on life, and settling in.

it's the most interesting feeling, having your own place.
if i must be honest, i love it.
it's fun. the details. the mundane. the every day.
they're our towels.

it's our kitchen sink.
our laundry to do.
(two loads desperately need to be done right now.)
our coffee maker that brewed fresh, hot, yummy coffee this morning.
our front porch.
(it could use a rocking chair or love seat of some kind...maybe craigslist will let something out of the woodwork again. hah.)

our couch.

our entertainment center that we put hard work and concentration and teamwork into, one night from 10:30pm to 2:30am.
our budget to sketch out and write up.
our rent to be paid (and what a great deal do we have!! so blessed.).
our dresser.

our mirrors and awesome leather chair that i found while rummaging with lady friends back in wisconsin. :)

our coffee mugs. (great gifts from awesome friends, used all the time, if you would believe that. ;))

our milk glass bud vase from my grammy who passed on in june 2011.

our at-home date nights late on sunday nights with a movie and caesar salad kit from wally's.
(p.s. i love you is one of those films that i watch 2 or 3 times a year and it gives me a whole new appreciation for life and loved ones. just because. these humans are so precious to me.)

friday and saturday night, while justin worked, i had rachel over for one night, and anna for the other night.

we talked and talked and watched a movie before sleep. the next morning, i made them coffee in my kitchen. poured them coffee into my collected (or gift-given) mugs. 
it's pretty fantastic to be able to have sisters over for a night of quality time and coffee in the morning.
i like it a lot. ;)

after-dinner walks out here in southern illinois are amazing.
no doubt about it.
i used to live in a small town, about 10k. i could see sunsets, but not like this. 
friday night i think it was, justin and i took a walk alone on the country road. all the way up to the stop sign like we always did over the past almost-2-years. we stopped and stared at the sunset. hugged and talked about how we couldn't remember the last time we'd done this together. the past how many months were too busy to randomly take a walk.
i believe after-dinner walks are some of the best things to have in your life. it's pondering time, whether you have good, lovely things to think and talk about, or hard, frustrating things.

and i can't believe,  that I'm your man,
and i get to kiss you baby just because i can.
whatever comes our way, ah we'll see it through...
[michael buble]

all in all, we're loving the challenge and joy that is marriage.
i'm just so glad we're in this crazy life journey together.
♥

5 things about today.

1. ohmyword! the smell of coffee grounds is absolutely amazing.
tomorrow would be one week since i've brewed it at home.
i  fell sick with a funky cold last friday....had a cup at church on sunday; had an americano at caribou coffee after wedding dress shopping monday night; and had a cup of coffee at church again wednesday night.
but there's truly nothing like brewing your own.
my word.

2. the reese boy. anna usually nannies this boy, but she's gone on a roadtrip to minnesota with two of the other siblings --my favorites: the hilarious ones, caleb and rach, until next wednesday.
this boy is playing with duplos. it's quiet time. he's 3. twenty minutes till he goes home with his daddy. we just got home from a 40 minute outing at the park. fresh air, warmer than our past week has been even though it's windy. [i'm putting up my hopes for an indian summer...]
he has shown me today exactly how hilarious and cute boys can be...you know, instead of just dangerous and quirky as i'd viewed them before. heck, i look forward to maybe having a boy or two.....maybe. especially if they're as cute as my love. ;) the world is so huge and detailed and simple to them all at once. i never knew a balloon could be explained like that before this morning.
...but when it comes to bathroom matters [like this one time today, for instance!], that's where it'll truly get fun. i have a feeling that might be one of my least favorite things about having kids...........

Source: tumblr.com via Alba on Pinterest

3. i'm going swing dancing tonight, with ben and martha. [since anna's gone. gone. gone.]
we're gonna have fun without her. she'll be swing dancing at her own friends-of-friends swing dancing hall tonight or tomorrow with a whole new crowd. heh.

4. chicken curry for dinner? sounds fantastic. over quick brown rice. mhmmm.

Source: eatdrinkchic.com via Beka on Pinterest

5. mum and i have been discussing and looking at tutorials for birdcage veils. i like the idea of one based on a headband. not a clip with a flower, or bobby pins...obviously i'm not having an elaborate updo; my hair won't be that long by then. lol. and not too much poufing. and not too much flowery embellishment. heh. i can't wait to make one! it's amazing the cost difference between $100-$200, or diy with things you can get from joann's or michael's for a total of under $30. heck. yeah.
[btw, did i mention that i found a dress monday night? yes. yes. yes. i like it a lot, and am so happy with my choice.]

p.s. coffee is good. and it's great to be able to taste it again. mmmm.

this: my wednesday.

this was my friday.
and a favorite song.

