"I do not know how anyone can live 

without some small place of enchantment to turn to."

Tuesday greetings! I hope you're enjoying the summer and getting out there every chance you get. The days are flying by - it's hard to believe we are halfway through July already. I thought I'd start off today with a peep in my garden...

This is a small corner of my front bed - I don't have a lot of flowers up front,

preferring instead the low-maintenance of cedar, flowering bushes and grasses.

Beauty is everywhere...

Sometimes you just need to get low and look up...

A week for the pinks :)

Some flowers are just coming into bloom...

While others have already gone to seed...

This is the lane directly behind my home,

there is a field to the right and a highway beyond that.

When you're back here, you could almost swear you're in the country.

Now that it's summer, these are the shoes I quite often wear when going for a walk. I took this pic when we were driving to Winnipeg a few weeks ago. At the time I was reflecting on how much my decision last summer to stop wearing high-heels has changed my life. I am a new woman!

Yikes - does the 'D' stand for Dumb... lol!

This was a huge decision for me (I repeat, huge) and I owe it all to a pair of skinny jeans I'd purchased and then of course needed the proper shoes to wear with. Up to that point I wore only high heels: adamantly and exclusively! I would have worn them to exercise in, if at all possible... Anyways, the instant I slipped my tender tootsies into the above soft-as-butter ballerina flats, something magical happened and the evil spell I'd been under since I was sixteen was broken - it was my own personal Cinderella moment! A few weeks later I bought black leather riding boots and I've never looked back. I can now walk, talk, shop, and chew gum all at the same time: pain and blister free lol! As well, I'm way more relaxed - why I'm practically laid-back at times ;) Additionally, according to a very interesting article I read on Sunday, I'm also doing my bones a huge favor. Here's the link - every woman should read this.

Another healthy choice I've been making lately, is to incorporate more meat-less meals into our diet. (Good for us and the planet.) Here's a light, very healthy meal we had on Saturday night. Homemade hummus and butternut squash soup - two of my favorites and relatively quick to make. 

Butternut squash soup

1 lb. butternut squash, peeled and diced into 1-inch cubes

2 medium onions, chopped

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil 

1 tsp coriander

1 tsp cumin

1 tbsp fresh ginger very finely chopped 

1.2 liters vegetable stock

salt and pepper to taste

coconut milk

nutmeg

Slowly saute your onion in olive oil on low-medium heat, stirring occasionally until it is softened. Add butternut chunks and continue to cook until they also soften and just begin to lightly brown (watch your heat). Add your spices and continue to cook, stirring throughout, for another 2 minutes. Add in vegetable stock, bring to the boil, turn down and simmer covered for 1/2 hour. Mash and then blend smooth with a hand blender. Salt and pepper to taste. I add a big dollop of coconut milk and a sprinkle of nutmeg to each bowl, which tastes great and looks lovely when serving :) 

Hummus

I originally found this recipe in "The Mediterranean Diet" book, but have changed it up quite a bit over the years. Hummus is so easy to make yourself, I don't know why people buy it.

1 14 oz can chickpeas, drained and rinsed well 

1/2 cup tahini (sesame paste)

2 cloves fresh garlic

Juice from 1.5 lemons (the other half I use later)

1/4 cup milk (I've used cow, soy, unsweetened almond)

4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

1 tablespoon fresh parsley

In blender add the following: sesame paste, garlic, lemon juice, milk, olive oil and 1/2 of the chick peas. I use the chop feature here at first, then blend, add rest of chick peas and chop and blend until you get the consistency you like. 

Ladle into your serving bowl - at this point you can either heat the hummus slightly in the microwave (be careful, it heats up very quickly) which really brings out the flavor, or enjoy at room temperature. Drizzle additional olive oil and reserved lemon juice on top to your liking and garnish with parsley. Enjoy!

I finally got around to another chapter in The Sound of Paper. You may recall I profiled the first chapter and accompanying exercise a few weeks ago (link) This book has turned out to be one of my great 'finds' - it contains practical methods and musings designed to help discover and boost your creativity.

Try this: Set aside one hour's writing time. You may wish to take yourself to neutral territory, a cafe or coffee shop. Once there, settle in to write and to describe yourself as you would a literary character, in the third person. Describe your looks, your attitudes, your perceptions. Try to draw a clear portrait of yourself, filled with telling details. In other words, pay attention to how you are and how you are doing. 

Personally, I would find a coffee shop very distracting - I am too much of a people-watcher to concentrate in such a public arena, so I holed up in my office on Saturday and worked on this. I found it quite challenging to look at myself objectively: Who am I? Perhaps describing oneself as the person they see themselves becoming could be another way of approaching this exercise. 

I love visiting new blogs and stumbled across a very interesting one this week. In one post, Sherrie of Little Home in the Country, discussed the practicality and joys of repurposing items. I was reminded of something I'd repurposed a few weeks ago and have been meaning to show you. This concrete fountain had been languishing in my garden shed for the past five years. A few times I almost got rid of it when we were doing our annual spring clean-up, but now I'm glad I didn't. Turns out it's perfect as a planter. A few vines, some amethyst and tada! Not sure if you are aware of this, but amethyst is Ontario's official gemstone. We used to live in Thunder Bay just prior to moving out west and a 'dig-your-own' amethyst mine is located right outside the city.

