some nice favorites to share

Check out our beautiful summer sunset from last night! Sometimes I simply can’t get over how lucky I am to live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Wowzaa!

I got this pretty concrete rhubarb leaf at the Ste Michele Winery Art and Jazz show we went to last weekend. Its meant for the yard but I love it sitting in my living room. What I think is the coolest thing about this though was the artist selling it. She let us take it home without paying because we didn’t have a check with us! She trusted us to send it to her the next day. My kind of person.

Meet Squawk! You haven’t yet met the characters in my upcoming novel but one of them is a talking parrot named Squawk and, as things go in the Universe, one of the recent catalogs featured this bright parrot on a post! Can’t imagine who else would order him really, but, for me, well, it had to happen. It’s pretty much an exact replica of Squawk who is quite intelligent and feels he’s very good looking. What do you think?

Have you seen the new choices in tomato soup labels that Campbells soup has featured right now? I think they’re pretty cool. Gives a nice artistic twist to a regular ole label. I just read that they’re available only at Target for a limited time. Same soup — sassier label.

Look at this beautiful homemade pie my mom fixed us all the other night for dessert. What a beauty! And it tasted better than it looked. yum-o.

Hi I’m Julee and I’m a magazine junky. My habit isn’t as intense the last few years as it was in the past. I think that’s because of a combination of the internet and not enough time to keep up with it all but I still love them. One of my favorites is Real Simple. I have an interesting little story about that magazine. When it first came out I actually was thumbs down on it and decided I wouldn’t keep getting it. It just seemed a little too practical — leaned boring to me. Then a friend encouraged me to give it another look a year or so later and I found I really liked it. It seemed a lot “brighter”, more useful, loads of good tips and I’ve liked it ever sense. Then, coincidentally, at the Blogher conference, I was in a session where one of the women who talked introduced herself as the recently retired editor of Real Simple and said she had taken it over after the first five issues were out and it needed some “rescuing!” For me that was the answer to what had changed to make it go from blah to engaging — her! Love “small world” moments!

This cute boy always has my heart. I love him always but when he does things like snuggling up in the garden to rest and cool off I can hardly stand how sweet he is.