life, & a granola (bar) recipe.

babies are mysterious things.
sometimes i wonder if it's phases that make them so difficult, or if it's based in their personality, or what. especially if they're fed and freshly changed and had a nap recently. (like the one above: s is 6 months old, and he fought that nap like no one's business. cranky babies fighting naptime is not fun. nope. and i'm pretty sure rocking chairs save lives. because babies eventually fall under the spell of spacial disorientation via said rocking chairs. thank God for those things.)
that's one thing i ponder, as i have 2 young nieces and a nephew --the latter of which is 6 months old, and fantastically (and i say that sarcastically) loud sometimes.
why do i think of all this? because i'm married and everyone asks when --whether in their thoughts mostly or not-- we will start to have kiddos. the answer is not yet. i have my fill of babies with my nieces and nephew. they're all cuties.
but, omg...gotta love their phases.

in other news, i adore the hoodie weather of yesterday and today. (just earlier this week, it was hot and windy. perfect for drying clothes on the line and saving the propane via the dryer.)
we haven't turned on the air conditioning since thursday. ceiling fans to circulate the air has been all that's needed since then. it's amazing.
oh my word.
hoodies and hot coffee and leaves just barely starting to turn.
i mourn the coming of winter after this beautiful, hot summer, and the autumn that is (hopefully) starting to set in.
but goodness, the fall day i feel all around me presently is such a relief.
such a beautiful relief.

i'm thinking of starting a new blog.
a different, clean, fresh place.
i started a new journal in the middle of a huge school-type notebook that i've been writing in since november 2012.
i got so tired of the plain bulky thing that i lugged everything in my purse.
so i dug around in a storage bin and found a few empty journals that i've either found or been gifted through the past few years.
and what did i do? i started a new, pretty, smaller, spiral bound, hard-back journal.
less space for so many words. less expectation.

also, i love hanging art.
this print from marisa's etsy is so cute, and i bought it in july 2011 for my house someday.
i'm thinking it'll look even better against pale yellow walls in the kitchen when we (hopefully sometime this year) paint it. :)

so, i started making no-bake granola bars.
and i can't find the recipe that i first used and adapted and memorized. i swear i pinned it, but it disappeared.
here goes.

no-bake granola bars

put in a medium sized bowl:
4 cups old fashioned oats
2 cups rice crispy cereal
stir to combine well.

simmer in a small saucepan:
1 cup brown sugar
1 stick of butter
dash of salt
whisk steadily until the brown sugar is dissolved and the mixture has bubbled for a while.
add a dash of cinnamon and nutmeg if you like the idea of some depth of flavor. (we like it a lot.)
take the saucepan off the heat.
drizzle a tsp or two of vanilla in and stir till combined.
pour over dry ingredients immediately and mix till dry ingredients are well coated.
pat firmly into a slightly greased pan, and refrigerate for a couple hours.
cut into bars, and enjoy!!

p.s.
if you're a blog friend of mine and you have Instagram and we're not friends yet, my username is love_beka_hill. i update that realm way more than facebook or my blog these days. hahah.

holy crap, it's autumn. :P

♥
this morning.
i didn't have coffee, but i had him.
he left at a little before 9. here's a paragraph from around 11am.

out of coffee.
soon to be remedied.
i need it. bad. this morning needs it. bad.
my love left this morning with his little sister jacklyn.
without coffee to give even some slight sort of comfort, you can imagine how the morning's been.................

thankfully, within 20 minutes of that, we had coffee back in the house, and it lent a tad bit of sanity and coping to the morning.

how are all the trees suddenly mostly orange?!
time has... truly.... flown. holy freakin' crap.

any commentary on this? it's from my brain.:

struggle and challenge and less-than-ideal times/moments/circumstances 
are not meant to be [and cannot be] avoided.

it's all found in how we handle those times;
they are how we have become who we are.

poblano peppers.

