Let Love Continue.

Valentine's Day was this week.  There are many ways to approach this holiday (great joy, great grumpiness, ignore it altogether), but I love to use it as an excuse to enjoy beauty in things red, white, and sparkling.

One of my favourite things to do is have the girls over for a beautiful dinner, so we did that again this year, softening the lights in the flat and laying out little tea-light candles everywhere.  (You'll notice the Scottish flag still is a prominent feature!)

Partly to make it simple, and partly because we love it so much, our Valentine's Dinner came from the famous Boodle Bar.  So our table was set with chopsticks, as well as roses, carnations, floating candles, and cut glass goblets. 

 

 

 

For a while we just stood and looked at it.  Hayley was so excited before I opened the door to reveal the beauty within that she was leaping around gasping 'I can't stand it! I'm almost afraid!'

But she came round to the beautiful flowers....

 ...as did we all.

Afterwards we pulled out our 2010 goal lists and reviewed them all (with a little hilarity and great congratulations for those who had achieved theirs), and sat down to write out our 2011 goals.  A little belated, but we'd rather do it in February and mean it than join the madding crowds in January and be giving up by now. We're just getting started!

The girls and I had resolved to write out reading lists for 2011, so after we wrote those, we re-discovered Alice in Wonderland in my bookcase and sat reading it aloud to each other.  One of my favourite quotes of all time comes from Lewis Carroll's book:

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things: of shoes - and ships - and sealing wax - of cabbages - and kings - and why the sea is boiling hot -and whether pigs have wings."

May you find beauty in all these things!

Beauty And Capability

Ever since I saw these I have loved the idea of having a camera bag that is not big, black, and bulky.  As much as I love my Lowepro Slingshot (if you have a variety of equipment and need to access it quickly, that bag is the dream), it's not exactly the kind of bag I want to take with me when I'm carrying my camera and then go out to dinner.  Or into any beautiful building really!

So this handbag from Jill-e does everything you could want it to as a camera bag - and does it beautifully.

I decided to go with the handpainted one, to give it a little flair. 

Just to show you the kind of room that's in here - I can fit a DSLR with 50mm lens attached, a wide angle 10-22mm, 24-70mm, and an external flash.  Plus a purse and my iphone and several other bits and pieces.

In the Bible, when the Israelites were making the things associated with the temple in which they would worship God, they were instructed to make garments "for glory and for beauty" (Exodus 28.2).  There were settings of gold, and thread of blue, purple, and scarlet.  There were shoulder straps and braided gold cord and precious stones.  It wasn't just about making garments of a certain size, or for a particular purpose.  They were meant to bring glory to God and be beautiful, too. 

Now that's my idea of good handiwork.