since feeling is first / who pays any attention / to the syntax of things / will never wholly kiss you…for life’s not a paragraph / and death, I think, is no parenthesis
e. e. cummings

I love punctuation. I am a lifelong bookworm who went on to be an English major in college, so grammar has been front and center in my psyche for many years. I am a proponent of the Oxford comma, and I think periods and commas should go inside the quotation marks. But I’m learning that life doesn’t always follow those rules. Sometimes, in fact, life is more like a run-on sentence, and I have to struggle to keep up, placing commas where I can to give myself a breather. This blog is where I explore the chaos and the beauty of my every day. I’m glad you’ve decided to join me! I’ll be sharing recipes, projects, frugal shopping adventures, book and restaurant reviews, and spiritual musings. If something doesn’t pique your interest then I’m not doing my job!

The Cliff Notes about me, in incorrect sentence form for stylistic purposes (when you know the rules, you can break them, right?): Christian, but far from perfect. constantly reading. love going for long walks, hiking, and being near water. take pleasure in cooking and feeding people, usually too much. delight in the thrill of finding a bargain, use coupons and shop at thrift stores. enjoy teaching/playing with 3-year-olds. looking for a job in the non-profit or ministry world where I can use my organizational skills for a greater purpose than myself. own an inordinate number of cardigans and love daisies.

A. is my husband. He’s a software developer at a small local company, and he spends his time creating web applications for various customers who hire them. We were married in April 2010, 4 months after I finished college and 3 months after I started my first full-time job. Talk about a run-on sentence. We’re still learning how to “be married” every day, but it feels like the most natural thing in the world to be sharing our lives. He helped me get this site rolling, and he’ll make occasional appearances here in my content, so I thought you should meet him.

Here’s a picture of us, for good measure:

Thanks for stopping by! I look forward to getting to “know” you, too.

~Laura