♥

8:30am skype date.

my skype date is super freaking amazing and talented. ohboy. you can't even imagine. :)

then, because i had cute socks on [thanks, love;)] . . . and because a brother was nearby, i took a few pictures before we headed out to visit grandpa in the hospital before he had surgery.
does ben look like a creeper? maybe he didn't get enough sleep. lol

me and the brother.

fall is starting to be really noticeable all of a sudden.

sigh. pretty orange leaves. my my.

:)

because my skills were requested for birth photography of a lady anna is a doula for anytime soon . . .

this picture ^^ makes me laugh. of course, i'm not the one pregnant and impatient and growing a little human and so ready to be done and see the precious sweetie. heh.

speaking of patience...and hippie-ness....hahaha. here. the due date debacle. i figure it's best to prepare one's mindset even before babies are seriously on the horizon. [laughing]
interesting, no?

anyhow! it's too late for any of you who liked my c.s. lewis painting...it sold the other night. :) :) :)
i'll make another sometime. don't worry.
it'll be grand.
i plan on doing some j.r.r. tolkien quotes very soon so that excited people can buy some awesome art inspired by the hobbit coming out in december. :)

hi, world.

it's been ages [literally, maybe a month?] since i've even logged into my blogger account.
i kinda miss reading and seeing and getting inspired by and learning about other lives and beautiful things out there.

i'm so tired and don't want to go anywhere tonight.
but we cannot do or get what we want all the time.
sigh.
true, no?
i just need another cup of coffee.
i just wanted to say hi. :)

this is me, this morning.
i got henna done last night by a friend. aka, the legit tattoo artist boyfriend of a sweet friend. lol.

i shall never get a real tattoo because i am afraid of needles.
but henna is good enough for me.
art. heck yeah.

also...this past week, i've sold 5 different canvases, via my etsy. :) pretty exciting.

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?!

sap and sun and shadows and perfect weather. lol.

have i said lately how much i love the taste of coffee?
and the color of the sky no matter what season it is.
and the feeling of being able to sit under the shade of a mature maple on the most perfect day of the week so far.
my leather amplified bible in front of me on the grass, open to the book of james.
sunshine. layers and branches full of leaves glowing with it.
and the feel of getting up from grass you thought was dry, that feeling of everything being damp. lol.
like childhood. i don't sit on the grass very much anymore.
bugs. chairs are better. the ground is . . . not as convenient.
just . . . i don't do it much.
but ah, the feeling of this afternoon . . .
crazy beautiful weather, the gift of coffee ;), a breeze whispering over pages [like james 2], and laughing over all sorts of random stuff that comes up when i'm talking to justin on the phone. discussing some verses that stunned me. like this one. and why or why not people talk about it, preach on it.
i rambled about something odd that if i told it to anyone else, they would give me that look. the one that says heh, beka....you're crazy. just kiiiiinda weird....
and i am.
but i'm just thankful that some people [ahem, very few, very rare] accept and even appreciate --gasp! even love?-- the fact that i am . . . me. 
i just feel so lucky it's him.
some days really suck to be long distance. actually, all days do. and as time goes on and we get closer, talk about and open up about different stuff and dream all over the place with hopes and logic combined, it really hurts some days to be apart. to have only the phone and sometimes, once in a while, skype to connect us between the one weekend a month-ish that works out to see each other in person.
[take yesterday for example. a perfectly good day. everything was going great. no huge drama or anything. but inside? inside i could. not. stop. missing. him. i'm not usually so melancholy at every turn as i was yesterday. so.....i'm super thankful for today. a lot more free, positive mood. still miss him, but it's not horrible at the moment. lol.]

