Lazy W Marie

Carpeing all the diems in semi-rural Oklahoma...xoxo

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Another Reason to Love Mornings

    Do you adore mornings? Early morning is my very favorite time of day, that slice of time between the darkest hours of night and the palest, most timid moments of dawn. Everything is hushed. Generally the air outside is calm, no matter the season. The house is still and lit only here and there by a few golden pools of light. I am almost always the only one awake at this time, and it’s a wonderful time for perfect coffee.  
   Early morning is when my mind is most fluid and able to tap into that collective stream of life’s possibilities.  Everything feels fresh, possible, and important.  While the sun is trying to reach over the east field, I always think I can do anything and that everything good and worthy can still happen.  
   This evening I ran across a few sentences that spoke volumes to me even before I realized they were spoken by one of this past century’s most quotable men, John Wayne:
“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life.
Comes into us at midnight very clean.
It’s perfect when it arrives,
and it puts itself in our hands.
It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.”

   What do you think about this? Are you as enamored as I am by the gift of a new morning, by the opportunity and obligation to do better in this new day than we did in the previous one? No need to wait until January first of next year; we have new beginnings available to us every single day. And so we should be deeply grateful for every single day.
   We see in the Old Testament even more encouragement to love dawn: 
“It is of the Lord’s mercies 
that we are not consumed,
because his compassions fail not.
They are new every morning:
great is thy faithfulness.”
Lamentations 3:22-23

   I encourage you to read that entire chapter in Lamentations. Especially if you are in the mode of counting your blessings, these passages are both humbling and strengthening, filled with encouragement to lean on God.  Rely on Love.
   If you spend your earliest morning moments preparing for the day rather than rushing into it, framing your thoughts and collecting your energies, I suspect you’ll enjoy the results.  Actively see the day as you want it to play out.  Harness the power of your imagination.  Resist fear and negative thinking; shun regret; embrace newness and strength. You’ll be in decent company!  Marcus Aurelius once said, 
“A man’s life is what his thoughts make of it.” 
   This is not meant to imply that thoughts are all that matter, only that positive thinking is certainly a positive beginning and perspective matters a great deal.  And in my opinion the morning is an ideal time to secure your perspective.
   When I wake up tomorrow morning, I am determined to…

Pray those prayers I’ve been weary of for so long, the stuff I am close to believing will never happen
Be a better steward of my time, energy, material resources, & talents.
Be more appreciative for my abundance and for mercy.
Be kinder, more patient, and more compassionate than I was before.
Give more affection to our animals.
Reach out to loved ones in ways I haven’t tried so far.
Believe the best about people then act on that belief.
   On any given day, miracles can happen. Amazing surprises are lurking behind every sunrise, and I never want apathy, fear, or staleness in my own mind to preclude a miracle for myself or for a loved one.  
   Tomorrow morning, if you will, please pray for my family. Especially for my two daughters, Jocelyn and Jessica, and my two sisters, Angela and Genevieve. I hope your tomorrow arrives to you clean and is filled with mercies. I hope your tomorrow is richer and wiser than today, even if today was wonderful.  
xoxoxo

Hobo Memories

   Throughout my childhood, Mom was incredibly resourceful. She crafted celebrations from only construction paper and glue. She filled our table with healthy meals, often from leftovers. She kept five children in good clothing every season. Her resourcefulness also applied to Halloween costumes. I cannot remember shopping for costumes, although plenty of my friends did. But I never felt deprived. For us, building your look out of almost nothing was half the fun! Scavenging through the house for raw materials was a happy ritual.
   One year’s costume stands out in history. I was attending a sixth grade Haloween party with classmates.  Mom conspired with me to exact something wonderful, exploring options like punk rocker (my fave for many confusing years), vampire (the traditional kind, because I hadn’t seen The Lost Boys yet, much less Twilight or anything from Anne Rice), and Carmen Miranda.  For that last option, Mom even let me stuff my dress with rolled up bobby socks, but we laughingly agreed Dad would object. My fake sock boobs were removed. 
   Anwyay, as great ideas often happen, we arrived at my eventual incarnation quite by accident. We were sifting through the accumulation of clothes pieces and possible accessories, piling onto my twelve year old self lots of crazy, unrelated things. I remember Mom joking that I looked like a hobo. Eureka. Her face lit up and she dug until she found a pan of brown eyeshadow.
   Mom smeared my face with the shimmery stuff so it looked like I had a five o’clock shadow. She slid a stocking cap over my blonde hair and added who knows how many more unmatched garments to my frame.  After some frenzied moments of adjusting and editing, she stood back and said, “What do you think?” 
   I was already happy from being the object of her undivided attention and bottomless creativity. So to see that I was also transformed into a completely unrecognizable hobo was bliss. Mom found a long stick from outside and tied to it a piece of cloth stuffed with something bulky, denoting the classic hobo carrying satchel.  Costume complete.
   The pleaseure of being so well costumed would have been enough, but later at the party, I heard people asking, “Have you seen Marie yet?  She’s not here!” They didn’t even recognize me, I was so hoboish. 
   Well done, Mom. And thank you for the creativity and memories. Happy Halloween!

