With Fresh Eyes

During summer I spend as much time out of the house as possible, knowing that when winter comes somehow I’ll have missed out on vital sun and warmth if I don’t take advantage of each opportunity for Vitamin D. Even on muggy 90 degree evenings, I’ll drag Regan outside to have dinner in the backyard, batting away mosquitoes and coming inside with splotchy, bug-bitten legs. It’s the price we pay to enjoy summer.

The images I have of my home currently emblazoned in my mind are the views from our front porch, our backyard, our front garden beds and the paths around the park, but I’ve forgotten the details inside our house. In summer I displace its importance and forget it’s someplace I really like to be.

This weekend the temperature dropped so we turned off the air and opened the windows. Somehow having the windows open helped bridge the gap between outside and in. It felt brighter and lovelier inside than it has all summer. As I walked around cleaning our house before someone who had never seen it was set to arrive, I started to look at our house through new eyes. Maybe I was trying to see our house like she might, or maybe I’ve just been ignoring inside for so long that I forgot how ours looked and felt.

Seeing things through fresh eyes helped me change the landscape of what I pay attention to each day and appreciate those little things I neglect to see regularly.

Another thing I’ve seen in a fresh way is banana bread. It’s probably not any amazing revelation for anyone else, but I’ve never enjoyed banana bread as a bread. It’s always been a sweet dessert for me, filled with chocolate chips and enjoyed like cake. But suddenly I’ve found the perfect recipe and learned to enjoy it as toast with a bit of peanut butter slathered on top. Peanut butter on banana bread? I know. Elvis probably figured this out a long time ago– as many of you probably have as well, but to me it was such a revelation and I’ve found myself buying more bananas that necessary, hoping for a few to over ripen so that I have the perfect excuse to make my new favorite treat (still enjoyed in the way of cake, but somehow plopping it in a toaster makes if feel more breakfast-like. And, to quote a friend, we all know that “breakfast is a cleverly disguised dessert bar.”)

After trying many a banana bread recipe, I’ve settled on the one over at Simply Recipes. It’s pretty much perfect — with or without adding a bit of peanut butter or Nutella.

What are you seeing with fresh eyes?