Author: Suzy Taylor Oakley

How now brown blog

Suzy Taylor Oakley Crohn's disease, dogs, food, nature

I told you I would have trouble with brown. I struggled to find pictures I had already taken. I didn’t want to go around my house looking for something to take pictures of (I thought of photographing something I deal with daily — dog poo on the carpet — but Bruce didn’t think that was such a good idea), so the file photos I scrounged up will have to do.

I made this pumpkin cheesecake on Thanksgiving Day for a family from church when I was making money baking for people. The pecan praline topping was a little runnier than I would have liked but so good I wanted to drink it all up!

Click to see the apple pie I referred to in Crust-ophobic no more.

And saving the best for last: Below is Pepper in her sunny spot in the office. She appears mostly “black,” but if you look at her closely in the sunshine (in real life, not in this photo), you realize she’s really just very dark brown. And then there’s the obvious brown, which is the reason I chose her for Brown day.

pepper on Brown day

Want to know why I post more pics of Pepper than Salsa? Salsa is in perpetual motion. I told Bruce she is self-winding. In most of the pictures I try to take of her, she’s just a big blur. I still want Whitney to take family pictures of all of us for Christmas cards; we’re going to need someone professional to take the pictures while we try to corral the furbabies.

Whitney and I tried year before last to schedule a photo shoot but could never work it out. And last year Bruce was sick, and we didn’t really want to take Christmas card pics of him in his bathrobe on the couch. However, he used just such a picture for his blog.

Tomorrow is pick your own color. I’m going to surprise you.

Yellow

Suzy Taylor Oakley family, food, friends, fun, inspiration, nature

Today’s color is yellow. I have to admit, it’s not one of my favorite colors — unless it’s BRIGHT, like these mums. Although my laundry-room story will seem to contradict that…

butterfly and yellow mums

My laundry room is bright yellow, although my plan was to paint it “butter yellow.” Bruce had decided to surprise me by painting it while I was in California for a wedding. Because of a mix-up at the paint store or a miscommunication on my part (or maybe just Bruce’s not knowing what I meant by “butter yellow”), it ended up being more what I would call canary yellow. But laundry rooms should be bright, right? So it has remained “canary yellow” for nearly eight years.

Sorry there’s no picture of the laundry room. You just get the mums today. (On White day, I linked to a similar picture.)

Tomorrow’s color is brown, quite possibly my least favorite color, although there are some wonderful browns out there nowadays. Still, it might be a challenge to come up with pictures to illustrate what I like about brown.

Added 03/08/08: I found this picture on the last day in the Week of Color, so I just had to add it. It’s a rose from a 40th-anniversary cake I made last year, modeled on the couple’s wedding cake.

yellow cake rose

Going green

Suzy Taylor Oakley baseball, family, food, fun, inspiration, nature

Today is green day in Jerusalem’s Week of Color.

The pictures I chose for today are a little more meaningful than the previous ones. The first is of cookies for my church’s Christmas Interrupted celebration year before last. I didn’t make the cookies — I think my friend Alicia did — but they depict two aspects of the holiday for me. Christmas cookies always mean fun, and Alicia made them just a little whimsical with the green candies (or is that icing?). But the star shape also makes me think of the star in the East, the one that guided the wise men to worship our Savior.

Christmas_interrupted_cookies3

The next picture, also from 2006, is of a park in Kerman, Calif., where my brother, J.T., played Little League baseball. My parents, my best friend and I spent many hours on those bleachers, cracking open bag after bag of sunflower seeds and dropping the shells down below us while we watched my brother and our neighbor boys play the sport I will always love.

In June 2006, when I had a business trip to California, I talked my mom into going with me. We met up with some old friends, and they drove us around our little hometown, which isn’t so little anymore. I took pictures of the first house I remember living in (on E Street); our church (First Southern Baptist Church and its mission, Primera Iglesia Bautista); the elementary school my brother and I attended (Kerman-Floyd); and Kerckhoff Park …

Kerckhoff Park June 2006

It's not easy being green

Suzy Taylor Oakley friends, fun, inspiration, nature

It seems Jerusalem got sidetracked by the little snowfall we had overnight, so she has postponed her green post until Wednesday. I had just spent a few minutes picking out my green pics when I saw her note, so I am ahead of the game — a rare thing nowadays. I’m too tired to write about what my green pictures mean to me, anyway. So I will take a day off with Jerusalem and go green on Wednesday.

