We love:

This video totally made me bawl my eyes out:


A New Perspective For Moms from Elevation Church on Vimeo.

New reads:

This week I'm reading The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd. A few years ago, I read her book, The Secret Life of Bees, and liked it so when I saw this at the last library book sale, I thought I'd give it a go. And yes, I am aware it has taken me an insanely long time to actually get around to reading this book. I've had a ridiculously long queue (it's still ridiculously long -- and about to get much longer).

Have you read it? If not, here's what it's about:

"Sue Monk Kidd's stunning debut, The Secret Life of Bees, became a bestselling phenomenon and a modern classic. Now, in her luminous new novel, Kidd has woven a transcendent tale that will thrill her legions of fans and cement her reputation as one of the most remarkable writers at work today.

Inside the church of a Benedictine monastery on Egret Island, just off the coast of South Carolina, resides a beautiful and mysterious chair ornately carved with mermaids and dedicated to a saint who, legend claims, was a mermaid before her conversion.

When Jessie is summoned home to the island to cope with her eccentric mother's seemingly inexplicable act of violence, she is living a conventional life with her husband, Hugh, a life 'molded to the smallest space possible.' Jessie loves Hugh, but once there, she finds herself drawn to Brother Thomas, a monk who is soon to take his final vows. Amid a rich community of unforgettable island women and the exotic beauty of marshlands, tidal creeks, and majestic egrets, Jessie grapples with the tension of desire and the struggle to deny it, with a freedom that feels overwhelmingly right, and the immutable force of home and marriage.

Is the power of the mermaid chair only a myth? Or will it alter the course of Jessie's life? What transpires will unlock the roots of her mother's tormented past, but most of all, it will allow Jessie to make a marriage unto herself.

Few novels have explored, as this one does, the lush, unknown region of the feminine soul where the thin line between the spiritual and the erotic exists. Where does the yearning for soul-mated love come from? When it comes to love, what are the pulls inside a woman between the ordinary and the sublime? How does a woman find the place of self-belonging in herself?

The Mermaid Chair is a vividly imagined novel about mermaids and saints, about the passions of the spirit and the ecstasies of the body. It illuminates the awakening of a woman to her own deepest self with a brilliance and power that only a writer of Kidd's ability could conjure."

I'm about half way through it. So far, I like it okay. It's not the best book I ever read but I enjoy her writing style and it's easy to read.

We Love:

Welcome back! To celebrate the start of a new week in which we are all hopefully refreshed and renewed, please enjoy this trailer for Wes Anderson's new movie, The Grand Budapest Hotel.



Anderson is my favorite director of all time. His movies are the best. The perfect combination of weird and silly. And insanely beautiful. Needless to say, I am beyond excited for this new release coming in 2014.

Watch it and get excited.

This week:

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I've been suffering from internet burnout lately so I've decided to take this week off from the blog to recharge my batteries. Don't you ever just feel like you need a break sometimes? Well consider this my internet fall break. 

Hope you have a great week, friends. Happy Halloween and all that!

Happy weekend:

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Happy Friday, everyone! What are your plans? Andrew has been in Sikeston visiting family for the past few days. He should be making his way back today. And we are running a half marathon on Saturday morning and then maybe helping some good friends move.

The weather is supposed to be amazing this weekend. Get out there and enjoy it!

New music:

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Today I bring you a new playlist for October. This is the music that's been filling my head as of late. I hope you find it as enjoyable as I do. If you find your feet tapping, don't be alarmed.

New reads:

This week, I'm reading The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I'm not sure how I missed this book growing up. I was never required to read it in school and it somehow flew under my radar. When A and I started dating however, I was introduced to the magical world that Tolkien created through the "Lord of the Rings" movies. I never thought I would like them (not really my kind of thing) but I've actually grown to love them. They are some of our favorite movies to sit down and watch on a rainy Saturday.

A few years ago, for his birthday, I got A a really great boxed set of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. And I had every intention of reading them. But again, somehow, I've just never gotten around to it. Last year, for Christmas, he got a really nice leather-bound copy of The Hobbit in his stocking and it's been taunting me from the bookshelf ever since. So, I decided to finally give it a go.

I thought it would be hard to read but so far I'm really enjoying it. I like the writing style and the characters are interesting, but there are just so many dwarves running around, I don't know if I'll ever get them straight.

If you don't know the story of The Hobbit (and how could you not?), here's a really great introduction from Amazon.com:

"'In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.'

The hobbit-hole in question belongs to one Bilbo Baggins, an upstanding member of a "little people, about half our height, and smaller than the bearded dwarves." He is, like most of his kind, well off, well fed, and best pleased when sitting by his own fire with a pipe, a glass of good beer, and a meal to look forward to. Certainly this particular hobbit is the last person one would expect to see set off on a hazardous journey; indeed, when Gandalf the Grey stops by one morning, "looking for someone to share in an adventure," Baggins fervently wishes the wizard elsewhere. No such luck, however; soon 13 fortune-seeking dwarves have arrived on the hobbit's doorstep in search of a burglar, and before he can even grab his hat or an umbrella, Bilbo Baggins is swept out his door and into a dangerous adventure.

The dwarves' goal is to return to their ancestral home in the Lonely Mountains and reclaim a stolen fortune from the dragon Smaug. Along the way, they and their reluctant companion meet giant spiders, hostile elves, ravening wolves--and, most perilous of all, a subterranean creature named Gollum from whom Bilbo wins a magical ring in a riddling contest. It is from this life-or-death game in the dark that J.R.R. Tolkien's masterwork, The Lord of the Rings, would eventually spring. Though The Hobbit is lighter in tone than the trilogy that follows, it has, like Bilbo Baggins himself, unexpected iron at its core. Don't be fooled by its fairy-tale demeanor; this is very much a story for adults, though older children will enjoy it, too. By the time Bilbo returns to his comfortable hobbit-hole, he is a different person altogether, well primed for the bigger adventures to come--and so is the reader."