suziebeezieland

colossians 1:15-19

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 
For by him all things were created, 
in heaven and on earth,
visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—
all things were created through him and for him. 
And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 
And he is the head of the body, the church.
He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead,
that in everything he might be preeminent. 
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 
and through him to reconcile to himself all things,
whether on earth or in heaven, 
making peace by the blood of his cross.

isaiah 53:5

But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.

the front door

Today when I was walking to my house from the car, I realized that I wasn't just looking at a door and a wreath and a welcome sign.

I was looking at a cross and a crown and the Gospel, right there in front of me.

It was pretty cool. :)

Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God, the Just, is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me. 

family camp

I wasn't able to go to my church's family camp this year because I was really sick that weekend, and I was so sad, but then today I was so happy to see this video of it. :)

My sister and brother-in-law graciously took Claire up with their family when I couldn't go, and she had a wonderful time.

I love my church family. My heart just swells up happily watching this. :)

where's hannah?

eggy-bunny easter decoration

Cost Plus World Market has the cutest scherenschnitte-ish Easter gift bags right now. I bought two and cut away the bag, then glued magnets on the back so they would stick to the metal blackboards.

The tulipy white borders are "Dutch Garland" vinyl decals from Shanna Murray. The garland is always there, but I rotate what I stick in the middle. :)

p.s. I am going to paint the living room and dining room when we get back from spring break. After all these years, I'm finally ready to get rid of the yellow and try something else for a change. I am currently fascinated with blue-gray and blue-green colors, so I will throw some swatches up soon and we can see what's what. It will still be light and bright, but more subdued. Maybe I'll even just do a shade of white. I'm not sure why I suddenly got sick of the yellow after 17 years. Maybe I'm just getting old. :)

bob + suzanne + claire's big adventures in dublin

Does a fellow good a bit of a holiday.
I feel a ton better since I landed again in dear dirty Dublin ...
(James Joyce, The Dubliners) 

How did I neglect to post any photos from our two days in Dublin last August? I do not know. But today is the day. :)

We stayed at The Aberdeen Lodge, and definitely recommend it. It's in a quiet, residential suburb, and a quick and easy commute into town. It's family run, and they're very lovely and personal there ... they give you a cup of tea and a newspaper when you arrive, and sit down and have a chat with you. (You can read the Trip Advisor reviews here, if you want.)

This was my favorite thing about our very short time in Ireland ... everyone was very relational.

I think it must get a bit breezy for Miss Molly Malone on Grafton Street sometimes. 

Here's Trinity College in the  photos below. You can walk around a bit yourself, but make sure to take the official tour so that you can see the Book of Kells and, most impressively, the Library, the interior of which completely knocked my socks off. 

(As part of the general celebration of St Patrick’s Day at Trinity College, Dublin, they've announced that the Book of Kells in its entirety is now viewable for free in the Library’s new Digital Collections online repository. And! They have a Book of Kells iPad app. No kidding.) 

We always like whatever the local version of hop-on, hop-off buses are when we visit new cities. They tend to give you a great overview of the main points of interest, and you can hop off whenever something looks interesting, and jump back on when another bus comes by. Sometimes they have live guides, but more often you get a recording, available in many different languages. They tend to be relatively cheap, too.

Bono and The Edge own The Clarence Hotel, below. :) They bought it in 1992, found some more Irish investors, and restored it to its former glory. 

We highly recommend An Evening of Food, Folklore, and Fairies at Dublin's oldest pub, The Brazen Head. We all loved it.

If you want to shop a bit and have a way to pop out of Dublin and get to Avoca Handweaver (there's a store, cafe, and mill tour) in Wicklow, you can spend a pleasant couple of hours there browsing, having lunch, and walking in the gardens. This is where Claire met her Irish penpal Jessica. :)

And now we have an abrupt segue back to Dublin.

We recommend lunch at The Winding Stair. Make reservations, because it's small and popular. Then you can pop into the bookstore, which is connected.