i just tried take a nap; for 40 minutes; unsuccessfully. what with a decently late night last night, and swing dancing tonight along with getting home at nearly 1am . . . i kind of wanted to take part of the luxury.
anyhow. that didn't work.
maybe i got enough sleep last night or something.
and maybe i'm excited; tomorrow, justin's coming up for the weekend. :)
could be both. lol.
today we went to the farmer's market.
i got 5 poblano peppers, 2 eggplants, and two huge bunches of kale all for the grand total of $7.
heck. yeah.
and the lady who sold it all to us told us how she likes to prepare these wonderful, mild-to-medium heat peppers, which in the first place  i'd never heard of before. 
[i don't remember how much the chunk of gouda was, though....]

stuffed poblano peppers....i'm looking forward to making them.
when i do, shall post a picture and let you all know how it turned out.
i have plans for some yummy soups in this next week. ones i've never made before myself.
i can't wait. it's totally soup weather again. :)

do you like soup? what's your favorite??

oh my!

hi hi hi!

this is me and my younger brother. [he's a cute dork in this picture. heh.]
me and my freaking awesome family just got back from a week long vaca.
it was perfect weather then, and we came home to perfect weather.
on the cool side. breezy.
scarily like autumn, even though we shouldn't have autumn weather till late september. weeeeiiiirrrrddddd.
i'll take it though.
makes it even more natural [and not weird] to drink good, hot coffee. :) all the time. ;)

sarah and justin's littlest kiddo.

 

...cute things happened last saturday. the last 3 pictures are proof. ;)
you're welcome. :)
i'm not going to get much sleep in the next few days. not like vaca. sleeping by 10:30 pm, awake by 7....
life is changing. and it's good.

p.s. i almost never log into my blogger account because google screwed with my email not being able to be logged in at the same time as my google/blogger one. :P oy!!!! inconvenient much?!

a letter.

dear certain natural hair dye brand,
why don't you have a dark/ash blond that actually dyes right?
certain people in my life would prefer i go for more natural stuff...but this is not working. for me. at all. i've tried.
ya know, something that looks like my real color . . . ?
i don't want bright blonde and i didn't want to go back to brunette....
i give up.
run-of-the-mill, unnatural-as-heck, hair dye, here i come. :P
sincerely, a frustrated user.

a beautiful october beginning.

yes, this was breakfast.
and then i made cinnamon chip scones.
what a morning this was, i tell you!

well.

well. [again.] 
it's 3:50pm.
crazy unmatched socks.
insane hair with no mousse. [yes, again, martha. hahaha.]
loud music . . . this song: calling you.
dishes to be done.
i'm going to clean, clean, clean . . .
even though right now i feel like dropping . . .
curling up in a cozy blanket [even on the floor] and taking a nap.

5-6 mile hikes to that to a person and their legs.
but it was gorgeous, so . . .
it all evens out in the end. :)

and, what's better than girlfriends and exercise??
nothing.
that's what.
exercise by itself is stupid.
but double-duty . . . plus wonderful photo ops . . . a very good time, indeed.

this music: something in the water. ice on her lashes.

at 11, anna and i carpooled with martha to a nearby area of hills and forest and sand [hah!] and leaves . . .
it's just starting to turn colors around here, so i got some really delicate color palettes on camera.

we took a few detours and had adventures, due to the place not having many signs at all.

hey, they didn't even have a map where there should be one.

the point of the hike, kinda, was this elephant rock that martha wanted to see . . .

a slightly snobby lady on one of these horses told us a couple vague directions. 
we ended up going the wrong way, thanks to her vagueness, and ended up getting the right directions probably almost a mile later from two hunter dudes coming peacefully up the path out of the wooded trail, one with piercings all over his face and the other with a voice to tell us reason.
el oh el.
we went through the maze of downed branches here and the guys were coming out of the woods. hah. funny that i took a picture right before it happened.

when we finally got there, we found it did not, in fact, look anything like an elephant.

 trees like lothlorien! all winding together...

. . . steepness to climb before finding the end point. lol.

wait for it . . . 

and believe me, i checked out the trail further up....there was nothing past this. this was it.
it looks like a whale.
a freaking whale.
but hey, it was fun.
they should rename it so people don't get their hopes up and dashed with the reality of the non-elephantness of it all.

it's totally a whale. see the jaw? i know my whales and dolphins, from being obsessed when i was 10-12.

