Extending Autumn


Today it’s snowing as I prepare for the early holiday season. And while the snow is beautiful, I’d love to extend autumn just a bit longer. So that’s the reason for this post – sharing our recent fall trip through southern Minnesota, northern Iowa and central Illinois. Want to take this fall road trip with me? 

Enjoy Life

Life is meant to give us joy and to be enjoyed. The God, consciousness, love or life force that created us lives around us but also within us. God experiences life, joy and love through our eyes, ears and all of our life experiences.

Joy, like love and happiness, deepens our sense of ourselves, creates personal growth and connects us more deeply to the world around us.

Joy is what God seeks and wants for us. It is our right. When our joy is diminished God is diminished too. When our experiences of joy increase, God expands.

All the poverty (physical, psychological, spiritual, emotional) we create through inadequate distribution of the means to joy (education, safe housing, food, water, clean environment, etc.) demands that we work for change. Joy requires it. Love insists on it.

Simple Wardrobe

Too often we have closets that are crammed with additional bins of clothes in the garage or in a storage space. But the task of reducing our wardrobe to something manageable can seem overwhelming – daunting. We all know that a streamlined wardrobe makes life so much easier. You select from a few outfits that you know are flattering, comfortable, easy care and work for you. Likely, that’s why you wear the these basic outfits more than 80% of the time. These items are the workhorses of your wardrobe.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a quick way to pare back and streamline our wardrobes, create space in our closets, have outfits that always work and can be selected effortlessly?  Well, because I often travel for weeks with just ten items of clothing, I’ve developed a system for keeping my entire wardrobe to a minimum. It’s easy and it has been working great for me for a few years now. I’m happy to share my system with you and you can decide if it will work for you too.

Here are the basic rules that govern my system –

Try A Staycation

How often have we said, “We should take a week and just explore our own town.” Well, this summer we finally had a chance to do exactly that. Our friends from Europe came and stayed with us for a week. We were able to take a week off and explore the Twin Cities with them. We did a number of fun activities every day – but there is so much more that we never had a chance to do. Nevertheless, here’s an itinerary of the things we did do. Many of the activities were outside because we had perfect weather, but we had a list of indoor activities for rainy days too. These included museums, movies, theater or day trips to other nearby towns. Some of these ideas cost no money. Others had a small fee. Some were more expensive. Choose ideas that fit your budget. I hope you find it helpful or that it sparks other ideas of things you could do if you decide to staycation in your town.

Monday we took a bike ride around Lake Nokomis. We picnicked by the lake and then headed over to see Minnehaha Falls.

Image result for lake nokomis bike riding
Image result for lake nokomis bike riding

What Mauritians Can Teach Us

Marceline has a large, but very old stone in her kitchen. It’s from her grandmother, who got it from her mother – so it has been passed down through many generations. With this stone and its accompanying stone roller she can quickly grind spices, grains, even make tomato sauce as you can see in the picture. What you can’t see is that this stone is right next to the microwave! It’s an interesting accommodation of old and new.