this is just to show how long her hair actually is.  it looks about 1/4 of this length with how tight her curls are!

I'm reading a book called Edenbrooke right now that I'v heard so much about from several people.  The plot is interesting, but what is getting me more than anything in this book are the descriptions of the scenery...it's like straight out of Pride and Prejudice or Sense and Sensibility.  I feel like I can hear the background music as I read about the light on the meadow and the windswept vistas with the beautiful views.  This is my break time and I'm now spending daydreaming on the couch instead of doing dishes or even watching one of my shows.  It's okay though, because I believe that everyone needs times like these, and I'd venture to say stay-at-home mothers especially.
It gets me thinking about a place I saw about 6 or 7 years ago that has always stuck in my mind as my ultimate dream home.  It was somewhere on the way to Idaho from Utah- I'm not even sure which of those states it's actually in- and we went there to get my sister Julia's wedding dress altered. There was a lady out there who was either the only one or one of only a few people who did custom alterations on the specific type of dress Julia had gotten.  So we got some of our friends, piled into our friend's car with the subwoofers (everyone's favorite of all each other's cars), and rode the 3 hours talking, laughing, singing, hanging out, rocking out, thugging out to loud music like we always did.  In those days a 3 hour ride was no inconvenience if we were with our friends.  We'd just be doing the same things in our apartments anyway so the time flew by.  I remember that the directions were a little difficult once we realized we should probably start figuring out where exactly we were going and I think we even got little stuck in some mud somewhere along the way.  But it was worth it for Julia's dress and for the sight of this place that is forever fixed in my brain.  We saw it from a distance at first because there was a large American flag hanging on the porch.  We didn't know that it was where we were going so we (actually I think just me) oohed and ahhed over it as we drew nearer, thinking we were going past it.  Then when I realized there was nothing else around anywhere, I decided that wedding dress altering was going to be my new career!
In my memory the house a like a large but elegant country farmhouse set against a back drop of rolling green hills.  It was my most favorite time of day, early evening right when the sun was starting to go down and it's orange glow was cast on everything in sight.  It was cool outside and there was still snow on the ground scattered across the fields stretching on all sides of the house.  There was a wrap around porch with rocking chairs, a giant shade tree with a swing, and fields and fields of beautiful sun kissed land.
We were able to spend a good amount of time there for the lady to measure Julia for the alterations, and oh how I enjoyed every second of it!  What we saw of the house was homey and comfortable, very big but not opulent or too excessive.  I was dying to go exploring through the house, but I figured that'd be rude because this was this lady's home not just her place of business.  She had already opened it up to us who were probably not her usual type of visitors- little college kids in jeans and t-shirts who had all wanted to come along for the ride.  We came back several weeks later to pick up the dress and that was the last I saw of this beautiful place.
I guess I want to be a country girl.  I grew up in the small city of Daly City right next to the ocean, beaches and cliffs only about 2 blocks away.  I wouldn't trade the home of my childhood for anything.  But sometimes (when I'm not dreaming about my childhood home as the ideal place to live forever) I dream of our future home with wide open fields, green and brown hills, orchards, forests and streams.  A place where my kids can run far and still be in sight of the house.  A place where we can sit outside with a book for a long time, a place where I can pursue gardening, where we can have backyard parties with lights.  I think it has all come from Anne of Green Gables, Avonlea, and Jane Austen.
Who knows where we will settle in the long run?  We may not fulfill all of these dreams of mine and I  will always know that I have the most important things.  But it's always good to dream.  I dreamed these guys up and they came true, so who knows?


avonlea, anne, sense and sensibility houses