Happy weekend...

It's been a weird week back here in Boston, and I'm looking forward to a relaxing weekend of staying local and really enjoying that extra hour of sleep. I'm also working on getting back to sharing some posts about our time away in Peru, thoughts on self-care routines for the fall and a few of the delicious recipes that we've been cooking since returning home. In the meantime, here are a few things that are on my radar:

• Taking in the most glorious sounds with Spotify's playlist "The Most Beautiful Songs in the World." They're the perfect tunes for a quiet candlelit evening or a moment in solitude.
• Making my way through Voracious, Cara Nicoletti's awesome set of recipes inspired by life and literary stories.
• Shedding my summer skin and embracing fall thanks to SunPotion's Wildcrafted Shea Butter. It's a thick concoction, but after warming the butter between your hands and giving a good massage, it's truly nourishing and has helped me steer clear of any fall itchies. 
• And finally, two parts of wonderful poems on grief from Mary Oliver that, when juxtaposed, have been greatly on my mind this week:

“Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand

that this, too, was a gift.”

— ("The Uses of Sorrow")

“And I say to my body: grow thinner still.
And I say to my fingers, type me a pretty song.
And I say to my heart: rave on.”

— ("A Pretty Song")

Weekly Words: "Time is Land for Tilling"

"One of the most important characteristics distinguishing man from all other forms of nature is his knowledge of transitoriness, of beginning and end, and therefore of the gift of time.

In man, transitory life attains its peak of animation, of soul power, so to speak. This does not mean man alone would have a soul. Soul quality pervades all beings. But man’s soul is most awake in his knowledge of the inter-changeability of the terms “existence” and “transitoriness.”

To man, time is given like a piece of land, as it were, entrusted to him for faithful tilling; a space in which to strive incessantly, achieve self-realization, move onward and upward. Yes, with the aid of time, man becomes capable of wresting the immortal from the mortal."

- Thomas Mann