Favorite Pieces

To enjoy beauty, you have to be aware of it, and that's one of the purposes of this blog--to build awareness about beauty. We so often walk right by beauty without noticing it, especially if it's part of our everyday landscape. Today, to wake myself up, I thought I'd list just a few of my favorite items of beauty in my house:

* the "jar of clay" painting we bought on our first anniversary trip
* the multi-colored glass bowl he gave me for my birthday
* the "Narnia" painted door
* the purple frosted glass water bottle with the delicately-turned lip
* the tall vase with the Raku finish

Now, what about you? Leave a comment listing or describing some of your favorite items of beauty in your home. Look around before you do so and enjoy your things again.

Gold and Gems

Last week, I went on a field trip with my daughter's class to the largest hardrock gold mine east of the Mississippi River, the site of America's first gold rush. During the excavation period in the late 1800s, approximately 4,000 tons of dirt, debris and ore were removed from the tunnel system. During the tour, our guide talked about the geology of the gold belt, including quartz and pyrite formations, where early miners found gold.

Before we took the underground tour, though, we did some gold panning and gem grubbing. My favorite was the gem grubbing, which involves taking a wooden box with a mesh bottom, filling it with sand, and dunking it into a stream of running water. As the sand washes away, it leaves gems behind. Apparently it's possible to find emeralds, rubies, and sapphires but I didn't wash up any. I did walk away with a bag full of colorful gems, though, including quartz, adventurine, sodalite, carnelian, citrine, blue calcite, a desert rose, a chunk of fool’s gold, and more. When she panned for gold, my daughter found nine pieces, the most of anyone in her class but unfortunately not enough to make a dent in her college fund.

My gems now sit in a small mason jar on my desk to remind me of a fun day with my daughter and my early fascination with rocks and geology. We're planning to go back and take my husband with us. Maybe next time we'll strike it rich.

Why Beauty?

I try to seek out beauty wherever and whenever I can, and I want to help other people do that too. Click here to go to one of my first posts, which explains why. May your eyes be opened to the beauty around you. Thanks for reading.

To Openness

So much escapes our notice. So much depends on our openness--openness to God and to the beauty He has created. I like this quote and thought you might too.


"There is ecstasy in paying attention. You can get into a kind of Wordsworthian openness to the world, where you see in everything the essence of holiness, a sign that God is implicit in all of creation." Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird