Healthier Saturdays and the Moon

Happy Saturday!

I'm feeling better than I did two Saturdays ago or even one Saturday ago. I pray that the flu is gone and that I'm never that sick again. As I mentioned previously, I actually took the flu shot, but I still got the flu. Oh well, nothing is 100% effective. I'll still get the flu shot next time around because you just never know. Anyway, I'm extremely grateful to be feeling better and I'm praying for a full recovery and for my full energy to return soon. 🙂

As I mentioned the other day, as I feel better and better, I'd like to get back here more regularly to share what I'm up to, more like I used to in the earlier days of this blog. I'm also still loving taking photos, so I'd like to share them here again, even though I share them on Instagram often. I know that not everyone is on Instagram, so I'm going to get back to sharing them here on the blog also. I hope you'll enjoy taking a look.

To kick things off with sharing photos, I thought that I'd share a series of images that I shared on Instagram a few weeks back. I was walking home when I took these. The evening sky just took my breath away with its beauty. Nature is amazing! They're a little bit fuzzy, but I took them as I was walking briskly in the very cold evening air 😉

I loved getting a glimpse of the crescent moon along with all of that fantastic color! I love the moon!

I hope that you're having a great Saturday wherever you are.

Happy weekend! 

The Shared Supermoon

I know that it's a fresh new month, but before I go forward, I'd like to take a moment to celebrate the absolute beauty of the supermoon last night. It was glorious!

Some places in the world got the opportunity to see a blood red moon, but we didn't get that here. The pictures that I've seem online have been extraordinary!

Even though we didn't get to see the blood red moon here, the big, round pearlescent beauty that we saw was a joy to see! I adore a full moon anyway...I've always been drawn to it since I was a little girl. Therefore, a supermoon that's bigger and closer really makes me happy. And living in England, where clear skies can be a bit hard to come by sometimes, makes a clear view of the moon extra precious. 

Below are a couple of pictures that I took of the supermoon as it rose above the horizon here in the beautiful Wiltshire countryside.

And the two below were taken by my sister Grace, back home in Georgia. She sent these to me while I slept on this side of the world. Her pictures were there to greet me when I checked my phone this morning. Absolutely beautiful! Her pictures warmed my heart because I know the exact spot where she was standing when she took them. That's the view down the hill, to the east, that I saw every day growing up in our family home. I've had the absolute pleasure to live in two beautiful places on this planet. Our planet is beautiful all over. I love that my sister (and all my loved ones back home) and I saw the same beautiful moon on opposite sides of the Atlantic...separated for now by the ocean, but always side by side in our hearts ❤

Happy September

Hello September! :)

A new month has arrived and like a lot of people that I talk to, I can't believe that it's already September. Where does the time go? I guess that it's all about perspective though...we just have to enjoy every moment no matter how quickly it seems to pass. I'm all for that.

I took the above photo the other day and I was struck at how blue the sky was. It was glorious! If you look very closely, or click on this pic to enlarge it, you can see the faintest bit of the moon near the center of the picture. This photo makes me happy for a few reasons:

1) I love the color blue as I've mentioned many times before, and the lamp post matches perfectly. 
2) I love the moon. It's so mysterious and I've always been really drawn to it.
3) I'm reminded of that wonderfully beautiful day!

Simple pleasures...

Happy September wherever you are! :)

A Friday Photo and Pre-Blue Moon Quiet

Today's Friday photo is a continuation from the last couple of Fridays. I guess that it's turned into a series :) Anyway, this is the last of the group taken on July 31, 2015. 

As I mentioned in my previous posts here and here, we went to watch the full blue moon rise on that evening and saw a fantastic sunset and the beautiful blue moon. It was a glorious evening and one that I won't forget for a long time. The awe-inspiring beauty has definitely stayed with me. 

The photo above is the midpoint of the whole experience. I had just cast my eyes upon the wondrous power of the setting sun in the west and then I turned my attention the other way to the east and saw this haunting lull between the stars of the show...the sun and the moon. 

When I see this photo, I can "hear" what I heard that evening...the quiet, as a slight wind blew across that Wiltshire hill as we waited.

As with the sunset and the full blue moon, I'm grateful to have witnessed nature's grandeur in this quiet moment. And I'm glad that I can share it :)

Have a great weekend wherever you are!

A Friday Photo and Blue Moon Beauty

Today's Friday photo is part of a matching set from my experience of seeing a glorious sunset and the beautiful blue moon on the same evening. This photo was taken on July 31, 2015. You can look back at last week's photo here if you'd like to see the sunset that I saw.

