scarcity and abundance

Protect your eyes

2011-05-03T23:40:00.005-06:00

"The question is not what you look at, but what you see." -Thoreau

With parenting I find it's never the stuff I plan to be rewarding, fulfilling, or fun that actually is so. The cute Easter photo I plan for every year of the kids in their finery is a total flop with no one looking at the camera and chocolate stains running down Flynn's shirt. The unique dining experience at an ethnic restaurant is disastrous from start to finish full of whines and pulled faces, and in the end, hungry tummies. The surprise trip to a restaurant to get breakfast in their pj's freaks my kids out and makes them feel self conscious like they've been seen naked by thousands. Like most things in life the stuff that evolves naturally tends to be what's most awesome and authentic.

I was downloading some photos off our camera tonight and ended up entranced looking at the literally hundreds of photos Cleo has taken over the past couple weeks. She's been really interested in the camera lately and we've given her free reign with it. I'm so glad we did because the kids got an eye! Her photos capture a world I can't see that much of anymore; a world where every single thing is worth looking at. Call it the curse of adulthood this inability to truly see. The whole lot of Cleo's shots capture the completely mundane. There are almost no posed or even composed shots, just snip snapping away at everything that surrounds her without regard to some hierarchy of what image/thing/view is of value or prettier or more worth capturing. Car decals, her hand, cracks in the pavement, fabrics, the back of my head, city views...nothing is edited out and because of this the shots tell such a great story.

One of the central tenants of physics is that by observing something it necessarily changes that which is being observed. I felt that interplay in looking at Cleo's shots. By her singling out these random, mundane moments and objects of life and capturing them in a photo, she changed them, distilled them into art or memory or something altogether more, something that made me feel a connection to her, and to a child's world view. It was refreshing to retreat back to that place of easy awe. That's another uncanny truism of parenting in my experience...kids will always teach you the bigger lesson, not vice versa! So enjoy these photos. They are original Cleo Louise Harbertsons...and you'd better believe I'm keeping them.

W-o-r-k

2011-03-24T22:03:00.003-06:00

I'm always grateful when I recognize layers aligning in life. The universe works hard to spell things out doesn't it? Since I'm gearing up for an entrepreneurial chapter in my life and starting my own business, I've been giving a lot of thought to the meaning of work. There are so many nuggets of wisdom out there that indicate that work won't be capital letter WORK if you are doing what you love or following what you are passionate about. I believe this and yet so few people I know seem to approach building their careers from this framework. The responsibilities of daily life, the educational paths we set ourselves on at an early age when our sense of self and the big picture is haphazard and fledgling, and the expectations we all have about standards of living seem to interfere. And lord knows many, many people never can identify or sum up their life's passion--too much soul searching involved! Too much risk!

So it was a relief to me when I happened to hear a nugget of wisdom about work recently that really resonated with me. Work= Worth. It's so simple, but most truths are. What I outwardly do in this world defines me, gives me my sense of self and the world's sense of what I bring to the table. It's my personal GNP. We live in a culture obsessed with this and I think it's why work that is hard to quantify such as motherhood or teaching receives so little attention. (Both are such broad investments, it's hard to see immediate results.)

Boiling the word work down to how I feel about what I do with myself is a lovely concept. Because truly it is larger than a paycheck or a certificate on the wall. My work on its best day should help me walk a path I want to be on. It should be urging me on toward discovery, toward goals, toward becoming more, toward helping myself, my family, and my community. And I think it's worth digging deep on this subject since for most of us work will make up a large majority of how we spend our lifetime. Literally work will take a lion's share of my life. Wow.

The Indian concept of dharma came up in something I was reading recently. In it dharma was described as the one thing you were born on this earth to do that you can do better than anyone else. It's the belief that every single human has something special, has a talent, a way of being, that is unique to them. If one can discover their dharma then they will find satisfaction, success, wealth, and end up helping others by following it. I guess it's akin to a life's calling. I love thinking about making dharma and work synonymous in my life. My dharma should lead me to my work and my work should lead to my dharma.

Living in a culture obsessed with material wealth is a definite hinderance to realizing work-dharma but I also think living in a culture that defines work as something we must do, or something we have to do to make ends meet is equally to blame. As an American I've connected with the ethos of the hard working man and the 80 hour work weeks required to "make things happen", to get the big pay day. These type of standards have led me to some belief that to be successful one must work hard at everything. Toil, sacrifice, labor these are the descriptor words I associate with work. And yet why do we need to have this hard work consciousness? What is the value in this? To me working too hard also means forcing an issue. No bend and flow, no flexibility. It strains. It imbalances. It is frought.

