sunday simplicity

The Glitter Guide

“November comes

And November goes,

With the last red berries

And the first white snows.

With night coming early,

And dawn coming late,

And ice in the bucket

And frost by the gate.

The fires burn

And the kettles sing,

And earth sinks to rest

Until next spring.” 

― Clyde Watson

sunday simplicity

To Wander and Seek via Floridian Social

"O’er many a heath, through many a woodland dun, 
Through buried paths, where sleepy twilight dreams

The summer time away.” ― John Keats, Endymion

sunday simplicity

Kate Osborne Photography

"I love your feet

because they have

wandered over

the earth and through

the wind and water

until they brought

you to me."

-Pablo Neruda

#5FandomFriday: Geeky Tattoos I'd Want to Have*

*If I wasn't terribly afraid of the pain.

5 Fandom Friday is a weekly prompt challenge hosted by The Nerdy Girlie and Super Space Chick. This week, I'm rounding up Geeky Tattoos I'd Want to Have. Maybe one day I'll actually be brave enough to make one of these a reality!

1. A quill pen - If I was to get a tattoo, the most likely choice is a feather. My maiden name led to my dad and I having nicknames of "Bird" and "Birdy," my online alias has been "heatherbird" since the 1990's, and since I'm part Native American, feathers are also culturally significant to my family. I love the beach, so a seagull feather would be a nice touch. Since I'm a writer and English teacher, a quill pen gives the feather another dimension and turns it into a Harry Potter reference! Oh, and who has two giant feather tattoos by Kat Von D? Just my spirit animal, Dave Grohl.

Take #PeggysPledge at SDCC w/ these limited edition free "I Know My Value" temp ring tattoos! We have 100 to give! pic.twitter.com/rRPRZAnTLY

— *Lauren Gallaway* (@LaurenGallaway) July 8, 2015

2. "I Know My Value." - Agent Peggy Cater is my everything right now (my Halloween costume is STILL my Facebook profile picture) and I'd love to see a tattoo of her most famous line in a pretty script on someone's ribcage or bicep (the temporary version shown here is pretty sweet!).

3. Something Once Upon a Time related - I loved reading Peter Pan when I was young, and I've fallen head over heels in love with Once Upon a Time - it reminds me why I loved stories so much as a child and how important hope is in our lives. I'm also a total Captain Swan shipper, so I love both of these sweet little tattoo ideas.

4. A 4-leaf clover - Not necessarily geeky, but definitely nerdy. This is another symbol that has multiple meanings for me; I've been a 4-H member since I was nine, my birthstone is the emerald, and my first time traveling away from my parents (and first trip on an airplane) was when I spent two weeks in Ireland to study literature. I also have an Irish married name and love my family so very much. I think a tiny emerald green clover tattoo would be lovely.

5. A coffee spoon - It's about to get really nerdy up in here - in high school, the poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" by T.S. Eliot pretty much blew my mind (modernism can have that effect on a sheltered Southwest Virginia girl). In time, the "coffee spoons" in the poem came to represent the part of me that tends toward being a control freak and not taking chances, so the next logical step was to take that symbolism a step further by getting a coffee spoon tattoo. Until my mom told me people might think I was a heroin addict. True story. Thanks for crushing my youthful rebellion and saving me from potentially awkward situations later in life, Mom.

Do you have any geeky tattoos? I'd love to see them!

sunday simplicity:

Alixann Loosle Photography via Ruffled

A dreamer on the hillside, in late September's glow,

Looked down upon the valley that lay serene below.

The blue wood-smoke upcurling, the fresh brown earth up-

        turned,

The winding road where dully the dusky sumac burned,-

All these and more he saw not, for past its farthest rim

The land beyond the valley was beckoning to him.

 -From "The Land Beyond The Valley" by Esther Mary Clark Hill

sunday simplicity.

Sylvie Gil Photography via Style Me Pretty

“My soul is full of longing

for the secret of the sea,

and the heart of the great ocean

sends a thrilling pulse through me.”

― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

sunday simplicity: the gladdest thing

Michelle Lange Photography via Style Me Pretty

"I will be the gladdest thing  

    Under the sun!  

I will touch a hundred flowers  

    And not pick one.  

  

I will look at cliffs and clouds

    With quiet eyes,  

Watch the wind bow down the grass,  

    And the grass rise.  

  

And when lights begin to show  

    Up from the town,

I will mark which must be mine,  

    And then start down!"

- "Afternoon on a Hill," Edna St. Vincent Millay

sunday simplicity

Nancy Neil Photographer via Design*Sponge

"East of me, west of me, full summer.                                      

How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.

Birds fly back and forth across the lawn                                 

                                                                      looking for home

As night drifts up like a little boat."                                         

- Charles Wright

sunday simplicity

Tamara Gruner Photography via Wedding Chicks

"In the grey summer garden I shall find you   

With day-break and the morning hills behind you.   

There will be rain-wet roses; stir of wings;   

And down the wood a thrush that wakes and sings."

- from "Idyll" by Siegfried Sassoon

sunday simplicity #119: viva sweet love

Minted

“sweet spring is your
time is my time is our
time for springtime is lovetime
and viva sweet love

Imbue You I Do

(all the merry little birds are
flying in the floating in the
very spirits singing in
are winging in the blossoming)

lovers go and lovers come
awandering awondering
but any two are perfectly
alone there's nobody else alive

sunday simplicity #84 - orange crush

Santa Barbara Chic

Yes, they are alive and can have those colors,

But I, in my soul, am alive too.

I feel I must sing and dance, to tell

Of this in a way, that knowing you may be drawn to me.

- from "A Blessing in Disguise" by John Ashbery

Heavenly Blooms

A Little Shakespeare for your Valentine

I was an English major in college, and I can vividly remember my thoughts upon reading Sonnet 116 for the first time. Thought #1 was that it reminded me of my parents. Thought #2 was that it reminded me of Yeats' "When You are Old." Thought #3 was that I wanted to incorporate it into my wedding day, whenever that day came. It definitely will be, either as a reading during the ceremony, on the program, or on one of our table numbers.

Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

One of my favorite love-related Shakespeare lines is Benedick's "I do love nothing in the world so well as you" in Much Ado About Nothing, so Act 4, Scene 1 will probably make an appearance in our table numbers. Here's another great line, from my favorite Shakespeare play, The Tempest: "Hear my soul speak. Of the very instant that I saw you, Did my heart fly at your service" (3.1). A love at first sign quote!

For more poetry about everlasting love (though in this case, it was mostly unrequited love), here's the other poem I mentioned above. Yeats wrote it about the actress and revolutionary activist Maud Gonne:

When You Are Old - William Butler Yeats

When you are old and gray and full of sleep

And nodding by the fire, take down this book,

And slowly read, and dream of the soft look

Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,

And loved your beauty with love false or true;

But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,

And loved the sorrows of your changing face.

And bending down beside the glowing bars,

Murmur, a little sadly, how love fled

And paced upon the mountains overhead,

And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.