Ooh! And finally, here is our last recommendation in Dublin. You've got to go to the dinner show at The Merry Ploughboy. It is fantastic. 

They have a handy shuttle service that picks you up, takes you to the show, and then takes you back to your hotel when it's over. They're very obliging.

Bob: Mind if I sit up front?
Merry Ploughboy Shuttle Driver: Course not. You can drive if ya want. 

:)

nutrisystem

I've been doing Nutrisystem for a couple weeks now, and it works! I am losing weight.

Here is the scientific explanation for how it works:

The food is disgusting, so you don't want to eat very much of it,
so you lose weight.

Nutrisystem knows this, and includes the following, helpful exhortation in each packet:

spring green

Spring has sprung!
The grass is riz!
I wonder where
The birdies is?

Here are some cute green things I have noticed lately. :)

Hudson Valley Seed Library: Art Packs

Cost Plus World Market: Mini bundtform pans and cupcake liners

Dash + Albert: Birmingham Green Woven Cotton Rug

Present + Correct: School Satchel

Cath Kidston: Cross Body Bag + Mini Dot Small Zip Bag

Hudson Paint: Bakery Green Chalkboard Paint

Fishs Eddy: Demitasse in Chartreuse

 

Ross Labs: Ceramic Salt + Pepper Cellars

Janet Hill Studio: Camping Under the Stars

claire's first horse riding lesson

One of Bob's clients (who has become a family friend) owns an equestrian center in Ventura County, and she very kindly paid one of her trainers to give Claire a riding lesson for her birthday. 

We weren't wanting to make an investment in riding gear for the initial lesson, so our friend also borrowed riding pants for Claire (you can see from the pics they were too small for our tall 10-year-old, but they're stretchy and did the trick) and a helmet. Claire already owned the t-shirt. :)

We spent a very nice afternoon out at the center last Saturday, and horse-crazy Claire is now more (rather than less) horse crazy. :) 

I rode when I was Claire's age, and I was so impressed with her lesson. Her trainer was so thorough. He taught her how to approach a horse (not timidly), how to walk around a horse (the instinct is to give the hindquarters a wide berth as you walk around behind a horse, but you need to keep your hand on his rump and stay in close so that if he does kick, it has no power), how to groom a horse, how to pick hooves, put on the bedding and saddle ... Claire was in heaven.

By the end of the lesson, he even had her trying to post to a trot. It was fantastic.

Bob and I are investigating riding lessons closer to home (there is much to consider), and Claire is holding her breath. :)

(I'm sorry for the poor-quality phone pics. I got there, turned on my good camera, and realized I'd left the battery plugged in and charging at home. I almost cried, I was so disappointed, but then I thought, don't be a baby.)

kitchen

My kitchen has changed quite a bit (cosmetically) this past year. 

I think it started early last year, when I realized that the kitchen island I was using as a buffet in the dining room actually worked really well as a kitchen island. :)

Bob and Claire bought me the stool for Christmas. It has been great, because Claire perches there and does her homework or talks to me while I make dinner. The cat likes to sit on the stool, too, when she wants to tell me that it is time to feed her.

Last week, we bought Claire a couple bigger bookcases for her bedroom. She had outgrown her little kid bookcase, which was also my bookcase when I was little. I didn't want to put it out in the garage, so I stuck it in the kitchen, replacing the wire rack I had in here previously. (The wire rack went into the garage for storage out there.)

I am so happy with it!

About eighteen months ago, I was looking at Lissa's neat Keep It Simple, Keep It Fresh blog, and fell in love with the storage shelves she has in her dining room. I immediately grabbed her idea to keep pantry items in these Weck canning jars (I found mine at Crate and Barrel ... they are cheap), and label them with clear (instead of white) labels. For me, this wouldn't be practical for things I get into every day, because the clips are fiddly to take on and off, but it has worked out great for my baking items. And I think they're pretty. :)

I've also been able to tuck the trashcan in next to the washer and dryer, which has been nice.