All Day Tomatoes

   Tonight is pizza night at the farm. Homemade, handmade pizza, not $5 hot-n-ready. And today has been more moderately paced than every other day in recent weeks, so I indulged in some slow food luxuries while I could. First, I mixed up a couple of batches of pizza dough. Feeling the warm dough in my hands encouraged me to slow down even further. Then while the dough was resting and rising, I oven-roasted a pound and a half of grape tomatoes.
   The resulting yeasty, tangy-sweet, garlicky aromas wafting from the kitchen have pretty much intoxicated me. I am down for the count, good only for reading old books with yellowed, torn covers and having my toes nibbled by Pacino. As mentioned, it has been a while since the pace around here was so simple, so single-layered and calm. Today has been a much needed reprieve, and I am fortunate enough to have shared it with my ten-four-good-buddy M Half.
   You probably already know how to do this; it is neither rocket science nor Sudoku. But I snapped a couple of colorful before and after photos, so I want to share it with you guys.
Step One: Rinse your tomatoes and slice lengthwise. I used those small, sweet grape tomatoes today but have used lots of other varieties in the past. Feel free to improvise. Just slice, chop, or otherwise re-size ’em to suit your taste.
Step Two: Pour the raw tomatoes onto a baking sheet and add in some minced fresh garlic. I used my handy-dandy Pampered Chef garlic press for the first time today and L-I-K-E it. For this pound and a half of tomatoes I used about five cloves of garlic.
Step Three: Drizzle all of it with olive oil then sprinkle on some dried Italian herbs (fresh if you are awesome enough to have some) and sea salt.
Step Four: Place into a 200 degree oven for approximately the rest of the day. Specifically, a few hours. You will begin to smell the magic in your kitchen within five minutes. Your adjoining rooms will be perfumed in under half an hour. And by the time you can breathe in the tomato-garlic heaven from your front yard, it might be done.  
The tomatoes emerged from the oven three hours later, looking all shrivelly and exotic, 
promising us delicious toppings for our pizzas.

   That’s about it! A little tiny bit of knife-wielding, a slightly larger investment of time, and some appreciation for organic pleasures. That’s all you need. And if Oklahoma gets the rainy Saturday evening we’ve been promised, this might be a nice way to celebrate.  Enjoy!
xoxoxo

Five Senses Tour: Crafts on the Horizon

   At any given time I have three hundred and forty five thousand craft projects “in the works.”  The stages of completion range from “just saw this on Pinterest or in a boutique, must try asap” to “I just need to top stitch one more little piece, and it’ done!”  So it’s a little bit funny to be zeroing in on just five items on the crafty horizon.  Still, here they are.

   The general approach around here is to use fabrics and materials already on hand, that wonderful found stuff, recycling and re-purposing every single chance we get and resisting the urge to buy anything new except, perhaps, thread and finishing nails.

Item Number One:
distressed & stenciled piece of furniture

Pinned Image
Miss Mustard Seed does beautiful work!  This is hers, which I snagged off of Pinterest.
Item Number Two:
full bib apron with ruffles & pleats, made from vintage cotton sheeting
My version will be for sale when it’s done.
Unless I love it too much.
Which happens a lot.
Pinned Image
http://christytomlinson.typepad.com/christytomlinson/
Item Number Three:
wreath made from aged book pages
I’ll finish this one tonight while watching movies with Handsome.
Pinned Image
http://thriftydecorating-nikkiw.blogspot.com/2011/08/old-book-wreath.html
Item Number Four:
silly applique pillows using only scraps of course
Pinned Image
http://www.etsy.com/listing/80090478/owl-cushion-pillow-red-blue-green
Item Number Five:
scarf made from recycled tees
This one is intended for my sixteen year old daughter,
and I am using happy-memory shirts from her childhood.
Pinned Image
http://www.craftingagreenworld.com/
   So there we have it, five projects, each of which is underway and also has a recipient in mind.  Happy scavenging!

Truth Telling

   Not fortune telling, not spell-casting, not even name-it-and-claim-it spirituality, but truth telling.  We have a shortage of it.  From the everyday washing over of a minor indiscretion to the biggest lies, the most heinous deceptions, we try over and over again to trick each other into accepting what we hope will be a better reality, an easier or more advantageous way of seeing the world. 
   My almost grown children are hearing incredible, destructive lies that are temporarily isolating them from people who love them dearly.  And I have started a Truth Journal so that one day, when the time is right and I know no one will interfere, they can hear the truth about things and hopefully feel set free.  They both deserve that and so much more.
   What lies do you catch?  What lies do you tell?  What lies do you allow to slip past without making any effort to stop them?  I’m not suggesting that we spend our lives combating falsehood; we need to be good stewards of our time and energy and use wisdom to choose our battles.  But I wonder how different life would be if, starting immediately, we refuse to settle for untruths.
Pinned Image

I found this lovely print on Pinterest.
The original source appears to be 
   And I am really thinking of the important stuff here, the things that impact our hearts, although knowing for sure what truth lies behind certain advertising schemes or whether aspartame is R-E-A-L-L-Y that bad for me, yep, I’d like to know.
   Today I challenge you to join me in facing the worst lies in your life by standing on the knowledge that Truth can overcome them.  Love trumps, Love wins, and words matter.  Use them wisely and trust that even your thoughts can circle back to you.  So make them good and beautiful.  Make them truthful.
 xoxoxoxo