then again . . . there are some days, you're just so thankful for the utter blessing of someone who truly loves you, and takes you on your good, bad, weird, freak-out, lazy, fantastic, and horrible days. and vice versa. [obviously, i'm no where near perfect:P]
and that's when you find yourself laughing at jokes and teases as you ignore the fact that there are bugs in the grass all around you and there are a lot of things yet to fall into place in this time before that blessed day, but still . . . you just know that it'll all be perfectly wonderful in the end. [reminds me of that joy set before you scripture. so much hope, even though we may go through so many trials on the way to it!]
really tough at times, but then that's life.
and the tough times will be okay because we'll be together and God is always with us. and He knows all that's in store. how we're going to draw closer to Him through it all, as our lives are washed with His grace.
through the valleys and the storms.
through dashed hopes and fulfilled hopes.
through conflict and peace and every.single.bit.of.it.

 ~~~

wow. a post without pictures.
yes. i survived and posted without pictures.
so.....here we go. i need to figure out what i want to do about that storage issue. thanks to all you who put in their two cents of how you do it! :)

muffins. oh my.

so . . . my sister works as a hostess [and part-time baker] at a fine dining restaurant.
she worked this morning, because as it turns out, tons of people loved the idea of taking their mumsies out to brunch for mother's day. ;)
she brought home a few things . . .
such as lemon poppyseed muffins, and blueberry muffins.
divine.
so i poured myself a cup of coffee and may or may not have had two of each kind.
they're my top two favorite kinds of muffins.
only wish i could've shared. ;)

hope you all had a beautiful mother's day, loving on your/a mother, being one, or something awesome like that. :)

gorgeous mornings, coffee, and weekly news.

it's 8:18am and an utterly gorgeous morning.

i brewed coffee this morning for myself.
it's the first time since last week's sunday.
why? because i was sick all last week.
came down with a case of the chills during the service at church, came home, took a long nap, had fever/chills/aches/coughing all week....and now i'm getting better. thank God.
i still haven't been getting as much sleep as i could, considering i go to bed at 9:30 lately [insert gasp here; just a month or more ago i called my sister anna a grandma for going to bed at that hour. lol.], but with coughing and all that, i wake up a lot through the night.

 justin, drawing robots for danny boy. :) d.a.r.l.i.n.g.

then, friday night justin drove up here, and stayed till sunday afternoon. that was great...i went off and on with a fever, but it was good anyways...so good to see him again. :)
so yeah, i haven't been craving or brewing coffee all week because of the darn sickness....:P
but,
this morning.

i woke at 6 to my fiance's voice on the phone as he drove to work another day.
i watched out the window as the sun came up and brightened the trees colors.

i packed apples, blackberries, and strawberries to eat at work later.
i brewed some coffee. 
finally.
i love gorgeous days like this.
now to figure out what i want to wear to work......
i have to say, i was excited to feel the urge to write a few words in this post editor here in blogger this morning. it feels like it's been forever.
so . . . . hi!!!

my saturday.

this child...
woke up this morning with crazier hair than i've ever seen on him before.

[and no, not mine, for those of you who don't know. i'm still working on a "the peoples" about list so you all can see the important people in my life listed there with pictures and a little description and all that jazz....]

it's probably because his mum bought gel for his hair the other day, and he had some in yesterday....he's never had this crazy bed-head look that bad before.
hahaha.

it was a gorgeous, chilly morning. 
the scarf and hoodie kind of day.

those earrings are my favorite.
and gray is one of my most favorite colors.
and.....burt's bees lip color is pretty awesome.
i wore a touch of deeper color for the special night of vintagey-themed, live-band swing dancing at the art museum last night, and i decided i kinda liked it and wore it again today.

in the awesome women's loo with the full wall of mirror....at a resort place for a conference.
gotta love sisters.

 :)

all the ladies in our family [mom, anna, me, rach and lyd] went out to lunch at this really awesome place...then hoppity-skipped next door to the cute little bakery....obviously, i got lemon poppyseed tea cake. and a small regular coffee. alterra.
we came home, and after i talked to justin for a few minutes on the phone, i crashed into this thing called a . . . a . . . nap. yeah. i think that's what it's called. it's where you close your eyes and everything disappears and goes foggy and it's like this really really wonderful thing, especially if you stayed out till 12:30 swing dancing with awesome friends [a post with tons of pics coming soon] and getting home at 1:30 and going to sleep by 2:30 and waking for the day on a saturday at 7:30 . . .
yeah.
naps are wonderful things. :)

comparison and children. not at all related.

when i started reading this post, i had some thoughts running around in my head.
i then remembered that this is kind of what blogging is for. hah. write your thoughts and learning curves out.
