Cheese & Grace

Right now, one of the most spiritual things happening in my life is shredded cheese. Specifically shredded cheddar and mozzarella. Cheese is teaching me about parenting, God, and life.
The first lesson I am learning from cheese is how much, as a parent, I am willing to do to make my child happy, even if its at my own expense. This I realize will be nowhere near the Top 50 parenting sacrifices I will make over the next decades, however this is where it starts. With cheese. Noah loves shredded cheese, I hate it. But cheese is good for him and cheese makes him happy so I will spend a few combined hours each week or month cleaning it up. Vacuuming it, mopping it, wiping the greasy streaks it makes up off the floor, shaking it out of clothes and cleaning the remnants of it out of the bathtub at night. I will scrape it off the bristles of my broom and dig it out of the dirt devil and the crevices of the high chair. Sick.
Cheese is also teaching me about grace-one of the hardest aspects of my faith for me to grasp and live by. Cheese is like us. We are kinda gross, kinda good, kinda everywhere all the time. We get stuck in some pretty strange places and cause some messes, but with Gods love we can become something beautifully tasty in this world.
Cheese is also the messes that we make in our life. All the time. Every day. No matter how much God cleans up after us and gets everything back in its place, we still make a new mess each day. Yet God's mercies are new every morning. He gives us cheese (love & grace) each day, despite how we handled it or what we did with it yesterday. I don't stop giving Noah cheese because he makes a giant mess with it. God doesn't stop giving me love and forgiveness because I make a giant mess of it either. Cheese & grace may sometimes actually end up in my mouth and go down into my stomach to nourish me and fill me up. Other times they ends up ground into the floor or thrown into the trashcan. But either way I get as much as I will need again tomorrow. Praise God for cheese & grace!

Cozy

I'm obsessed with cozy. The word, the feeling, all the embodies it. I have been this way since I was little. In 1st Grade there was this book in my classroom that I would always read when my work was finished. It was a Muppet Babies book and I remember nothing about it except for my favorite page-a picture of some Muppet Babies all cozy inside on a rainy night. I get all warm just thinking about it. In 2 or 3 grade I loved Winnie the Pooh and my favorite Pooh video was called "The Blustery Day". I used to fill pages of notebooks with "stories" that were really nothing but descriptions of cozy towns, cozy houses and the people that lived in them. (Gilmore Girls fans: think Stars Hollow).
Growing up, I hated dance class or any after school activity that took me out of my house on a cozy type of day. Some of my favorite growing up memories took place in the fall. I loved coming home and hanging out inside (apparently I'm an indoor girl) and playing with my dolls while my mom melted caramel for dipping apples and of course had the pumpkin spice candle going. In college I always got homesick when the weather changed because I missed my cozy home.
One of my favorite books is called Winter Solstice. I love to read it every winter because it gives me such warm fuzzy cozy feelings. It takes place in Scotland and in every scene there is a fire lit in the fireplace, frost on the windowpanes and people sitting around drinking scotch.
I have always loved gray blustery days because to me, nothing is better than a sweatshirt, some quilts, a fire in the fireplace, a candle (preferably pumpkin spice) and a warm beverage (preferably coffee). My dad tells me this is inherited from his side of the family. My great grandmother was also quite fond of cloudy days.
My dream house is a cozy cottage, and when I decorate I just want things to feel comfy and cozy. I like the lighting to be relaxing, not harsh and rooms to feel welcoming and warm. Dave laughs at me because sometimes I get a wave of what I call the "cozy feeling", where I get all warm inside and this feeling in my stomach that I really can only describe as cozy.
Fall and winter are my favorite seasons because the cozy feeling comes around a lot more. It also come around a lot more in Williamsburg than it did in Northern VA. Crazy I know. Williamsburg is definitely one step closer to my Stars Hollowesque dream town. And our house on Winster Fax is one step closer to the cozy cottage of my dreams.
Hope everyone is having a cozy fall night!

Happily Ever After...

...Thus ends the tale of Sense & Sensibility on this cool October evening, only 4 days later than my self made end date. I must say, I am surprised. Elinor and Edward had pretty much fallen off the radar as far as I was concerned, but then all of the sudden he comes to visit, acts super weird and then BAM they are engaged! Had they even spoken in months? Wasn't Elinor supposed to be getting over him? I wanted her to end up with Colonel Brandon, but hey, if Elinor is happy I am happy. That girl deserved a happy ending. She was so busy taking care of and stressing out for everyone else that I hope she spends content and peaceful evenings relaxing with her strange husband in their parsonage and not worrying about the well being of everyone else.
And Colonel Brandon and Marianne? Was he only in love with her for her looks? She was so rude to him the entire book, they never even had a real conversation yet eventually he won his prize thoroughbred and they got married. And she came to love him just as much as she loved Willoughby even though he was old and decrepit (in her eyes) and wore flannel waistcoats.
All of the problems that spanned over 290 pages were wrapped up like a neat parcel in the last 7. We spent hours and pages grieving and mourning for both women and their lost loves. Feeling frustrated with the social constraints that kept them completely helpless to do much about their situations and wondering if they, well mostly Marianne, would ever recover. Then all of the sudden the sisters return to Barton Cottage and everything works out perfectly. Elinor and Edward even get the forgiveness, I mean money, they need from his mother in order to marry since they weren't in love enough to marry with no money.
This leaves me wondering about dear ole Jane. Did she do this as a happy ending because that's how every good love story should go? Or was it more of a social commentary or even satire? I don't know and I'm not going to try to argue one or the other because I have no idea what I am talking about. But if anyone has an opinion I would like to know.

Now...on to the next book. I have decided that I don't want to follow my aforementioned schedule and will instead be reading Northanger Abbey next. I am also going to be reading Knit Two, as sequel to Friday Night Knitting Club, written by Kate Jacobs. It is too hard for me to read one book at once and I just got this one from the library so I need to read it before I have to return it! Besides, it will correspond nicely with my blanket knitting project while also providing me with an easy read.

Also I am reading Prodigal God by Tim Keller right now, its amazing and changing my life. I LOVE books like that.