Sitting, just sitting, outside….experiencing the calm, cleansing purity of a summer  storm.  I am so glad I took the time to do this, doing it with intentionality, daring my senses to absorb all the sounds, scents, feelings, & visions of the enchanted summer storm.  I found it brought clarity to the mind & soul, while at the same time, cleansing & nourishing the earth.  Such profound power.

Hope you get to enjoy a summer storm before the end of the season.

A gorgeous summer night, cool breeze, starry sky.  Time to star gaze.  And because I never take the time to sit in awe of a starry night, it took till I was 50 years old to see my first shooting star!  I am so glad I took on this Intentional Living Project.  It is helping me take time for the little things.

Hoping your days, weeks, and months, are overflowing with joyful little things!

My husband and I will celebrate our 25^th anniversary in a few weeks and our son’s sudden move to Arkansas provided us with an opportunity to start our 2^nd 25 years with a fresh start.

I’m talking dishes and pots/pans!  Yes!

We decided instead of buying him dishes and pots/pans we would buy ourselves some new ones and move ours along.  I loved it! 

You see, the dish set we have been using for 25 years was…do any of you recall this….???….from the grocery store.  You buy something like $20 worth of groceries and you get a plate.  We had our entire family doing it for us and had a nice set of dishes.  As you can imagine, 25 years later, it isn’t much of a set at this point with mishaps along the way.  So we finally bought ourselves our first set of dishes!!!

And then the crème de la crème!  We never had a set of pots and pans at all.  We just had this odd assortment of pots/pans that we assembled from who knows where.  But they worked and there never seemed to be any real reason to spend money on getting new.  But now we had a reason.  So we bought a nice set of stainless steel pots/pans that we are going to hang in the kitchen.

Oh such fun!  I know…it doesn’t take much to make me happy!!

Matt's new kitchen

Fresh flowers…like sunshine bottled up in brilliant colors.  Heavenly.

This weeks intentional living activity was to buy myself fresh flowers.  Oh how I love, love, love fresh flowers.  Years ago, when I was in a particularly rough patch in life, I went to a  florist and arranged to have fresh flowers sent to myself monthly over the winter.  When I said I wanted flowers sent each month, she pulled out a card and asked, “to whom”?  Me.  “And what would you like the card to say??”  hmm…”to me, with love”:)

What a special treat!  How many parents get the opportunity to share their kids first night in their first  “home”?  I mean, really, they move out to get away from us!!!

But special circumstances create special situations:)  I am still in Arkansas to help Matt find housing and get settled in.  Matt would prefer to rent a home vs. an apartment but a few weeks of hunting showed us we could not find something meeting his needs, be in a good neighborhood, and be within his budget..those things seem to be mutually exclusive.  We determined we needed to find a month to month apartment while we continued to try to find a house.  When I got to town I previewed many apartments and planned to show him the top choices after work. 

Then divine intervention interceded.  Near closing time that day, a customer overheard Matt saying he was looking for a home to rent.  The customer said, “I have a home, just around the corner, and the tenant just moved out unexpectedly…come see it.”  36 hours later, he moved in:).  The previous tenant had a LOT of things they left behind.  A small price to pay for being able to get in the house immediately. We got to the house around 9:30pm. We cleared some things aside, inflated our air mattresses, and headed off to take a shower.  I was glad I had thought ahead and packed the mattresses, sheets, shower curtain & hooks, a towel for each of us, some pots/pans, plastic silverware, a few plastic dishes/dish soap, a cooler, a tv/dvd player & some dvd’s and a few other things to tide him/us over till my husband could bring the truck down with all Matt’s things.  We thought it made the most sense for Matt to find a place to live before we brought everything down.

We were blessed to have electricity (read “AC” as the temps are in the 90’s in July here), and water.  We would have to wait till Tuesday, because of the holiday weekend, to call to have the gas turned on.  As we were turning the shower on it all clicked….no gas = no hot water.  Brr.  We sure are spoiled creatures:)

Pretty cool, tho…sort of like camping in a house. 

It was the neatest night.  Matt was wired…his first night in his first house.  And then I realized, I was blessed to be here to enjoy that first night with him.  I will treasure this week forever.  It has been so special being here with him, cleaning, setting things up..just he and I.  Nothing better for a mother’s heart.  Especially since I likely won’t see him again for quite a while.  My heart is soaking up every moment.

Definitely an Intentional Living week.  I will have to take something less deserving off my list and replace it with this unexpected golden opportunity.

Spontaneous roadtrip…..YES!!

My son had a job offer from a business in Jonesboro, Arkansas & relocated from Cleveland very suddenly.  He has been living in a hotel, with primarily just a laundry basket of clothes and a phone.  I decided to go down and help him locate housing and get settled in.  This mission has “mom” stamped all over it.  I’m in!  I am great at researching, scouting, organizing, coordinating.

While road trips are always fun, I think spontaneous roadtrips are even more tantalizing.  Throw some stuff together and head out on the open road.  It was a beautiful drive down.  I couldn’t have asked for better weather.  Sunshine, trees, changing landscape.  And though I have traveled nearly the entire united states, I had never been to Arkansas so it was to be an even greater adventure.

I enjoyed the scenery, listened to country music, but mostly, just enjoyed this beautiful country of ours.

What was your favorite road trip?

This week’s activity was to try a new hair color…just for the very fun of it.  What color to try?  My hair is naturally brown and I have worn lots of shades of brown.  Red?  No….I’ve had enough red tint in the browns I’ve tried to know I don’t care for red that much.  Not going with an unnatural color so purple and green are out.  That leaves blonde. 

My stylist is a hair color specialist so I felt confident she wouldn’t let me walk out there looking like a freak!  My thought had been that I would try some version of blonde and if I didn’t like it, I could change it back in a few weeks.  She said if I did that I could easily damage my hair so much that a lot of it would break off.  So…not going there.  I’ve been working on growing my hair out for too long to do that! 

She suggested doing blonde highlights, done in a way that would be attractive and age appropriate, in a manner that I would likely want to keep it for a while vs. the double-change I was envisioning with going drastic & then returning to my regular color.  And if I liked it, then I could add more or go more dramatic once I adjust to this.  I like her thinking.  I knew she would take care of me and I trust her for that.  Especially since I have a speaking engagement tonight!

I tried a few of those virtual makeover websites a few days ago and took the photos in today to my stylist.  She said look at this…with this color you will look 20.  I told her, I AM 20 in that photo!  (I don’t have many full face photos so I used this one from my graduation from nursing school 30 years ago!)

 So…blonde highlights it is!  Thought I might get to experiment and see if blondes do have more fun.  I may need to go more blonde because I don’t want to just have part of the fun!!