Simple Things bringing me joy this week:

• Receiving a handwritten letter in the mail. No one takes the time to do this anymore, and it totally made my day getting this piece of snail mail from sweet friend Paige. 
• A little diy Sunday project  for the office 🙂
• Sharing a homemade meal with friends laughing into late hours of the night. It’s moments like these that make my heart full.

The start of October brings a whole slew of craziness to the table. This is the start of our last month in our very first home of the very first 3 years of our marriage. We’ve shared this same 659 sq. foot cozy apartment for a chunk of time while we got through school (one degree for Andy–he’s still in) and dreamt big. As last month settled down and in swept cooler temps, an attitude set-in ready to embrace the upcoming change. I started keeping a mental list of all the things I couldn’t wait to leave behind about our little home: water being shut off at inconvenient times, screaming lawn mowers right by your window too early in the AM, brown kitchen counter tops molded to look like leather (who in the world thought of that?!). We were in such danger of leaving this sweet little space with such an attitude when Andy brought it to my attention. Too eager to start the next thing, we were forgetting to savor all the little memories and sweet moments we shared here. I was forgetting how many people we’ve shared our food and space with (sometimes sitting on the floor so everyone would fit), all the laughs over envisioning our neighbor as a criminal mastermind, and all the time spent hanging things on the walls and investing in our very first home. Forgetting the time spent on the couch hearing each other’s hearts and watering the seeds for our marriage to grow; forgetting the many meals I burned and the many meals I mastered all in our tiniest of kitchens. And, something I absolutely cannot forget: the soft light that flooded through my window day by day and allowed me to be an artist as I created picture after picture in it’s brilliancy. Yes, I will miss this place. And no, happiness doesn’t come with having more. No. Sometimes it comes in the form of ugly counter-tops you wish you could change and all the quirks of sharing and inviting others into a space too small for most people to count significant, but which is so near and dear to your heart.