as i peered out our back bedroom window, watching as he finagled a flashlight with one hand and a tie with another, safeguarding the girls against mama nature.

we protect the things we love, and the people too. no matter how long it takes us to find and realize each other.

golden hour

there is a sliver of time before sunset known as the golden hour. when the sun pours across windows and through tree branches. when i walk to the mailbox in my flip flops and feel the small gravel stones against my feet. there is a breath at this hour unlike any other. a release of the day, a sending off of upsets and stresses and disappointments. at the old cottage, my favorite place to soak in this special half hour was sitting on the countertop, my calves resting against the cupboards. but here in this new place, its on the driveway. watching as robert and pablo pull up in the truck and both come falling into my arms.

the day can wear. oh, it can wear a girl down. but all it takes are moments like this, pieced together through a lifetime, to build us back again.

the thing is.

the thing is you deserve to be out west. where the juniper bushes die in the winter and shed their hardened branches across the road. where you can open the brewery. or the honeybee farm. or the bread bakery. where the highway stretches out like a welcome mat across state lines and mountains jut up and out into the ocean, where they crumble to jagged black. that little restaurant on the coast where we ate that oyster stew on the park bench while the november wind ripped through our jackets? yes, right there. i can see you there. or maybe up in oregon, haystack rock dwarfing you by the pacific. or down in california, short-order cooking in that rooftop restaurant where we watched, behind sunglasses, as that odd man behind us rubbed his biscuit butter on his arms. places like those, wide open as the sunset sky, are the only places big enough for this soaring, beautiful spirit of yours. but i am heart-deep happy that you chose our bed instead. wrapped up in tightly pulled flannel sheets with my sleeping legs sprawled over onto your side and pablo's paw in your face. this crowded, tiny space in the back bedroom of my grandfather's house with light glaring in through the cracked wooden door from the hallway lamp that my mama can't turn off. thank you, thank you, thank you.for all the things you know and i can't say. we'll take this town that moves real slow and turn it on its head. we'll make big dreams out of the small things, you and i.

a weekend in carolina: the cold and the warmth

 

there was an afternoon this weekend when i tried my best to pull weeds from the flowerbeds in front of the house. i dug my nails into the earth only to find tiny slivers of ice and a frozen ground. it reminded me that we are still very much in the middle of this carolina winter. when days can turn from pleasant to blustery in the instant that wind picks up your hair and cuts into your chest.

but there was another afternoon when sunshine cut through the pasture near our house and spilled into the brick floor of the sunroom and reminded me, soon. soon there will be dirt to churn for the garden and honeybees in the backyard. there will be lights strung from the shed and suppers on old picnic benches. there will be sundresses and bare legs and feet, and entire evenings spent listening to music on a blanket by the clothesline.

mama taught me never to rush things. to not wish away days and write too many things on my calendar in anticipation. so i'm trying to appreciate these last few weeks of cold. the early mornings by the coffee pot and the nights spent wrapped in blankets by the fire with heavy socks on. soon enough, summer will raise her heavy head and coat our little corner of the world with thick heat and i'll wish for these mornings where my little honda creaks under the shock of heat running through its veins after a night spent in a cold garage.

oh, the foreshadow of hindsight. such a delicate little oxymoron she is. 

marriage and partnership: or grab your own towel

welcome to week 2 in our marriage series! this week's topic is "marriage and partnership." be sure to check out gina and morgan's blogs today for their thoughts, and do share yours!

when i first started my blog, i went away for a long weekend and asked my sweet friend dacia to guest post for me. she wrote about five things she's learned about living together with  your loved one. one thing she said stuck with me for its simple, honest truth: grab your own towel. she wrote:

How many of us have jumped in the shower only to realize we’re out of soap, shampoo, or have no clean towel waiting for us on the hook next to the shower curtain? How many of us then shout out across the house (still in the shower) to our significant other for these things we forgot? 

