Link Loves

Unknown

Some spring outfit inspiration.

Something to do...with your extra concrete mix(?)...

Something to dress up your tech.

Someone to follow on instagram.

Someone to follow on Pinterest for inspiration.

Something to get stuck in your head.

Someone who can write.

Someone to follow if you have a sweet tooth.

Pinterest Inspiration // 9

1. we the people 2. Unknown 3. ZARA 4. Weekday Carnival 5. Unknown 6. Fossil 7. Rag And Bone

1. I really love this. I wish I would have done something like this while I was still bleaching my hair...
2. I've been really into illustrations of pineapples lately, I have no idea why, I just think that it can look so modern and no matter how distorted you draw it, you still know it's a pineapple.
3. I have been eyeing-up this jacket from ZARA for a while now. I always think that you have to have a certain style to pull off a black leather jacket -- which I do not have! This jacket is different though, it's slightly more feminine and definitely more wearable with my wardrobe.
4. This free calendar download is just perfect. I love it's simplicity, and I am definitely going to print it out for my room.
5. After I wrote, "if you're bolder than the darkness", I found this pin and felt like this fit in with part of what I was trying to saying. 
6. I buy cheap watches from the drugstore, at least every six months when the batteries finally die or something goes glitchy. I never found it worth it to buy an "expensive" watch but after my last one died and I was out a watch for a week -- feeling quite lost I must say -- I took a look at some of what Fossil had to offer. Let me just say women's watches can be the most ugly, decked out, bedazzled, mess of metal and diamontes, I literally scrolled through over 80% of their watches with a disgusted look on my face. This watch caught my eye because of the simplicity (sensing a theme here?) of the face, metal, strap and everything! It looks really chic, would go with just about everything and has a good sized watch face. Win!
7. Now I have been looking for a black felt hat, that wasn't so huge and floppy and conspicuous as what everything seems to be that I find, for just about a year now I'm sure! This hat would be perfect if it wasn't sold out and a ridiculous price anyway -- I'm so cheap lol. So alas the search continues.

Just Peachy

 It's beginning to look a lot like spring, with flowers coming home every week -- the perks of knowing the florist at our local greenhouse I guess ;)

This is the first Saturday morning that I am feeling genuinely refreshed! Such a relief from being literally a walking zombie in the mornings. I was sick last week which sucked. The week before I went to a work thing in the city and had to get up at 7, let alone having a horrible sleep in the hotel beds -- as you do. 

It's beginning to look like spring outside as well. The sun has been warm enough to start melting the piles of snow that have buried us all winter long. Our creek broke on the first day of spring too which was kind of fitting! Usually we are mocking the "first day of spring" because it's always cold and snowing.

It's actually kind of cold right now but it has been above zero for the last week or more -- that darn wind!

The last couple of weeks I have been really thinking about my future and what I want to do and ultimately what is holding me back. And I'm excited and scared about what all of it means, and I am so grateful for this year that has given me a chance to pause and transition into the person that I need to make that first leap.

And I was reading last nite Ephesians 3:14-21, but specifically I read verse 16 over and over, "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen [me] with power through his Spirit in [my] inner being..." and I do. I pray that I may be strengthened to face whatever is ahead, for whatever is my future, for whatever I dream.

It goes on to say in verse 20 and 21, "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."

He is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine...

Everything that I dream for my life is too small for what he has planned for it, because I cannot even imagine what he has planned. When we think big -- he thinks even BIGGER.

And I pray that he may strengthen me to be able to live all of it out -- and I am so excited!

And I am so scared.

if you're bolder than the darkness

I think the scariest part is not even the idea of leaving. 


I think the scariest part is that nothing will ever be the same...again.


It's that when I come back it will be different. Not because things have changed overly much. I live in a town that has housed the same type of people for decades. It's not going to change just because I've left.


No, it's because I will have changed. 


The things that once upon a time was my normal, will be somehow alien. 


It will be a place of haunted memories. Good memories, but haunting just the same.


Its that I will long for the things to be as they were before but know in my heart that it never will be. That I'll know in my heart that I've changed too much for it to ever be the same, regardless. 


And I think that is the scariest part. 


It's that when I leave, this will never be my room again. This will never be a home that housed six of us. This will never be the place that I come to, after a long day, and lay my head. This will never be mine, 


because it slipped out of my fingers as I walked away to chase my dreams.


It will always be a home, but never our home. It will always be ours, but not ours to keep. It will always be there, but no longer a sanctuary. 


And I think that is the scariest part. 