As I mentioned in that post, the sunset photo turned out fantastic, but the full blue moon photos didn't turn out as well. They were a bit fuzzy for the most part. Lol. This one is probably the best of the lot. It was definitely a case of the real view and the real experience being better than anything that I could capture :-) Still, I like this photo because it reminds me of the serenity that came over me as I saw that beautiful moon inch its way up into the eastern horizon. I love blue as you know if you've visited me here before, so I loved the blue tinge of the sky. The whole evening was a gorgeous display of colors with the fiery oranges, purples, and golds of the sunset in contrast with the cool blues surrounding that pearlescent moon. I love how the moon's light is seeping through the grass along the edge of the field.

What a beautiful sight!

Have a great weekend wherever you are!

A Friday Photo and Glorious Shows in the Sky

Today's Friday photo was actually taken last Friday on the very last day of July 2015. My other half and I went out further into the Wiltshire countryside because I wanted to see the blue moon unobstructed. I love seeing the full moon as often as I can when it first peeks above the horizon. It's always a beautifully moving moment for me to see it like that. It looks so much larger at that point and it looks so much more tangible. Also, seeing the beginning of its rise just strikes something within me that makes me feel so connected to nature and to our universe.

So we were out waiting for the blue moon to rise in the east...minding our own business, when the sun decided to show out! Lol. Isn't this a beautiful sunset? The colors were just breathtaking and my camera didn't do it justice, but I hope you like taking a look.

Seeing this sunset reminded me of how lucky we are to live on this beautiful planet. With all of the turmoil that we hear about daily, it was so glorious to be reminded that no matter what...some things, like the sun and the moon, are just timeless, constant, and amazing! They remind me to continue onward always.

I was so grateful that we were there to witness the day ending with the golden light of the magnificent sun in the west, as the cool and luminous beauty of the gorgeous full moon came up in the east. What a beautiful experience!

My moon photos didn't turn out as great, but I'll share a couple of those next Friday, so I hope you'll visit me again.

Have a great weekend wherever you are! :-)

A Super Moon and a Rainbow

Happy Monday! I just wanted to share a couple of quick pictures from my weekend...well actually from yesterday. It was a wonderful evening and I saw two miraculous things in the sky at the end of the day. First of all, we had rain off and on all day, along with lots of wind. It felt very much like fall is on our doorstep again. 

When I looked out at one point I saw this beautiful rainbow across the way. I took the picture below at the window so that's why there are dark edges in the upper corners. I thought that it might move along quickly before I could get outside, so I just took it from inside. It was glorious!

 

I knew that there was going to be a super moon last night, but I wasn't sure if we would be able to see it here since it had been so cloudy all day. Thankfully though, the clouds parted and that big beautiful moon showed up for us. My battery on my phone was dying when I took this so I'm so glad that I got this quick picture :-) 

As I watched the super moon I got a wonderful feeling of how this was something that many were sharing and seeing all across the world, wherever there were no clouds. The moon is amazing.

Super Full Moon

Here's an interesting video that I found about the Super Full Moon that will be visible tonight (May 5th). The video isn't too long so I hope that you'll take a look. I'm fascinated by the full moon, so having a bigger visual to look at is right up my alley! When I was back home, even when it was just the normal full moon, I loved to go outside into our field and take a look at all of that gorgeousness :-) There is just something so calming and extraordinary about a full moon. It makes me feel like I'm truly a part of the human experience, because I realize that I'm not the first and I won't be the last to gaze up at it and that binds me with everyone who ever looked up at the moon. Also, I just love having that moment to stand and just contemplate whatever crosses my mind in that moment...or I don't have to think about anything at all. That is the beauty!

So I will be watching and I hope that the weather cooperates and gives us a clear sky for a while here. But even if the clouds don't disappear, I will still know it's there :-) I hope that you'll join me! Have a great weekend and happy Super Full Moon night to you!

 

The Moon and Happy Feet

It’s a beautiful sunny Friday here in Wiltshire. It seems that nowadays we get all of our beautiful weather in September instead of during the summer months. Better late than never I always say :-) Although while I was gone home to Georgia in June, Brit Boy tells me that the weather here was lovely. He blogged about it here. So I'm making up for missing it then. I’m soaking up as much of that vitamin D as I can.

This is gonna be a random post…I forgot to mention that in the opening :-) Okay, so I can’t remember if I’ve written here before about how much I love the moon and can gaze at it forever. I’ve always been intrigued by it and its beauty has the power to just stop me in my tracks when I catch sight of it. I’m sure that many of us have been enticed by a full moon or two or a few hundred in our lives. There is just something about that beautiful orb up there. When I’m gazing at our beautiful moon, I often think of the longevity of it and how my parents, grandparents, and all of the people who have ever lived on this planet have seen that same moon throughout their lifetimes. It makes me instantly feel connected to humanity through the ages. And I don’t just get excited by the full moon…oh no…I love the crescent moon too :-) It’s all amazing to me!

So last night, I was fiddling around with my camera and trying to photograph the moon because it looked like I could reach out and touch it. Well I did miserable at it. LOL. To tell you the truth I wasn’t really trying. It was late and I wasn’t using a high powered camera. I was just fooling around. I’m easily amused as I’ve mentioned before and I’m a night owl, so I just let it flow ;-) The photos turned out blurry and weird, but I like the eerie way it looks. So I want to share one of them anyway, just for a Friday laugh. LOL. And no, I was not drunk. LOL.



In other news, I’ve received a couple of comments here and on Facebook about my shoes that I wore on our trip to London last Saturday. Let me tell you, I LOVE those shoes!!! :-) They are so comfortable! For all you bloggers out there, you know how sometimes you get a meme or something and it asks you to tell something about yourself? Well my choice of footwear is something I’d like to share ;-) As you will notice from the photo, these shoes don’t have laces on them and they are my absolute favorite shoes. You know why? Because I really dislike untying and tying shoe laces. LOL. I'm sure there's some psychological reason behind this, but it doesn't faze me...I guess I would just say that I like ease in life and there are other things to think about besides my shoes ;-)


I learned how to tie my shoes many moons ago like everybody else, but I have developed this thing about not bothering with tying shoe laces. Even when I wear other sneakers, I will wrench them onto my feet somehow so I won’t have to untie them. LOL. I know…I'm a quirky chick. LOL.

So when I found these shoes I was in love!! ;-) Actually, these are the second pair of this style of shoe for me. Here’s the old pair that I still wear even though they’re a bit worn out now.



Interestingly enough, I bought both pairs of these shoes on visits home to Georgia, a few years apart. I bought the beige ones at the end of 2006 and I got the black ones when I went home in June. They are Skechers brand and they make my feet happy. They look nice on the foot and the best part is that they just slip onto my feet. Now isn’t that a beautiful thing ;-)

So this is the end of my random post and I will say here, that I was not paid to say something nice about these shoes or compensated in any way whatsoever. I just felt like sharing some info about these shoes, because you never know…there may be others out there who just don’t like tying their shoes either ;-)

Have a great weekend everyone and to all the folks back home in the States, have a Happy Labor Day weekend!!!!

To The Moon

Today, as many of you know, is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon Landing. I just wanted to take a moment to recognize this great moment in the history of the world. Space travel always has amazed me and I love the idea of exploring in that way. It must have been amazing for these three men to get to the moon and gaze back at our planet. What a view.

I am inspired by the words of President Kennedy as he spoke of going to the moon, roughly a year before he was killed and years before I was born. It helps me remember that you have to just go for it sometimes, even if you don't know all of the details of how you're going to do something, even when it's hard. This is what faith is to me. Here are his words.

"We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win" ~John F Kennedy - September 12, 1962

Earth Day 2009

Today is Earth Day and it is a day to celebrate and help our beautiful planet. I love that there is a day when we can all think about what we can do to make our planet a cleaner and greener place. The beauty of this day though is that the awareness doesn’t have to stop tonight when the clock strikes midnight. We can all do our part every day of the year. Please check out this Earth Day site. This and other sites are great resources to find out how we can all do more. I’m learning myself because I just want to do what I can to help along the future of our planet. I don’t have kids, but I have many nieces and nephews, and for them and other children, I want to leave a green mark on the world when I go. (smile) I know that this is all a complex issue, but a lot of times I just cut away all of that and think of it simply. I look outside and see scenes like these and I realize how blessed we all are that we were born here.




The first two photos are from here in England and the last one is from back home in Georgia...two homes to me, but they are all on the same planet that I love. (smile) I’m not here to preach or anything like that, because I’m still learning myself, but as you go about your day, spare a thought for our planet Earth. (smile) Happy Earth Day everybody!