Blue day, blue dog

Suzy Taylor Oakley dogs, family, fun, humor, inspiration, nature

Again, I let it get close to bedtime before remembering the Week of Color. (To be fair, I haven’t been home from work that long.)

Today’s color is blue.

After Salsa and Pepper frolicked on the bed for a while, Pepper suddenly scurried under her bed, where she usually sleeps (yes, in the winter, she sleeps under her bed). The bed is blue (you’ll have to take my word for it), and our cheap, dog-proof, ugly comforter has lots of blue in it, so I grabbed the camera. Weird dog to the rescue again!

blue_day.jpg

White

Suzy Taylor Oakley food, friends, fun, humor, inspiration, nature

It’s almost bedtime, and I nearly forgot about Jerusalem’s Week of Color challenge to celebrate spring. Isn’t a Week of Color a great idea?

Because I work mainly with the left side of my brain, my job is not — no matter how hard I wish it could be — to work with artsy things. So I try, when I can, to provide an “alternative perspective” (some might call it “comic relief”).

When I got to thinking about “white,” I thought I was going to fail the Day 2 assignment (Day 1 was pink, but I didn’t refer to it — my photo yesterday just happened to contain pink). Then, as often happens this time of night, I thought about my favorite bedtime treat: Old-Fashioned Low-Fat Frozen Yogurt. So here is my entry in the White category:

white_frozenyogurt

Then I looked at Whitney’s pink picks and remembered that I had some white pics in my previous posts: this and this.

So I’m not such a loser after all!

Mission accomplished. Now, pardon me while I go eat my frozen yogurt while it’s still frozen.

Hawk

Suzy Taylor Oakley friends, inspiration, volunteering

I’ve been meaning to introduce you to Sharon’s blog. She started it last week.

The rest of us write about silly stuff sometimes, but it appears that Sharon plans to use her platform as a way to call us to action. At least that’s how she has started out.

I’m sure she will write about light topics, too, but for now, in these beginning days of her blog, we get to see what a tender heart she has for those who don’t have homes, don’t have parents, don’t seem to have hope.

We serve a God of hope, and Sharon is tireless in her efforts to make sure the “less than” know that they are fiercely loved by their Creator. She is an advocate for the voiceless, faceless people we pass by every day in our busyness, sometimes without a thought to how we might make a difference in their lives.

Sharon is an educator with a servant’s heart. Let’s let her teach us.

Are you smarter than a 6-year-old?

Suzy Taylor Oakley books, friends, frugal living, fun, humor, inspiration

Taking inspiration from Berit’s post, I want to ask you four of the questions she asked her son, plus one question of my own (I added #3). The answers below are mine. For Cole’s answers, you’ll have to read Berit’s post. Berit, care to share any more of Cole’s school questions?

1) If you could go anywhere in the world, where would you like to go?
Australia, especially Ayers Rock and Sydney Harbor.

2) If you could be anybody else for a day, who would you be?
The person who gets to test flavors at an ice cream company.

3) What job would you least like to have?
Cleaning up road kill.

4) What else do you like to read besides books?
a) My friends’ blogs. No, seriously. I was going to say cereal boxes (to indicate that my love of reading is so intense that I will read just about anything), but blogs are more interesting, especially the ones written by my friends. It’s such a great new way of getting to know people you see maybe once a week. I have gotten to know Berit more through our blogs than anywhere else. b) News. c) Articles and essays on writing and editing, on words and how to use them well. d) Personal-finance stuff. I like to find ways to teach people how to make the most of their “treasures on earth.” e) The Bible. It’s the best source of inspiration, information, encouragement, training, correction and Truth you could ever ask for.

5) Do you think you’re smart?
I’m smart enough to know that’s a loaded question.

Now it’s your turn …