It's Autumn—Pretty Happy Funny Real

It's a beautiful fall, and it's finally turned cold around here. We had a beautiful day here two days ago, when the wind began to blow in earnest but the weather was still balmy and bright. The yellow hickory leaves rained thick and fast on top of us, like a golden snowfall.

This is the season when the world seems to spin faster even as nature is slowing down, people circle in and celebrate life and family and memory and now.

It suits me fine. I am feeling the need to draw inward and mull over my thoughts, even as the needs of the world around me are making themselves felt. Yes, needs, I hear you loud and clear. But first...

Just dropping in to celebrate a few of life's little joys.

{Pretty}

My grandmother's funeral was November 2, appropriately. After attending the beautiful ceremony and visiting with family, we took the opportunity to stop at my grandfather's grave, which was in a different cemetery. You might not immediately think of visiting a cemetery on the side of a mountain at sunset as a joyful thing, but it was. We prayed and talked and gave thanks for the people God gives us.  The colors were beautiful—the lights and clouds in the sky slowly shifted, and the shadows fell down the slope, over the bright foliage of the trees so strikingly. 

{Happy}

Red velvet doughnuts from the local Daylight Donuts. 

Let me just say... these are something special.

{Funny}

Anwen is two now. This means she's loud at Mass, and impervious to requests that run counter to her own ideas. So this picture is from a bulletin board in the atrium at our parish (St. Joseph Catholic Church) to where we regularly remove. I should have gotten a photograph of the actual statue inside the church, but this is what she saw. Authenticity. And what is this a picture of? 

"Baby Jesus and Daddy Jesus!"

We could call this a parenting catechizing fail, but aren't we supposed to see Jesus in everybody? And don't the greatest saints model for us the imitation of Christ as the height of holiness? So I think I'll go with "toddler win" on this one.

{Real}

Pluot cake a la mode!

I don't know, this seemed like my most likely candidate for "real," because I've given up on blogging anything in much of a timely fashion. This was from almost four weeks ago, when Deirdre blogged about the less-than-pleasing plums she bought that needed rescuing. I was in the exact same situation with some pluots that were part of our latest fruit binge. There aren't many fruits that I don't have a taste for, but these pluots...I don't know if it was this batch, or if I just don't care for pluots. I mean, they were okay. I just wasn't loving them. 

So I tried the remedy she tried (minus the spirits), and I'm happy to report that the linked, classic recipe for plum cake was such a success that I'm going to try them with the batch of blueberries I washed and then froze during blueberry season. (If you're going to freeze blueberries, don't wash them first—the skin turns tough. Speaking from experience here.)


Hop over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for more {phfr}. Maybe next time I'll get you some falling leaves!