Beautiful Things

Happy November!  

I'd like to kick off the month with a random list of beautiful things currently catching my fancy...

I love this delicate Dual Birthstone ring from Ariel Gordon jewelry.  I think it would be so sweet to customize it with the birthstones of you and your honey (doesn't hurt that ours are two of my faves: amethyst and tourmaline), or what a perfect keepsake for a mama of two (or you could do both and stack 'em! Love it even more!).

Ina Garten's Old Fashioned Apple Crisp, which I made this weekend, and it was in.sane.  The husband called it "the best thing ever".  Her secret?  Tossing the sliced apples with the juice and zest of a whole lemon and a whole orange.  And that every recipe she has ever written is the best of whatever it is, because the woman is a food prophet.

This mojito looks glorious.  Summer may be over, but we can still enjoy a rum drink here or there, can we not?

This photo of a Japanese lantern festival took my breath away.

And this poem, which is one of my favorites, always lifts my spirits when I'm feeling down:

Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
  love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.