That's all for now, thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a great week :)

I leave you with a very odd work of art.

If you are a Pastafarian, you are likely still celebrating this week's victory!

What's a Pastafarian you may ask?

Follow this link and find out...

Cheers!

Monday greetings! I trust your weekend was a good one. It was a soaker here, and at some points it poured for hours on end. Heavenly :) I've mentioned numerous times on this blog how much I love the rain. In fact, I distinctly remember as a child feeling quite dejected when the clouds eventually moved on and the sun reappeared. I obviously had issues, lol.

I am most contented when it gets right down to it and pours; a little thunder (I can do without the lightening) thrown in just sweetens the deal... and when it rains, I often play Neil Young Unplugged. Don't ask me why, it started when I lived on an acreage on Peace River and it had been raining for a week straight. Somehow this album's melancholy seemed the perfect accompaniment; fifteen years later and Neil is still the cherry on top of my rainy day.

To amuse myself Saturday afternoon (with Neil as my muse), I pulled out my new book The Sound of Paper, which I profiled last Monday (here) and completed the 'task' after the first chapter entitled Setting Off. Following the author's instructions, I gathered seven magazines (these were all freebies I've picked up here and there in my travels) and went through them pulling the images which "spoke to me". I was not to concern myself with why they connected. The second half of the assignment, I trimmed and arranged the images into a pleasing vignette. The author states that "the resulting picture it is a portrait of your consciousness at this point in time. What you see in your collage may surprise, delight, or even alarm you. Seeing is believing, and one picture is worth a thousand words." I was then to take to the page and describe my personal discoveries. (This is actually an exercise I used to do on my own in my late teens/early twenties. I had filled numerous journals, which I foolishly threw away years ago.)

While sparing you the details of my resulting epiphany lol, (I am not a psychologist, but I play one at home... just ask my family) I don't think it's too much of a stretch to guess at the issues I am grappling with. Aging, reaching my full potential (before it's too late... haha), possibly heading back to school and procrastination, to name a few.

A side note: the two men above are one and the same; (obviously many years apart) Michael Snow, one of Canada's most renowned artists. Michael now 81, is still going strong, creating art in just about every medium you can shake a stick at. I read an article profiling his life many months ago with great interest and was struck at the time by these two photographs.

In the end, I am quite intrigued by just how congruent the above images are. My subconscious is speaking - am I ready to listen? I challenge you to do this exercise for yourself and share the results - I'd love to see them :) If you send me a pic of your creation, I will post them next week - either anonymously if you are shy, or credited to you, if you'd like.

So there you have it folks, it's not all kittens and rainbows here at Jane's Jewels! I leave you with a track from Neil's Unplugged album and hope you have a great day :)

Stuff, stuff!
Glorious, wondrous stuff :) 

You know you need it!

Happy Monday! I trust you had a good weekend. I played hooky from blogging and I think I will continue this practice throughout the summer months. It gives one time to ruminate and I feel my creativity surged as a result. We had lovely weather - a huge storm which came on so suddenly late Friday night, shocking actually, but by Saturday morning we were once again looking at a beautiful day. Saturday afternoon I went to a community yard sale. I can scarcely begin to describe the sheer pleasure I get from snooping through other people's castoffs... it's a sickness haha!

I already own another of Julia's books The Artist's Way. The Sound of Paper is pretty much in the same vein: practical methods and musings to help discover and boost your creativity. These books are for anyone: writers, musicians, artists alike.  Throughout the winter months I was following one part of her program (outlined in both books) whereby you write three pages of whatever - essentially stream of consciousness - first thing in the morning before you read, listen to the radio or watch tv. You are free to be creative or complain bitterly - anything goes. She calls them The Morning Pages, and they are a way of tapping into your creativity and silencing The Censor - our inner critic who seeks to shut us down. I fell off the wagon this spring, but am happy to say I got back on yesterday morning. (We'll see how long I last this time...) This is only one part of her course. If interested, you'll easily find copies of her books in Value Village or Goodwill - just check back once in a while - I see them quite often.

Aren't these lovely?

I couldn't believe someone was selling them - practically giving them away.

I hung them on my fence, tucked in amongst the trees.

This trench is actually more green than grey, the material and condition are superb.
I love the lining and the gathers at shoulders, cuffs and belt :)

This vendor was Bethany, one of my daughter's friends.
Her handmade price tags are adorable.

This was also Bethany's - I love owls.

Almost forgot this jug - I'd already found a home for it!
I seem to collect odds and ends of pottery everywhere I go.

My last two treasures are the tin bird pill box (25 cents!) and the frog/mushroom glasses - which were actually my daughter's glasses she'd purchased from Ikea a few years ago. I was always sorry I hadn't purchased some for myself and now they are discontinued. Anyways, these are the only two left from her original set and she finally gave them to me (I've been dropping numerous not-too-subtle hints for quite some time now :)

Well, that was the highlight of my weekend - as they say they, one man's junk...