Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Sarah invites me into her home for supper. I don’t take that for granted anymore. (Plus, she sends me home with cake and doughnuts.)

2. Among the birthday gifts my parents send me is a container of the super-hip hot chocolate bombs I’ve seen all over the internet and been curious about

3. As part of my birthday weekend, I watch the original animated Beauty and the Beast Disney cartoon. The scene where Belle walks into the library the first time still makes my heart soar.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Saturday was a particularly productive evening for sock knitting, so I now have half a pair of socks.

I am still reading Recipe for Persuasion, but since catchers and pitchers have officially reported for duty in Florida and Arizona, I thought it was time to turn my attention toward a spring training novel, The Cactus League by Emily Nemens. I’m looking forward to starting it this week.

Head over to As Kat Knits for a reading/crafting roundup.

It’s good I had managing expectations down on my list of ways to celebrate my birthday weekend. Rudi was forced to deviate from our plans in order to fly out to Utah on Monday to help his mom move into assisted living today. This will be a good decision for her health and independence, but the accelerated timeline and pandemic protocols made it particularly fraught in the short term. I’m incredibly proud of both him and his mom, because I know this wasn’t an easy step.

I did get to do some celebrating in between that and the ice storm. On Saturday, I attended a virtual author event held by one of my local bookshops with four authors who had romance novels coming out this month, including a mother-daughter duo who wrote their story from the perspective of a couple’s dog. I also gave myself a Galentine’s Day treat and made waffles for supper, knit on my sock, and watched the animated Beauty and the Beast movie.

On my birthday proper, I hit up the farmers market (where my order from the bakery included heart-shaped baguette and cookies, a loaf of cherry chocolate bread, and my favorite of their jams, red berry rose). I did some reading, and when Rudi got home from coaching, he and I went to pick up some free birthday doughnuts and ice cream. I chatted with my parents, we ate pizza from my favorite pizzeria, and we ended the evening with Miss Scarlet and the Duke and All Creatures Great and Small.

Yesterday, we slept in a little and then had some birthday treats my parents had sent before diving into virtual tours of assisted living facilities. I took Rudi to the airport and returned home for a long chat with a friend from college.

Today, I slept in very late to celebrate taking the day off from work. The rain had ended during the morning and while I didn’t want to drive all the way to the ocean on my own, I decided to head to the Chesapeake Bay instead. To be honest, while it looks not dissimilar to the Long Island Sound, which I grew up on, it’s more like a lake and is hugely disappointing as a substitute for the ocean. It doesn’t really get waves and it doesn’t smell remotely salty. But I made an effort, and it was the longest I’ve been outside in ages without a mask, since I only saw a handful of people from a great distance. Plus, the Universe seemed to accept the apology I offered the Bay before leaving for just being itself and not what I wanted it to be, since it allowed the sun to peek through the omnipresent clouds. When I got back to D.C., I spent the evening with a friend, eating pizza and King Cake and petting her cats (and wearing masks when not eating, just so you don’t think us irresponsible).

And, now, forward! On to a new year! (And a new, short workweek!)

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share ten books in the Mardi Gras colors of purple, yellow, and green. Honestly, I don’t love cover challenges and thought about sitting this one out. But it seemed like more work at the outset to finish my top ten reads of 2020 post, so I started pulling together library books, figuring that of the 20+ books I have out, surely half must fall into this category. Nope. And by then I was committed, so the rest of the books are from my personal TBR collection that didn’t require dismantling shelves in order to extricate. (Yes, I do realize that makes it less likely I’ll read those books. Your point?)

Anyway, in the end I found 10:

They are:

Top row: Fast Cakes by Mary Berry, Undercover Bromance by Lyssa Kay Adams, Jake and Lily by Jerry Spinelli, Jo & Laurie by Margaret Stohl and Melissa de la Cruz, and Everyday Cookies by Dorie Greenspan
Bottom row: The Runaway Princess by Johan Troïnowski, Wayward Son by Rainbow Rowell, Selected Fables/Fables Choisis by Jean de La Fontaine, The Intrigue at Highbury by Carrie Bebris, and The Beast Player by Nahoko Uehashi

Have you read any of these?

Every year Rudi’s and my alma mater sends us a Valentine’s Day postcard to celebrate our being a Camel (our mascot) couple. Every year it’s adorable, but I think they particularly outdid themselves this year:

Scenes from my walk to the store earlier today: