One of the beautiful fountains outside the Los Angeles Temple.

Ripple in still water,
When there is no pebble tossed,
Nor wind to blow.

Reach out your hand if your cup
be empty,
If your cup is full may it be again,
Let it be known there is a fountain,
That was not made by the hands of men.

(Grateful Dead lyrics)

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven.
-Henry David Thoreau

I finally, finally have a Saturday off work. This is a rare occurrence so I’m taking the opportunity to spend the day at one of my favorite places – the beautiful LA Temple.

Have a happy weekend!

Lavender Vanilla Bean Fleur de Sel Caramels

I’m not normally a fan of caramels…. but these lavender-y, vanilla-y, salt-y caramels sound too good to miss.

Katie Kirkpatrick, 21, held off cancer to
celebrate the happiest day of her life.
Katie had chased away the cancer once, only
to have it return- to clog her lungs and
grab hold of her heart.
Breathing was difficult now, she had to use
oxygen. The pain in her back was so
intense it broke through the morphine that
was supposed to act as a shield. Her
organs were shutting down but it would
not stop her from marrying
Nick Godwin, 23, who was in love with
Katie since 11th grade.
Five days later, Katie died.

This photo essay is by Romain Blanquart is as heartbreaking as it is beautiful.

(Thanks Joanna @ Cup of Jo)

For the last two weeks I’ve had Sunday and Wednesday off. While having a day in the middle of the week off is sort of nice and breaks things up – it tends to leave me very confused. Monday felt so much like Friday … today feels awfully Friday-ish too.

But never fear! There is a website for everything it seems. Thankfully isitfriday.org has kept me on track. This morning it informed me “no, it’s thursday.” Getting closer at least!

Did you do anything special? I slept in this morning and then took a little nap this afternoon. That’s conserving energy… right?

Good night Earth. Hope you had a good day.

Love, Vanessa

photo

Did you do anything special? I slept in this morning and then took a little nap this afternoon. That’s conserving energy… right?

Good night Earth. Hope you had a good day.

Love, Vanessa

photo

It looks like fair skies this morning for Los Angeles!

Dublin is looking a little cloudy.

Rainy in Toronto.

Get your forcast here! Sorry SLC, you haven’t made the list yet!

(via fourty-sixth at grace)

This weekend was a cleaning weekend! I did other stuff of course but I had made a goal to do some serious cleaning.

(Method’s Le Scrub and my favorite cleaning sponge… is it weird that I have a favorite sponge? Ummm… don’t answer that.)

With my cleaning goals in mind I decided to try to make an effort at using products that are more “green”. I am going to make a confession – I have my doubts about “green” products. With products like bleach, ammonia, Lysol, etc I know they are killing all the yucky stuff. The ingredients on the back and the killer smell while I’m using them tell me so. But I was am determined to get into the habit of using more planet-friendly products so after much searching I settled on a few from Mrs Meyers and Method.

I’ve used Method laundry detergent for a long time and I really like it. So I picked up Le Scrub (Mint & Eucalyptus) and the French Lavender cleaning spray. They both smell amaaaazing AND my bathroom is clean and shiny. Not only that but I could actually breathe while I was cleaning. What a nice change.

And I bought Mrs Meyers Lavender Oxygen Bleach , because well sometimes you just need bleach. It works just as well (if not better) than the Clorox kind AND is gentle on your clothes and again you are spared the bleach-y smell. I’m 100% satisfied.

The next hurdle… floors. Ugh. I hate cleaning floors. After using a friend’s I went ahead and got the Shark Steam Mop. If you are going to buy it you should get it from Costco because it’s cheaper and you can return it if you want – but I promise you won’t want to. I’ve had it for a few months actually and I love it. No more regular mops or Swifters or buckets and brushes. The steam sanitizes without any chemicals at all…. great if you have babies or puppies.

There are also a lot of completely natural cleaning products you can use – like lemon mixed with a little salt to get rid of rust stains, and toothpaste to polish silver. There’s a great article in Real Simple Magazine that gives you 66 natural cleaning solutions.

I’m feeling downright earthy!

It even gets Simon off his feet!