sweet november: sky view

I'm a big fan of the sky. Night sky, day sky, clear sky, cloudy sky...I pretty much love them all though I'm not a big fan of tornado sky...that just freaks me out. My favorite is a sunrise, sunset, or cloud filled sky. The kind of clouds that make you want to glue cotton balls to a piece of blue construction paper. That's my favorite kind of sky. On the BIG road trip, I just about swooned over Wyoming's sky. A big sky is a beautiful thing. However, be it big or small, I love the sky I really do. Often I feel overwhelmed with the magnificence of it all and it brings tears to my eyes and catches my throat and I laugh and sob in the same breath.

This sky here, is today's sky. An Eighty degree Autumn sky with whispers of clouds hush hushing across that gorgeous blue. I took this picture from the parking lot of my work. I walked across the lot to stand under this pistachio tree and I tilted my head back, back, back and brought my camera to my eye and snapped, snapped, snapped away as parents buckled their kiddos into backseats, and staff kiddos worked out the rules for today's game of Zombies and Aliens. As all this was going on around me, as co-workers packed up their rooms for the day, I lowered the camera and stood there with my head tilted back, back, back and smiled as I stared at that gorgeous blue sky.

sweet november: orange

This is what orange looks like when you spend your day working with germy kiddos (there is something evil going around), run errands after work, then take a detox shower before you remember you need to put up a sweet november post and that today's word is orange.

This is what orange looks like when you dash into your not-yet unpacked craft room (which may never get unpacked) to see what you can dig up. And what you dig up...you, a person who loves orange...is not much. There is the tiny garland you whipped up after feverishly punching out a series of circles from a pad of scrapbook paper after you ransack your table for the extra large scallop punch you spent too much on (even with a coupon) that you later find after finishing the wee garland. The three scarves that border on coral which is kinda pink, three rolls of washi tape, a short length of white ribbon with orange owls on it, four crocheted hangers, one Hawaiian Punch guy, and a felt basket you picked up on super sale just because.

I have oodles of happy orange themed photos on flickr...take a gander here.

sweet november: 2pm

2pm

This photo was taken at 2pm yesterday. At 2pm today I was wrangling a bunch of three and four-year-olds as the cut squares, put on a puppet show, lined up marbles, and almost came to blows. While I do bring my camera to school everyday, there are times when I am up to my eyeballs in kiddos needing mt for this or that or that or this that taking pictures is the last thin on my mind. So you get a shot from yesterday when I was boiling eggs for the week for my protein packed lunches that I seem to crave when working with the children. For some reason, I get hungry, so hungry when working with the children. And so I pack eggs, and nuts, and meat, and yogurt, and hummus, and carrots, and peas, and I eat and eat and eat some more only to come home so starved I can't see straight. It's a good thing I am kicking the cereal habit...and I won't even mention yesterday's brownies that may or may not have been eaten all up.

sweet november: dessert

Today's word is dessert. Dessert. I have to admit that while I probably have the largest sweet-tooth on the planet. I am not really a dessert girl...unless it's for breakfast, think scones, coffee cake, pie. At least, when I think of the word dessert, I tend to imagine some sort of baked alaska or creme brulee (good golly do I LOVE creme brulee) when the reality is, at home, when the mister reaches for the ice cream some time after dinner, I am usually pouring a bowl of Marshmallow Mateys instead. See? Breakfast...ish.

 

As it stands, I have not been to the grocery store in a while and I have not had a decent bowl of cereal in a few weeks (I'm trying to kick my cereal habit). I was thinking of baking pumpkin donuts for today or making an icebox cake (I've had an idea for an ice box cake since last year that I have yet to do) but I was feeling utterly defeated by an early morning asthma attack and we had no whipped cream. What we did have was a box of brownie mix and some peanut butter chips.

But brownies on their own are hardly worthy of a dessert crown so I baked 'em up in a pie pan and then popped the rest of the batter into two small ramekins and a pilfered pyrex storage container. I like my brownies a little less gooey than is the norm so I usually make 'em a little longer. The pie pan baked up in about 28 minutes but the ramekins took longer (about 40) as they were deep dish. I know this because I dipped a spoon in for a photograph and eked when I saw the goo!

So next time you want to serve a fancy dessert why not make it brownies? A wedge of brownie dusted with powdered sugar or a dollop of barely sweetened whipped cream would pack a punch as would individual deep dish servings served up in pretty white ramekins. I got mine from Target.

****Hello November and thanks for joining us! It's officially a photo-a-day challenge (with words if you like but not necessary, I just tend toward wordiness). Click here to see the photo list and here to see Tara's photos.  Hopefully you'll be inspired to play along with us, and at the end of the month we'll have weeks worth of fun photos to share with each other! Think of it as a guided way to get all NaBloPoMo  on yer blog.  Leave a comment and share your sweet november photos.****

sweet november: collected

It should come as no surprise that I am a collector of things. Pretty things, old things, dusty things, musty things. New things, old things, useful things, broken things. Things that make my heart beat, that make me laugh, that make me swoon. Things that drive the mister crazy but connect my memories from one point to another until an image appears like magic. No more elaborate than a simple connect-the-dots picture but so much more powerful in emotion and memory.

