Snowy Symmetry

For two days, this is what has been falling softly to the ground and staying on my nose and eyelashes.

It makes me smile.

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Beautiful or Repulsive?

I have a feeling most of you would say this is repulsive. But somewhere in it, I see a bit of beauty.

Mind you, I wouldn't want to eat this pear that I found on the round at Lake Louise Saturday morning. But I did go back to get my camera to capture this image. What would compel me to do that? It has to be that there is something here that's beautiful. Or at the very least, interesting.

Here's another, albeit much bigger, bug I spied by in the dune grasses by the water. Perhaps he's more to your liking?

Insects are very interesting to me in that they can seem kind of alien and gross, but they are at the same time amazing little machines that are beautiful in their minuscule intricacy.

And, of course, we all find beauty in the shiny silken threads of an orb weaver spider's web.

Can you enjoy the beauty of God's small miracles? Or do they just plain gross you out?

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The Art of Edison

The most famous of Thomas Edison's patents (among the 1,093 US patents he holds) is much in the news of late. The poor incandescent light bulb is soon to be banned and replaced with the more energy-efficient and supposedly longer-lasting (though I have not seen this to be true in our house) compact fluorescent bulb. Whatever your position on the federal government telling how you are allowed to light your own home (I'm decidedly against it, despite my environmental leanings) the incandescent bulb, which for more than 100 years has lit our homes is on its way out.

Edison invented many more useful things, and improved greatly upon a number of others, bringing us recorded sound, the phonograph, movie cameras, the stock ticker, and even a battery for an electric car. He started more than a dozen businesses, one of which survives to this day—General Electric. He is the ultimate portrait of American inventiveness, ingenuity, and entrepreneurship.

His industrial research laboratory is part of Greenfield Village at The Henry Ford museum and makes for some beautiful photographs that even I, a lover of all things natural, can appreciate. I took these photos on my excursion to Greenfield Village last month.

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Summer Stroll

Days are long, pants are short, and the mind of a small boy is a vast and wonderful place.

What can you do at the end of a sweltering day but go for a lazy stroll along a boardwalk bordered by a swollen lake on one side and grasses and wildflowers teeming with buzzing insects on the other?

After all, in this beautiful world there is so very much to see. Every day.

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Just Dandy

A dandelion in the fading evening light is one of God's simple masterpieces.

It's also my new desktop.

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Thinspiration

I was at my thinnest in November 2005 when we bought our house.

See how the seat of my pants are sagging here?
Yeah . . . They don't sag on me right now.

Not that you can really tell with the baggy painting clothes, but I looked great. And I felt great.

At this point these baggy sweat pants are more like leggings around my thighs.

Over the next couple years I put on 20 or 25 pounds. Then I got pregnant. And gained about 45 more. Yeah.

I managed last year to drop quite a bit of weight that had kept hanging around after the boy was born. I even got back to my pre-pregnancy weight. But not most of my pre-pregnancy clothes. Because, of course, after you carry and deliver a baby, you are just not the same shape. Now you are shaped like a mom. Ugh.



The dress I'm wearing here in November 2005 is my prom dress from my senior year of high school
seven years earlier. I just shortened it and added a cute shawl.


Then since I wasn't watching what I ate, I gained a bit of that weight back. About 10 pounds. It's pretty apparent that if I'm not constantly diligent I will end up quite overweight and unhealthy as I enter middle age in a few years.

But some mothers obviously manage to get trim and fit. Which means I can. Right?

Right.

It just takes making the right decision about food each time I'm presented with the opportunity to choose to either eat a reasonable amount of healthy food or to gorge myself on comfort food. It means I need to find time to get back to exercising. It means I need to be smart about the grocery shopping and not buy things for the boy that I also like but shouldn't eat (because while "everything in moderation" is a nice philosophy, sometimes you have to admit your weaknesses and not sabotage yourself).

Because if I ever want to look like this again (and I do) . . .

I can't begin to imagine the depression that would ensue if I tried on that blue dress right now.

. . . it's not going to just happen by itself. It's going to take discipline and hard work.

The previous two photos are from the weddings of two of my cousins. My third cousin (yes, I only have three) is getting married at the end of August. I want the photos from Andy's wedding to look just as good as the ones from Mac's and Nick's weddings. And for that to happen, I have to make it happen.

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Beauty in Color

Not only is snow lovely in black and white, it is beautiful in full color, which really amounts to blue, gray-blue, browns, and white—one of my favorite color combinations (see: my living room).

All of these photos (and the ones from yesterday) were taken at Fenner Nature Center in Lansing, Michigan. I have to thank my friend Dave who, upon reading on Facebook that I was homebound and yearning to go take pictures at Fenner, generously offered to pick me up. Here he is taking some photos of his own.

We've agreed that the ultimate dream job would be a photojournalist for National Geographic, and we're currently scheming about getting our spouses to agree to a trip out to Yellowstone some winter so we can take pictures. His historic preservationist wife Valerie and my lover-of-all-things-big-city husband Zachary will have to find something to occupy their time. Not sure what those city-slickers will do out there, but I'm sure there are some buildings they could hunker down in while Dave and I stalk grizzlies and bison.

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Beauty in Black and White

Those of you out there who hate snow apparently don't do anything besides drive in it. Get some boots on, layer up your clothing, and get off-road. You might be surprised just how much you come to love it.

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Winter Beauty

Whether or not you like cold weather and snow, you cannot deny that winter is a season that is filled with an exquisite kind of quiet beauty.

Outside the pristine snow and cold, thin air seem to hold all of nature in a state of repose. Inside, we adorn our homes with warm lights, cozy blankets, and a little bit of greenery to remind us that spring comes again at its intended time.

THE SNOW

It sifts from leaden sieves,

It powders all the wood,

It fills with alabaster wool

The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face

Of mountain and of plain,—

Unbroken forehead from the east

Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,

It wraps it, rail by rail,

Till it is lost in fleeces;

It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem,—

The summer's empty room,

Acres of seams where harvests were,

Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,

As ankles of a queen,—

Then stills its artisans like ghosts,

Denying they have been.

~Emily Dickinson, 1891

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The Instinct for Beauty

"There is something instinctive within us urging us to seek beauty in our homes and to make our personal appearance attractive. It is a natural desire which frequently turns us all into artists."—Art in Home and Clothing, 1936

Beauty can be found . . .

. . . in an old beaker filled with paintbrushes . . .

. . . on a bookshelf . . .

. . . in the tools of the trade . . .

. . . in the face of a small, loveable beast . . .

. . . in a jar of paperclips . . .

. . . in a poorly executed creation that makes you proud anyway . . .

. . . in a bowl full of treasures you and your child found on walks . . .



. . . and in some hastily made curtains from your fabric stash.

Beauty can be found anywhere. Now go find some in your home.

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