{bit of beauty: simplicity}

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There’s a certain simplicity to the images above.

A garland of flowers enhancing natures superior beauty. A rudimentary trinket, like a tiny bicycle made of wire. Cool wet sand under your fingertips with the sun beaming gently on your shoulders and a light breeze whipping a few stray strands across your face. A stark white yurt in the middle of a mossy green forest.

Simple. Beautiful. Soothing.

For several months, bloggers have been detailing what makes their life beautiful in the Everyday Beautiful Life series. The most frequently mentioned were love and flowers. I’ve spent the past year reevaluating and redefining what’s important. The series, along with the discovery of other bloggers, and my own experiences has made me think:

What do we really need in our lives? Not a whole lot. What does it take to make out everyday life a bit more beautiful? Turns out, not a whole lot, either.

lace & tea, upon a fold, here, & christian weber

{bookworm: queen of your own life}

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Queen of Your Own Life landed in my mailbox a few weeks back. Within a few pages of the book, I could tell that I’m not the book’s target market. While the lessons in the book can be applied to any woman’s life,  the book is intended for women past their 40’s. I thought that perhaps the publisher had made a mistake in sending me the book or that I had missed something in the description when I first accepted to be sent a review copy. What to do?

Curious bookworm that I am, I went ahead and kept thumbing through the book. The book is filled with the authors’ honest accounts of the same insecurities of the women around me who’ve reached or passed midlife. These are the same woes that I so often wish didn’t affect my mother, sisters, and older friends. These inner demons and horrible outside forces that cause the fabulous women in our life to doubt themselves and feel insignificant are called out and dealt with. All neatly and simply laid out in Queen of Your Own Life.

It’s the perfect book to gift to a woman you adore. If you’ve ever wanted to tell your mom how fabulous she is and that her doubts about herself have no truth, give her this book.

Mother’s Day is this weekend, and with it comes a chance to show the women we love so much that we think they’re queens. Take the chance.

{bit of beauty: by the sea}

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I’ve recently acquired a hammock in which I’ve spent a good deal of time with Ms. Lola by my side. In my childhood, I often laid on a hammock listening to the wind whisper through the pines and the windchimes ring until I fell asleep. I still enjoy swaying a few feet from the ground, but feeling as if I were a hundreds of feet up in a cloud. All the times I’ve spent swaying in a hammock, I wish to do so by the sea. Yes, I have not had the opportunity to relax suspended above the sand or on the porch of a beach house, despite my living in Florida. It’s a shame. I’ll have to remedy this…
david bellemere for marie claire italia