It has been months since we packed up the second tiny casa and careened back to the homestead. Months of thinking and planning and fine tuning and pretending I do not have a room full of things that need organizing, unpacking, and putting away. Boxes of things. Jars of things. Too many things. My memories are elbowing into each other, trapped in a dark elevator moving up and down but not really going anywhere at all much like the piles of this or that, the piles I keep arranging, rearranging, dumping into boxes, shipping off to the thrift proud of myself for letting go but so, so, so anxious I will lose parts large and parts small of my self.

The truth is these things, these lovely, lovely, dusty, musty things are weighing me down. Keeping me past when I am now almost, almost solid and present. This new small job I have, small in hours and students and other people's eyes is enormous to me. It is all I think about. Every thing I look at I wonder how I can use it, how can I share it, with these small people I am gifted to care for? Many of my things have found a new home in the classroom and many more sit waiting in the wings for their debut. I am still acquiring things, good lord am I still acquiring things but these new old things I pick up at the thrift or at the park or in the garden are not for me but for the children I am gifted with. Now at the thrift I bypass the vintage tea cups or toys, in facts I barely see them, a glimmer in my peripheral like a ghost I may only spy when alone in the house. I move past the vintage treasures I would normally swoon to pick up (except crocheted hangers, I still reach for those and am now thinking that would have been a better less wordy photo for collected) to grab wooden boxes and trays, scarves, and salad spinners because when you teach young children you can never have enough wooden boxes and trays, scarves, and salad spinners.

Along with the thrift I am now gathering nature. Sticks and twigs, leaves, and seeds. Mossy things, smooth things, bumpy things, and things that would look great under a magnifying glass. And after all those words up there I come to this, this bowl of rose hips which look so much like pomegranates (of course, of course, of course) that I had to cut one open to see what was inside. These rose hips will be at our nature table along with a card with the word rosehips carefully printed out in my best attempt at teacher writing.

Aren't they pretty? The sister-a-go-go planted quite a few roses in the garden and now I am gathering, gathering. Gathering for the classroom and gathering to experiment...rose hip tea anyone?

****Hello November and thanks for joining us this Saturday morning! It's offically a photo-a-day challenge (with words if you like but not necessary, I just tend toward wordiness). Click here to see the photo list and here to see Tara's photos).  Hopefully you'll be inspired to play along with us, and at the end of the month we'll have weeks worth of fun photos to share with each other! Leave a comment and share your sweet november photos.**

sweet november 3: morning

morning

Mornings in San Luis Obispo are not grand or showy or pretty even. They are cool, they are fresh, and often they are dark.

I drove the mister to work yesterday morning just shy of 7am. He put together an astounding costume for the contest at work and could not ride his bike in it or even walk to work in it and so I stumbled out of bed on my day off in the quiet dark of morning to chauffeur my love to work clad in the jeans that were dropped on the floor the night before, the tank top and shirt I slept in, shoes without socks, and a sock monkey hat to cover the party on my head.

The sky was mostly dark with stars staggering home, the bully of a hummingbird that flits about his sage was chip-shipping away and a tiny sliver of moon winked at me. The air was soothing and cool with a whisper of breathy air moving about as I paused to take a picture of the moon.

The drive across town was quiet and dark with me muttering at the people careening to work annoyed that their aggression was taking away from enjoying the drive. Mister usually bikes to work and hour earlier than this and I am grateful that when he does there are no cars, just dark accompanied by a chorus from the birds and frogs beginning and finishing their days. The drive home took me less than ten minutes and in those ten minutes the sky changed from dark to bright.

No. Mornings in San Luis Obispo are not grand or showy or pretty even. They are dark then they are light. There is no pink blush of morning tinting our mountains or showy golden streaks careening across the sky. Often we are greeted with a muted marine layer that blankets the sky in white leaving us no clue to our days. Will it rain? Will it be hot? Will it be cool? The beauty of our mornings can be found in the everyday in the rituals you see of your neighbor bracing themselves against the cool in their green and blue polka dotted robe as they stoop to grab their morning paper, the little lady in the bright orange work-vest power-walking her way by your window for the third time in twenty-minutes, by the birds that twitter and gossip the dark away, by the college students hurrying to school wrapped up in hats and scarves, phones to their ears as they maneuver themselves with coffee-in hand and flip flops on their feet.

Mornings in San Luis Obispo are not grand or showy or pretty even. They are cool and quiet then busy and bright. They are full of dog walkers, runners, walkers, and cyclists. They are full of the sounds of skateboard wheels rolling down our street, with children slamming car doors on their way to school, with the wind-chimes in the garden gracefully slam-dancing in slow motion with the breeze. There is always a breeze.

Mornings in San Luis Obispo are not grand or showy or pretty even, they on occasion carry the lowing of the cows as they breakfast their way across the peak, the gobble of the wild turkey in the fall, the grumble rumble of the garbage trucks gathering up their breakfast of champions, and the rhythmic turns of the trains that hurry threw with nary a hello on their way to grander destinations.

As I drove home across town clad in the jeans that were dropped on the floor the night before, the tank top and shirt I slept in, shoes without socks, and a sock monkey hat to cover the party on my head; as the sky turned white, and the blackbirds careened across the sky in such masses I they appeared to be bats returning home, I thought of how mornings in San Luis Obispo are not grand or showy or pretty even...but to me, they are beautiful.

**Hello November and thanks for joining us this Friday morning! Today is the first day of our sweet november photo-a-day challenge. (click here to see the photo list and here to see Tara's photos) Hopefully you'll be inspired to play along with us, and at the end of the month we'll have weeks worth of fun photos to share with each other! Leave a comment and share your sweet november photos.**