beauty and body image: there is a war going on for your mind.
there's that comparison to other bodies and intellects, the resistance and struggle to be okay with being yourself, exactly how you look and who you're growing to be in your soul.
then there's the comparison of friends and bloggers where some seem a different sort of perfect. like erika wrote about in this guest post of hers on another sweet blog.
but that's different.
it's more a wondering sometimes if you're documenting your beautiful, simple life . . . trying out new things, taking breaks from other things, learning new things. because you know it; us bloggers learn a lot of stuff from each other. including the fact that we're not alone.
so even though billboards and blogs have that comparison thing in common, one is a a completely unreal conformity issue, and the other is more of a thinking issue, i believe. because we can choose to be real and not just write about all the things we're good at, and post only the pictures that are blog-worthy, and let it out that we sometimes have no clue what we're doing or that we're having a freaking bad day, but then at least we're. not. alone.

so.
on another note, i went to a whole foods market [for my first time in years] the other night with martha, nancy and my sister anna, before going swing dancing.
i thought i was seeing things when i read the price for these 14oz canisters of whole bean coffee by three beans coffee: $4.99 for 14oz, are you kidding me? dark, medium and light roast. i got one can of medium and one can of light, since i like being careful about dark roasts; some people don't do dark roast well at all. :P
anyhow.
so it's a chilly day, i'm drinking some freshly brewed medium roast from that night, and i do believe i'm going to paint.
or figure out what to make for lunch.
i don't know.
i had buttered toast and coffee for breakfast, and i laughed and told rach that i felt like an old person.
"well, you're kinda missing one thing."
"what?"
"well, if you're old, and all that time has gone by....ya know...you're missing one thing right now."
"um....? someone or something? i don't get what you're trying to say."
"someone."
"mhmm. true." 

also, there's a four year old boy right now in our kitchen, and he's obsessed with finding all the dominoes in one of *those* drawers...you know the kind. the one with everything in it. ;)
needless to say, he's having fun. it's a challenge. haha.

this is him, danny, friday. he was ridiculously tired because he didn't sleep during his nap-time hour after lunch. hah.
cutest thing ever, a sleeping child. :)

happy.

i have 601 published posts and 22 drafts. i haven't been posting at a normal or decent record lately. just a few facts for you.

makes me happy posts.
pretty darn inspiring.
especially considering the facts that i'm looking forward to so many things, learning to rest in trusting God and His timing and just who He is, but i've started to let little things slip away.
so. with no further delay . . .

things that have made me ridiculously happy this week:

the smile my younger sister/s gives me when we share a sibling moment telling each other 'you're weird'.

and the laughing that comes afterwards.

the morning's hot shower. that feeling of a new day starting. clean.

the freshly-cleaned off kitchen counter. my ocd tendencies satisfied.

the loud, obnoxious hum of the coffee grinder in my hands. anticipation and enjoyment of my obsession. :)

attempting to accomplish how many push ups while the coffee brews. exercise, keeping in shape, who's heard of it? psh....not me.....

the sound of someone's really tired voice on the phone at the end of a long day... and the good-natured argument over when exactly he should go to sleep because he's so exhausted, or if he should stay up like he wants to/wishes.
the laughing that comes when either person wins the argument.

how about you? what has been making you ridiculously happy this week?

a poem on a tuesday.

it's february 1st, and i haven't posted for . . . oh, has it been a week?
yeah. something like that.
one of my favorite authors, bonnie grove, shared this on her facebook this morning.
you know, since they now allow you to post more than 500 characters. hah.

anyways, the last time i --er, someone named lyddie [my littlest sister]-- used my camera, there was this cutie in the nursery. he was a sweetheart. for every smile you gave him, he gave you one right back. easiest going little one in the nursery at church that day.

. . . the sunset on january 30th.

. . . the sunset on january 31st.
you can now read this lovely poem, and i'm going to go finish watching tangled [only for the second time in my life, crazy, i know? what with a little sister who does the smolder all the time. lol] with lyddie . . . have a fabulous wednesday :)

Happiness 
by Raymond Carver

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

When I see the boy and his friend
walking up the road
to deliver the newspaper.

They wear caps and sweaters,
and one boy has a bag over his shoulder.
They are so happy
they aren't saying anything, these boys.

I think if they could, they would take
each other's arm.
It's early in the morning,
and they are doing this thing together.

They come on, slowly.
The sky is taking on light,
though the moon still hangs pale over the water.

Such beauty that for a minute
death and ambition, even love,
doesn't enter into this.

Happiness. It comes on
unexpectedly. And goes beyond, really,
any early morning talk about it.