5:21pm
let's face it: i'm not getting a nap today.
oh well.
the only thing left to do is grind some beans and brew coffee up to the 6 for the 3rd time today.
. . . it's days like this that i'm not sure i want to have kids of my own.
rach and lyd: playing monopoly . . . [oh yeah, sweet siblings bonding time? hah.]
15% yelling [random stuff with and at each other], 20% fake violence, 30% laughing, 35% annoying each other.
"don't tear apart the living room!"
yeah, that's me.
when they're older it doesn't matter if they're cute anymore to balance out "those days".
because when they're older they know what's acceptable and what's not. :P
but anyways, in the end, i'm just kidding about the no kids thing.
if it's possible, i'd like a few. 4 sounds grand. maybe a couple more. but no less than 4. even if we have to adopt. there's just something about having siblings.
there are phases when they drive you nuts and there's almost nothing except annoyance between certain pairs, but still . . . when everyone's actually growing up [no longer middle-little children] it's. awesome.

6:30pm
i like boiling potatoes for dinner.
and not just because they're flippin' easy.
i mean, they are good with butter and sour cream and pork seasoned salt. :D
but, even moreso prefer doing quick brown rice. the kind we get in a 5lb bag. hah.
even even moreso, i could go for some vegan fettucine/spaghetti tonight . . .
i might be making it soon anyways, because i told some certain people that i'd make it when jen has her bebe . . . which might be sooner than we think! who knows. as i've said before, babies are an unpredictable business when done natural. hahah.
unpredictable is good.

artistic endeavors: african tree sunset.

i just remembered it's been a while since i've posted a canvas.
which means there's art i've done that you people have probably not seen . . . even on facebook. ;) haha!
i'll remedy that today.
just . . . after i go pour myself a cup of this breakfast blend at 4pm.
:)

august 5
it's not my personal favorite.
you know one of those days when you just want to try something new? play with different colors, stretch your skills a bit, maybe?

this was one of those days.
not done for anyone or even for me, but just for the sake of doing something different.

there. now i can say i've posted this canvas.
:P
:)
i love kate briles' about page. it's a wonderful post to read all in itself.


right now, my cute little sister [lyddie] is making a batch of chocolate chip cookies, claiming that the zumba class [either here because she's memorized some of it] or there will pay off for the pound of butter in the dough.
hah!
oh my. i just love kiddo perspectives.
and . . . the sound of music is on.
my, my...i love that film.

Maria: I can't seem to stop singing wherever I am. And what's worse, I can't seem to stop saying things - anything and everything I think and feel.
Mother Abbess: Some people would call that honesty.
Maria: Oh, but it's terrible, Reverend Mother.

funny, this is me, today: puzzling over where to start with gathering the fabric in to make a skirt with elastic top :P . . . and the canvas above, scrubbed.
sigh.
some things in life have to be redone.
and sometimes, they happen to be things that can be redone.
how awesome is that?
el oh el.

There's nothing more irresistible to a man than a woman who's in love with him.

[the baroness]

[talking about pink lemonade]
The Baroness: Not too sweet, not too sour.
Max: Just too, uh... pink. 
. . . i'm sorry. i can't resist all these quotes from that film.

lyddie-boo and me:)

Maria: You know how Sister Berthe always makes me kiss the floor after we've had a disagreement? Well, lately I've taken to kissing the floor whenever I see her coming, just to save time.

manual focus. i kinda love it sometimes....

i'm listening to some josh garrels music.

this is what i love and miss in the wintertime; staring up into branches that reach for the sky
and grow stronger each year
and let the sun and seasons turn themselves colors.

benjamin :)
the older brother who rocks at painting and carpenter stuff. yep. :)

[no, i don't run. i grabbed the nearest pair of shoes because the ground is still wet from earlier. who likes wet socks? not me.]

[i need to go darker. and more ash blonde....someday soon....]

finally.

black.
the book i'm reading [mainly] currently. only so far as this chapter.

shall get farther.....soon. :)