It's that when we are all gone we will never be able to recreate what was. We will never be able to live as we did before. 


Time and experience will have made us different, able to long and appreciate the times we had, but never the same. 


It will be out of our reach. 


It will be too late to turn back.


And I think that is the scariest part.

The Terrible Two's

This is the second anniversary of my blog, I wrote my very first post on this very same day in 2012.

In someways it feels like I have been blogging for at least 4 yrs and in others it feels like I just started. I remember mulling over having my blog, what I would name it, what content would be on it, how it would look like etc. months before I actually had the courage to ask if I could make one.

It seems so silly now, I was somehow afraid to ask for this little space on the internet, despite the fact that my mom had had a blog for a couple years before this. When I finally did, we took care to make this as permanent a space as we could. Having my URL be my first and middle name respectively took into account that I may not have the name "BLUSH by a Lady" forever -- it left room to grow and change. Also not including my last name might have been wishful thinking, that I might continue this until I am married or simply that I may ever get married! 

I know I had a list of words that I liked the sound of and reflected my personality at that time, including, Peony, Blush, Petal and by a Lady. The first three I just thought of and the fourth I came across as I was flipping through the pages of Pride and Prejudice -- as you do -- and kind-of rediscovered the fact that she wrote under the pseudonym, By a Lady. It struck a cord with me and I decided to pair Blush with the sort-of-subtitle by a Lady added to it. 

This space has given me a place to somehow share and put into words what I am feeling, doing or making. It's definitely given me a chance to exercise my writing "muscles" and keep me on-top-of-my-game so to speak. 

It's also given me a chance to explore new avenues that I might never have picked up, like photography or videography. 

I've discovered so many amazing writers and fashionistas and DIYers through my journey on this blog. I started out by bookmarking perhaps five or so blogs, including people webs, and Anne Catherine Frey, to following dozens of bloggers that inspire me creatively as well as in life. 

I know I will forever hold a debt to this place that I call my own, it's helped my grow into the person that I am today and given me a chance to express myself because I never was good at expressing myself verbally. 

On another note, I made shortbread the other day. I love shortbread. It is the perfect cookie, both subtly sweet and buttery, melting-in-your-mouth delicious. Sometimes you just get a craving for the simplicity of a good English Shortbread and a cup of tea. The cookie cutter used to make these diamond shaped lovelies was my great-grandma's on my mother's side -- Nanny. 

I used the recipe found in my Butter recipe book given to me by my Auntie Amy. It really is the cutest little book and the most fairytale-esque story of the beginnings of a very humble and homemade independent bakery in Vancouver. 

***

I hope that this next year for my blog I will reach new heights in my writing, I will grow and it will grow with me, and I will stay true to myself and perhaps most of all that it won't be quite so terrible ;) Here's to another year!

Happy 2nd Birthday BLUSH by a Lady! xoxo

A photo an hour...

9:00 a.m. Breakfast. Tea and rusks.



10:00 a.m. Writing.



11:00 a.m. French Bread.



12:00 p.m. Getting ready for the rest of the day.



1:00 p.m. Lunch. Homemade corn chowder.



2:00 p.m. Waiting...




3:00p.m. Christies Greenhouse with my mom while she made some more bouquets. 



4:00 p.m. Coming home to this!



5:00 p.m. Attempting a cleanout...


6:00 p.m. Supper...with tea of course.



9:00 p.m. Sherlock Holmes.



10:30 p.m. Bedtime. Wake-up, 5:00 a.m. for the gold medal game!

Winter is lingering...

I was having a rough day today. Stressing. Worrying. A headache coupled with work on a good day is not desirable. 

I wanted to write a blog post and decided, as we crossed the creek up into our yard, that I would snap a couple of pictures of the sunset once it lowered a bit. 

Also to show all you people in the south that it is still very much mid-winter here. 

Minus thirty-five degrees yesterday morning. 

Buried under two feet of snow.

***

These two get quite hyper when you go outside and of course they proceeded to wrestle just out of shot of this first picture. I got them to settle down eventually and took some really good portraits of the two of them together. 

They are the best of friends. Adopted mother. Adopted son. 

Ezra was probably around 4 or 5 when we got Seth and he was definitely too young to be away from his mother because he cried and cried. It was heartbreaking. 

Ezra was a little wary of this little whiny fur ball that had arrived unexpectedly, they adopted each other quite quickly however. Seth took comfort in her at night, and because we had gotten him in the winter, they both slept in our little duplex for those first couple of months. 

They have become inseparable and are a little lost when the other is not around.