Another opportunity for more RED! :)

Do you see those paint chips above the washer? The kitchen is due for a paint job, because it hasn't had one in almost ten years. I've chosen the green on the far left, which is lighter and a wee bit yellow-er (less gray) than it is now.

We also got a new dishwasher, because the one that came with the house finally died a month ago. I know the fashion now is to get stainless appliances, but I actually prefer white appliances. So as the old stainless/black appliances conk out, we're replacing them with white ones. I guess this is backwards from the trend, but who cares, right? :) 

I think those are all the bigger changes. Everything else is me just moving stuff around occasionally, because I'm fidgety.

It is a blessing to have a kitchen that I enjoy working in. We sure gravitate toward this room ... maybe because that's where the food is. :) 

ten

Claire is ten today! 

• She loves her fourth grade teacher, Miss Free, who is also her auntie (my sister's husband's aunt).
• She is learning to play the cello.
• She is in advanced math (Bob's genes). 
• She misses her Grandpa B., Bob's father, who passed away two weeks ago. She dearly loves her Grandma B. (Bob's mom) and her Grandma and Grandpa B. (my parents) and is so blessed to live pretty close to all of them.
• She is recently into watching old reruns of The Andy Griffith Show and I Love Lucy.
• She wears a retainer to spread her palette, and will be getting braces in a bit.
• She takes good care of her guinea pig (Guinea Weasley) and her fish (Zip and Maggie).
• She really wants to take horseback-riding lessons, and begs us for another dog or a baby sister.
• She is alternately introspective, extroverted, goofy, blunt, giggly, shy, intense, emotional, thoughtful, determined, and FUN.
• She is growing in her love of God and is working hard at making wise choices every day.
• She loves her cousins, her school friends, her church friends, and her pen pals.
• She never forgets a name.
• She is warm-hearted, affectionate, and very relational.
• She is full of wonder and excitement and a million IDEAS.
• She is sweet, sweet, sweet.

And I can't believe she's ten!

guinea weasley

I cannot for the life of me remember if I have ever introduced you to Claire's guinea pig, Guinea Weasley. Claire got Guinea last August, and she is now an integral and quite beloved part of our family.

Guinea sounds the very loud Pig Alarm every morning and every evening when she is hungry. It sounds like this: Weeee weeeee weeee! You really can't miss it. She eats timothy hay, guinea pig food, and orange slices. Did you know guinea pigs need Vitamin C added to their diet or else they get scurvy? Yep. It's true. They are like humans in their inability to synthesize Vitamin C.

I didn't know a guinea pig was the same thing as a cavy until last summer.

I recognize the seeming caprice in welcoming this rodent into our home not long before we forced another one to leave. (Permanently.) (Snap.)

That's uneven hospitality, but you know how it goes: Guinea Weasley, yes! Scabbers, no!

Survival of the cutest.

new sheets

I am always surprised at how happy new sheets make me. The sheets from spring 2009 only lasted about 18 months before they had to be replaced, but the 2011 sheets that went on the long, long journey are still going strong. And Bob's Star Wars sheets will probably last forever, because I don't put them on that often ... mostly his birthday and Father's Day. :)

I got these new sheets on sale at West Elm, because I wanted a second, non-gallactic-battle option. They are so sweet. They have a white background, with little navy and light-blue flowers sprinkled all over them. It's a cotton that feels good, too. However, the quality of the sewing on them is not great ... it is completely wonky in a few places, and the hems are thin ... so they may be short-lived, like the Sheets from Spring 2009. We'll see. You get what you pay for. But I'm very happy with them right now. Love of pretty floweredy cotton sheets on sale beats out the need for sheets to last forever.

I like seeing all these patterns jumbled up together when I'm making the bed. :)

There are the remnants of muddy dog paw prints on our headboard that happened when Violet chased a fly in the front door and straight onto our bed and up the wall. It was hilarious but I was mad, all at the same time. That happens so much with kids and pets. But love of living things always beats out love of stuff, thank goodness. :) I need to rent a Rug Doctor with the upholstery attachment to get it all out, and I still haven't done that. Gross. Sorry, dear readers.