Pizza, The Moon, and EVPs

I didn’t know what to do with myself when I woke up on Saturday morning and didn’t have to get dressed to go to the acupuncturist. I was accustomed to getting up out of bed and getting into town by my appointment time. There hadn’t been that many Saturday lie-ins for me or Brit Boy lately. So I woke up at 9am and sat up to look at the clock. I thought that I had overslept. Then a few seconds later it dawned on me that I was taking a break from acupuncture. So I flopped back down on my pillow. It is funny how something can become a habit so quickly in life. Brit Boy was already up and he was downstairs studying in his pajamas. He is racing towards a deadline with his work, so he got up earlier. I stretched out over the whole bed for a few minutes to luxuriate in having it all to myself. Don’t get me wrong. I love being married to Brit Boy and having a bed buddy, but it’s also fun to hog all of the bed for yourself sometimes. (smile) Although a bed alone on a cold winter’s night is not ideal. It is just fun sometimes to play with having a choice. (smile) And I wouldn’t trade my cute bed buddy husband for anything in the world.

After I got out of bed, we just hung out around home. I made some breakfast while Brit Boy studied. The weather has been rather windy and overcast here lately. So it was great when the sun came out at the end of the day. I was so excited that I decided to document it and save it for later.(smile) Here is a photo that I took of the lovely blue sky. I was leaning back on our bed as I took it. It was a beautiful end to the day.



We were running kind of low on groceries, so we splurged and had a pizza delivered. We did our bit to support the local economy of our village and ordered from a place on the High Street here. It’s a little independent shop and the pizza is quite good. We ordered their version of a Mediterranean pizza and it was really tasty. In the past we used to order from them quite often, but we have pulled back from that to save money and besides I love to cook. Of course I hate to wash the dishes, but that’s a story for another day. (laugh) Anyway, they used to know us so well that when we told them which address to deliver it to, they would finish our sentence for us. (laugh) This time though, they had to be actually told the full address, so I think we are definitely on a more frugal track now. (smile)

To finish off the night, I watched this show about paranormal phenomena. I have become a bit obsessed with shows like this lately. There are so many of them on TV nowadays. I joked to Brit Boy that I know I must be watching too many because one of the ladies whipped out a piece of equipment and I immediately said, “Oh, that’s her EVP.” (smile) An EVP for those who aren’t into this stuff is an electronic voice phenomena recorder. It is supposed to pick up the voices of ghosts. As I have written before, I love creepy movies and all things Vincent Price, so I guess that shows like this are fun for me to watch sometimes. It makes for a great night in.

After my shows ended, I went downstairs to take a look out our back window. We have a big window that shows our back yard/garden and there is a glass door next to that. So you can get a great view of things. I was soon joined by Brit Boy. I have this lifelong love affair with the moon and I have brought Brit Boy along for the ride. He enjoys looking at it with me too. The moon was full here on Friday night, but it was cloudy. So I went to see if anything was visible. Brit Boy and I were not disappointed. The moon was big and fat and luminous with a scattering of clouds shielding it at intervals. I love the full moon when there are no clouds, but I think that I love it more when there is just a hint of cloud to add some mystery.

Watching the moon always makes me think of my parents. Whenever I was outside following my daddy around the garden at the end of a summer’s day and the moon was just showing itself, I would love it. I would tell my daddy that I wanted to bite a piece out of the moon. He would humor me and say, “Yeah, I guess it does look like cheese.” And I was very fond of going outside to see it as I grew up and would sometimes drive further down into the countryside to get a clearer look and my mom would always come along for the ride. She never liked missing a ride. (smile) Those calm, sweet moments that I remember with my parents always carry me through when I am missing them. (smile)

Today, we had a grocery delivery just in time. We were getting rather low. We had one more coupon that we could use to get free delivery. So since the truck is always out our way, we figured that our groceries could catch a ride along with everyone else’s. (smile) I do like that about living here that you can get groceries delivered from most of the supermarkets even if you live a ways out of town. Maybe things have changed back home since I was there, but when I was back in my part of Georgia, we didn’t have this service. It is a great idea though. It saves time and gas.

Now the day is coming to an end and I am going to go and watch my other favorite kind of TV show…mysteries. They make a lot of mystery type shows here in England that I love to watch. I love the whole whodunit thing and also they are usually filmed in some lovely villages across the country. The program started a few minutes ago and I have been typing this during the commercials, but now I am going to give it my proper attention. Later, I may take a look outside to see if there are any other interesting things twinkling in the sky tonight. And hopefully my bed buddy will come too.