Below are my Top Five Loves Today, but first–are you kidding me with that market post? I thought I had you all in rapture with my round the world farmer’s market tour, but you have to go and make it look downright shabby with your amazing Chinese food, flowers and cupcakes. Are we competing here, or what? Cause I’ll take you on if you want to have an old-fashioned throw down. Just name the subject. Fruit tarts? Bucolic country scenes w/ cows? Portraits of our children’s feet? Okay, rant over, darling. Love!

What I Love Today

1. September colours. We live in a place with lots of deciduous trees (i.e., not first growth), so in the fall it’s pretty amazing. And the past few years September’s been dry too, so the grass still has that golden summer hue, and with the deep blue fall sky…

2. Our studio space. DH spent countless hours under our deck with the spiders, rewiring, insulating and fixing up our wonderful glass multipurpose room (I hate that term–it’s so cold. Flexible room?). Now it’s beautiful and bright and used. Little e plays out there, we have parties in it, we chat with friends there when little e is sleeping and we don’t want to watch our volume, DH does his yoga and cycle training there. It was once a hot tub room, and now it’s our studio–flexible enough for almost anything. Except being a hot tub room again.

Before:

After:

3. The word luscious. I don’t know why. Apparently it was once short for delicious (and don’t we need all the variants of that we can get?).

4. Salted Peanut Butter Cookies. From her. There is a crucial quantity of milk chocolate in these which should really be in the name, so I always tell people they are salted peanut butter cookies with a heavy milk chocolate influence. They are so so good and so so addicting. Be warned. They are The Hunger Games of cookies. Just saying.

5. Writing. I mean, living an affluent life by most of the world’s standards and not being sick and having a healthy, happy family–all of which enables me to write when I want to. Okay, maybe not always when I want to, but most of the time. Like, I don’t have to choose between a basic need and writing a chapter. I get to do what I love and love what I love enthusiastically and often. That’s an incredible thing. I’d love to do it more–and get paid to do it more so I can quit my day job, but right now it’s more than most people dream of. And for that I thank the universe. And, you know, J.R.R. Tolkein.

XO

Ria