i thought about that sentiment this morning when preparing for my post about marriage and partnerships. because i find myself falling into that rut so incredibly often. for me, it takes the form of socks. i'll be in bed, toasty and warm, and robert will be right beside me under the covers, and i will innocently ask him to get out of the cocoon, place his own feet on the cold hardwoods and walk to the dresser to get me socks. or when i'm on the sofa, watching nasvhille, and i ask him to bring me some chestnuts (my new obsession). and bless his heart, the boy never complains. and i can probably count on one hand the number of times he's asked the same request of me.

but being partners means doing these things for our spouse. rising before the sun because the dog is pawing at the covers in that way that you both know means he needs to go out. making supper over the stove even though the day has been long and you need the night to be short and quick so the whole thing can be done with. bringing him a glass of water in bed. running my bathwater.

but it's when these things are expected and sought after without consideration that the partnership begins to weaken, and when the surprise of a sweet deed begins to carry less of its beautiful weight. because yes, being partners means carrying the person, sometimes. picking them up and physically, spiritually and emotionally trudging through the murk and gorgeousness of life together. but it also means knowing when, for the health of the relationship, to let him down to walk by himself. not in front of you or behind you, but right smack-dab next to you, for as long as you both shall live.

on marriage and friendship

 hey guys! i'm teaming with gina from contemplating beauty and morgan from mama loves papa for another marriage series! this week's topic; marriage and friendship.
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 only a true friend would do this with me. bless his heart.

 
the first time i spoke to robert face-to-face was on our first date. he was wearing a buttercup yellow polo and had just washed his dad's car. his hair was combed to the side and my entire family was waiting in the den for him to come pulling into the driveway. he shook my dad's hand and my mama jokingly grilled him on a scandalous story she'd heard. something about his rolling a house. and putting a lawn mower on a roof. and driving the slowest and easiest-to-recognize getaway vehicle possible: a volkswagen vanagon.

i didn't know him at all. didn't know how he liked his steak, or what he did after school. didn't know that he had a brother and that his father was a pastor. i didn't know that he had an affinity for instrumental piano music and was a highly decorated boy scout.

but i learned those things. i learned all of them over the course of our dinner date. and i've kept learning.

sometimes (quite often, actually), i turn to robert and say, "i think it would have been cool if we were friends first. like, just hanging out together, then one day, you looked at me and saw the woman you'd been searching for." instead, it was full-blown romance, from day one. case in point: all his friends call him rob, or robbie, but i absolutely can't. not for the life of me.

but right up there with romance and kisses and butterflies and stars, there is a rock-solid friendship between us now. because there has to be. you have to actually like the person you're married to, as crazy as that might sound. because love is truly magical and life-changing, but there's something to be said about just laughing with him. sitting in a room watching the bachelor on a monday night, not even really speaking, but just being truly, completely comfortable in the weight of a dark room together. saturday lunch dates. secret handshakes.

so yes, we didn't start out as friends, but it's been a heck of a journey learning this man, and finding that after all, our souls are the same, and that's a constant truth. one that was born the day we were. and every stumbling block, heartbreak, rude boy, ridiculous girl, and question we ever had led him to my doorstep on august 30, 2003. and BFF was just a natural progression from there:)

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what are your thoughts on relationships and friendships? any tips? do share! 

a saturday morning thought

there was a time this weekend when robert and i were driving in town on saturday morning. it was too early to be up (robert is the only person who could convince me of the delicious, soul-strengthening power of sleeping in on saturday morning. that pocket of perfect nothingness), but there we were. cruising down main street with the early birds, meeting my parents and sister for breakfast.

and i had a sort of early memory. a happy sort of sadness that comes with the realization that life is so fast. that one day, this family will look incredibly different and that's neither a necessarily bad or good thing, but an honest one. it reminded me of a time, riding in the back of my parents' van, that i looked up at the people sitting in the rows before me and thought to myself, remember this. remember your sister in middle school and your brother with the shaggy hair and skateboard. remember your mom and dad as laughing and young and pretty. and remember yourself as happy, in the backseat with your book.