I got Bob this print from Ideal Bookshelf for our anniversary in December, right before Christmas. My local framers messed up the matting (it's supposed to be the same thickness all the way around -- they're usually quite good, but a temporary holiday employee was helping me and their computer software was new and she was struggling with what I wanted, bless her heart, and I was in a hurry because I had to pick up Claire from school and I should have double-checked that she understood ... it was doomed to fail, really ... I blame myself) but I didn't notice until I got home, and then Bob was so happy about it that I decided to be okay with it. Love of people being happy on their anniversary beats out love of perfectly matted artwork.

In fact, he is so happy about it that I think it makes up for the lack of constant Star Wars sheets. :)

bob + suzanne + claire's big adventures in paris, part 4

I know it's ridiculous for me to still be posting photos from our vacation last summer. But here are the last bunch of photos and the end of that vacation. :)

On August 12, I didn't feel too hot when I woke up, so Bob and Claire went to see Versailles, and I stayed in the hotel and slept for several hours. (I had seen Versailles as a teenager and decided to not be sad about missing it. It probably hasn't changed much, I remember thinking.)

When I woke up, I felt better, so I went for a walk. I decided to head over to Rue Cler, the famous market street.

In general, I do not have a good sense of direction, so I hold the map in the direction I'm walking, and keep turning it so that it always faces wherever I'm going. "North" means nothing to me. The top of the map is "ahead".

But! There are so many landmarks in Paris, and there is the river, and the city is so tidy and organized in general that I seem to always do well there, in that I don't get as lost as I could be if I were a whole lot lost-er. I always do much better on foot than in a car, anyway. So I just started walking toward where I thought Rue Cler was, and sure enough, there it was. It was a good feeling.

The French expression for window-shopping is "to lick the windows." I licked some windows as I walked ... especially the windows in front of this sofa and this outfit. :)

When I got to Rue Cler, I remembered that the market is (mostly) closed on Sundays and Mondays. But that's okay. It was a nice walk, and it was still fun to see the street.

I guess I should remind you that I had to throw my old broken camera lens away back in Dublin, so all these Paris photos are just with my cell phone. Alas.

At the end of Rue Cler, I decided to take the Métro over to the Carousel du Louvre, which is the lovely shopping area underneath the Louvre. I wanted to get a few little souvenirs to take home the next day. (Fragonard was my favorite shop there. It smells so good and everything is packaged in such a pretty way.) I looked around for awhile (and licked some more windows) and then grabbed some lunch before I headed back to the hotel.

I decided to hit the Musée Rodin on the way back to our hotel. 

I got to the museum just in time, I guess, because when I came out, a big tour bus had just spewed out a big group of people and they queued up down the street to get in.

I guess I shouldn't say "spewed," as if I myself were not also a tourist. But I wasn't a big group of tourists. I was a lone tourist, roaming the streets.

Our hotel was just a wee bit down from the Musée Rodin, on the same street. I got back in time to greet Bob and Claire, who gave a report of their time at Versailles. (They enjoyed it but it was extremely crowded.)

We went for a nice walk at dusk and ate some dinner, then watched the Olympic closing ceremonies on t.v. in French and tried to figure out what was going on. :)

The next day, August 13, we headed up to Montmartre, to see Sacré-Cœur and the view from the hill.

We had lunch at a creperie (you have to eat crepes if you are in Montmartre), then took the funicular up the hill.

Montmartre is a crowded gaggle of tourists (first I said "spewed" and now I said "gaggle" ... I appear to have a strong and hypocritical animosity toward tourists) but is still delightful. 

Something I found out on this trip that I somehow never knew before is that Sacré-Cœur was just finished in 1914.

