Worth Sharing This Week

Did you notice the new description here on the blog?  I felt it was time to refocus and redirect.  Not foregoing the idea of thriftiness but expanding it to include my real goal.  After writing out a half dozen or so new ideas, I was inspired by a line I read this week to write this:
"Practicing wise economy while pursuing beauty, loveliness and grace."   


I've a tendency to lean hard merely on the side of saving money.  I am always doing that and getting myself all out of balance...And then when things get a bit snug I tend to worry far too much and don't appreciate the loveliness and beauty and wonder of just plain living.  I had a huge case of 'I can't'-itis this afternoon and that's when I decided it was time to give myself a check-up.  I realized that I needed to refocus my thinking and stop looking at what I couldn't do and instead to focus upon what I can do.  Right now, time may not be all my own, but I can take time to seek beauty in the written word, in the sights about me or even in a magazine layout.  Here's a few things that moved me this week:


From Instagram, a post Saturday by @sarahwanders about a lovely garden gate sculpture she'd seen at the Victoria and Albert museum in London:  "Beauty is a gift that communicates worth, that says to the recipient, You are precious, worth not just clothing and shelter, but delighting.  You are meant for joy."

The Daily Connoisseur (aka Jennifer L. Scott) is someone I've just begun following on YouTube.  Each month she shares a 'Chic Assignment' and in September she suggested a reading of Robert Frost's Poems.  These lines moved me beyond words.

From Robert Frost's poem, Mending Wall:

Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out
And to whom I was like to give offense...

And from his poem, Birches:

I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over...

From an article I was reading on Chabad.org about sounding the shofar on Rosh Hashanah.  I was so moved I made John mute the television show he was watching so that I could read this to him, then I copied it in my journal.   Rabbi Tzvi Freeman wrote:

"There are things that are important to us, so we speak about them.

There are things so important to us that the words flow out in a burst of emotion, rich words, expressive and vibrant.

And then there are things that shake us to the core.  Things that do not care for the mind's permission or for the  right words---for the mind cannot fathom them, the most poignant words could not contain them.  Things that can only break out in a cry, in a scream, and then in silence.

This is the sound of the shofar: The very core of our soul's crying , 'DAD! Don't leave me here alone!'

From Evelyn Underhill's Concerning the Inner Life which I've only just begun reading, I was struck hard by this statement:

We are drifting towards a religion which consciously or unconsciously  keeps its eye on humanity rather than on Deity---which lays all the stress on service and hardly any on awe (emphasis is all mine): and that is a type of religion, which in practice  does not wear well

Flipping through September "Flea Market" magazine (was this a BH&G publication?) at the doctor's office, I came across this photo.  I knew immediately what I loved about it and what I would tone down:

I love all the vibrant color but would not like to have that particular shade of purple in my room.  I've never cared for that color and find it jarring.  Yet it's telling that it's inclusion in this photo really made me pay attention to the room.  I came to a dead halt when I turned to that page!

I feel this is what I'm missing in my own English country décor: color...So now I know what direction I'd like to go.  I think I'll look for more vibrant pillow covers and throws, perhaps some flowering plants.

The pecan tree turned golden earlier this last week and then began to shed it's leaves.   The color against the blue sky was breathtaking:

Glad I captured it at the time, because it's very nearly bare limbed now.