we've added some people to the van in recent years, and lost one incredible man. and leaving them that morning, driving back home to get  back into the covers, i realized that the journey is really the best part. and there will be changing faces, and spaces. and shifts and swaps. and big gigantic leaps out of the car. but there will be forward motion, and that's the beautiful part about it.

i wore this shirt to work today.

 hahaha.

don't judge, just love and appreciate.

xoxoxo

wal-marts and mondays

 

 via

when snow falls on a small town, suddenly you go from having very little to do to absolutely nothing. shops and schools close. people get in pajamas and stay that way all weekend, huddled in kitchens and on sofas. they have real conversations and finally watch those movies on their lists.

but we had to get out this weekend. had to feel the weight of the truck on the road. had to slip into a corner booth and listen to live music and eat sloppy barbecue. and when that was over, we played our favorite game. we call this game, "people watching at wal-mart." with milkshakes in hand and the lights off, we park a good enough distance away and make up storylines about the characters that walk in and out of that glorious, extremely well-lit mecca of retail. because at wal-mart, people are at their most ordinary, and i love that. no pretense. no makeup. no heels. just running in to grab some cereal. or a firearm. or a grill. or maybe a t-shirt.

and last night was similar. just an ordinary monday. with a walk to mom and dad's. with desert before supper. with a dark room filled with the bachelor and dallas, and a fire.

but i love these times. an entire life is built on ordinary mondays and ordinary people. moments of familiarity that slowly, over the course of months and years and decades, shape us into humans capable of feeling and reaching and loving and even dreaming.

half-full

 

 via

even though we swore up and down that we weren't going to give each other gifts for christmas because we took our trip the week before the holidays, my sneaky husband got me a new cd player for my car. mainly for me, but a little bit for him, because every time we rode in my car we had to play either the radio or a CD from the 1990s, because the player stopped reading new discs.

with this newfound player, i have discovered the joy of hooking up my phone--oh the pandora mornings! as i drove into work, i played my favorite ingrid michaelson station, and "giving up" came on right as i entered onto the highway, saying a prayer for a clear lane.

and this line: i am giving up on half-empty glasses stuck out, clear and big as the billboards on the roadside.

i am giving up

on half-empty 

glasses.

i'm giving up on the negativity. on the worries. on the little defeats that threaten to upset a day. on the nights where it just feels better to get in bed at eight than stay up and make the hard day any longer. on the rude tones, drivers, and restaurant patrons.

this notion of giving it all up, relinquishing that suffocating, tightening, destroying control is such a beautiful thought to me. i don't have to even look at the thing anymore.

and maybe i'll put a half-full one in its place, or maybe i won't. maybe i'll just drink the dang water and forget about the philosophical strings tied to it. let it slip deep down and nourish. fill me up enough until i'm the glass. because there's a vessel inside each of us and i'm giving up the empty parts in exchange for the hope that maybe, just maybe, there's enough full to last for today.

a weekend in

 

 

it was hard to leave the house this morning, with the sunrise spilling in across the bed and pablo's eyes not yet open to the day. it reminded me of how we spent this weekend, the three of us huddled under covers while it snowed and sleeted and rained outside, eventually giving way to sun bright and warm enough to walk in.

this was a long weekend of coffee, movies, reading and talking. of stretching and moving and then sitting for inordinately long periods of time on the couch. and for the first time in a while i remembered what relaxing felt like. the tangible weight of Nothing To Do. where the days pass and you change from one form of lounge pants and a t-shirt to another, then into pajamas when the day gets dark enough to warrant such delicious comfort.

we talked about our garden, and our honeybees. about the beach in february and the newport folk festival in july. we planned and schemed our future a little bit on monday. there are  big decisions coming up soon. but for now, for this little pocket of a weekend, we were two kids in the country, a mile or two from the high school halls where we met, cocooning under a homemade afghan and existing on little but egg sandwiches and kit-kats. oh but what a sweet time this is.