Bob and Claire were ready to settle down at La Maison Rose for a cup of coffee and hot chocolate, but I wanted to see Le Musée de Montmartre and its lovely grounds, so I ran off and did that for about 45 minutes and then joined them back at the cafe. I felt glad Claire wasn't interested, because the bit of the museum about the Moulin Rouge had some pretty wild video accompanying it. Whoo!

The museum is housed in 12/14, rue Cortot. Number 12 is the oldest house in Montmartre. Fourteen great artists lived there during the height of Bohemian Montmartre.

It reminded me of Madeline's house even though it was not covered in vines. :)

See Au Lapin Agile down there? It is a cabaret where struggling artists and writers (including Picasso, Modigliani, Apollinaire, and Utrillo) used to hang out. Picasso made it famous with his painting "At the Lapin Agile."

After I finished enjoying the museum, I joined Claire and Bob at the cafe for a coffee.

Bob looks pretty tired in this photo. He needs to order an espresso. :)

We were all pooped! It was a wonderful summer, but it was time go home. We flew back to Los Angeles the next day, sad to leave but full of that particular brand of contented excitement that can only come from knowing you're about to sleep in your own bed and see your own people. :)

a little survey

I don't have as much time to spend on suziebeezieland as I used to, but I am still interested in knowing what you would like to see more of here. How might I better meet your blog-reading needs? :)

I am also always interested in knowing who is here. Thank you for your faithful readership after all these years, and please know how much I appreciate your comments and other feedback. I know I am kind of erratic about replying to comments, but I read them all and think about them all, and I do not take your kindness or interest for granted. :)

happy birthday, pa + mary!

from left to right, seated: Ma, Pa, and Mary
from left to right, standing: Carrie, Laura, and Grace 

This just in from the Facebook page for The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House in the Prairie:

Happy birthday Pa and Mary! On this day in 1836, Charles Ingalls was born in Cuba, New York, and then in 1865, his first daughter, Mary Amelia Ingalls, was born in Pepin, Wisconsin.

Thank you, Jennifer K., for sharing this! :)

yosemite

We just got back from a little getaway up to Yosemite. 

It is so beautiful there, and it was snowing this morning when we woke up! 

It's always hard to believe that Yosemite is only about 4.5 hours north of L.A. ... it seems like these two places should be on different planets.

some cute calendars

I have purchased my regular Erin Condren Jumbo Calendar for the year (I love and rely on it year after year), but here are some more cute calendars I found online.

(I usually pin one or two letterpress calendars up around the house as art, although I don't think I ever look at them to see the date!)

Wonderbound Press: 2013 Letterpress and Woodcut Farmstead & Friends Paper Doll Calendar

 

ShopKatherineWatson: 2013 Letterpress Calendar

 

Brown Parcel Press: 2013 Letterpress Farm Calendar

 

Golden Rectangle Press: 2013 Vintage Letterpress Wall Calendar

(I love this one except I wish that "yesterday is history" phrase weren't on the top of it.)

 

Liberty of London: Liberty 2013 Calendar

(I really just like the pages with the floral prints!)

 

The House That Lars Built: Language of Flowers 2013 Giclee Print Wall Calendar

 

Rifle Paper Company: 2013 Garden Calendar

Rifle Paper Company: 2013 Antoinette Calendar Print

 

Flakes Paperie: 2013 Screenprinted Wall Calendar

Snow and Graham: 2013 Wall Calendar

(I don't know ... January and July are pretty boring in this calendar, and that is sixty-plus days of looking at a boring calendar page. And October kind of scares me, because the middle of the sunflower looks like that crazy spirograph pattern people see when they're hypnotized in cartoons. But I really like the other months.)

years and stones

So much of any year is flammable,
lists of vegetables, partial poems. 
Orange swirling flame of days, 
so little is a stone.
(from a poem called Burning the Old Year by Naomi Shihab Nye)

For who is God, but the Lord?
And who is a rock, except our God?
(from a poem called Psalm 18 by David)