I have to believe that the dharma concept could make work seem effortless because I would be in alignment with what I do best, what I'm capable of doing almost without thinking. It's quite counter-intuitive to our Horatio Alger, pull yourself up by the bootstraps mythology, but I think there is something that rings true here.

Am I crazy? Probably. And lest my uber hard working grandmother be turning over in her grave, let's be clear that I'm not advocating laziness. Quite the opposite. What could be more galvanizing than the belief that simply by figuring out who you really are, you have figured out what you should do with your fine self. I'm not naive, I realize how inexplicably hard it is to take this stance in developing a career, and an entire life really. But ooo-eee wouldn't it be powerful if we all did so? Finding work that makes you feel your own worth-it's not an easy task by any stretch, but it's the kind of career I'd love to spend a lifetime in.

No nincompoops allowed!

2011-03-06T21:23:00.003-07:00

I've had responsibility on the brain today. Awhile ago when I was at my lovely friend Sarah's I was struck by a sign she posted on her family's bulletin board.

"RESPONSIBILITY. Anything children can do for themselves and we do it for them, takes away an opportunity for them to discover how responsibility serves them."

I think this statement hit me because I so immediately believed its truth but also because I recognized how little I was following this in my own home. My children are now 7 and 3 1/2. They still have desperate moments of neediness but also increasing stretches of self-sufficiency where they are content to follow their own whims and desires without much of my influence. As a parent its a relief to be at this stage, to have a moment to breathe and to get to reap the benefits of all those days of nonstop attention.

And yet I find that a parental wean is now required on my part...those bare bones days of sustenance and constant need meeting may be past, but left in it's wake is a habit that makes me jump to fulfill their requests and wants. From the simplest yell up the stairs for a drink of water to cleaning up dirty dishes, crumbs, and playdough, I've done my kids no favors by being quick to do these things for them. It's not an accurate picture of life's demands and it certainly isn't an accurate picture of how I want them to function as older children and future adults. Every parent imagines their kid reaching for the stars, climbing toward future success and happiness. I never picture my kid calling me to wipe his ass at 12. And yet if I don't start requiring more of them now when they are fledglings, then how will the desire, the need, or the know how materialize when they are older?

We live in an ultra convenient world. And it's more than likely that all these conveniences and gadgetry are making today's children less than able to do for themselves. In fact I read a great op-ed piece awhile back called "Are we Raising a Generation of Nincompoops?" that brings these exact concerns up. I truly worry that my 7 year old really doesn't know how to tie her own shoes yet and that much of her life is experienced with the aid of a virtual interface. It is such a good reminder that I don't need to be another interface for my kids preventing them from having raw, hands on experiences that can be both rewarding and trying for them. There are enough avenues making their lives easier. I really don't need to make home life ultra convenient for them too.

I'm a believer that one of the best aspects of being part of a family is contributing to that family in whatever way I can. Contributing is a beautiful word to me because it implies an individual putting forth something towards a common purpose, to in effect become part of the larger whole. In my desire to be loving and attentive I haven't given my kids enough opportunities to become part of the larger whole. So I've vowed to make a change and have officially instituted a new weekly chore list that will earn my darlings a teenie weenie allowance. I instituted the plan this weekend and the new lists are on the fridge and already pock marked with check marks. I'm also going to consciously respond less to their demands-not ignoring mind you, but a loving "I think you can handle that" quip.

Happily I didn't feel much friction from either Cleo or Flynn about the new regime. I actually think they want increased responsibility. It's easy to forget as parents that kids (at least the young ones) actually do aim to please. Cleo already "invented" a new chicken egg collecting system and judging by the gusto with which Flynn can smooth a bedspread, I think I've got a little emerging neat freak on my hands. The true test will be mine, whether I can bite my tongue and my urge to jump in and respond in order to nurture the kind of self sufficiency that will take them into reality not kicking and screaming and apathetic, but already contributing, already full of life skills and esteem. I love to think what a future made up of those kids would look like...

Modern Pioneer

2011-02-07T11:14:00.004-07:00

"There is a charm, even for homely things, in perfect maintenance." -Louis Auchincloss

I spent a lot of my weekend reclaiming my home. It seems that increasing busy-ness without hiring a cleaning person or someone else to pull my old weight equals disaster on the home front! Every single realm in my home dominion has been out of whack since the holidays. The laundry has been a continuous pile either on the dirty or the to be put away side. My fridge was emitting strange odors. The pantry was a pile of unorganized goods, my floors all had telltale crumbs from lack of vacuuming, and my car was looking like salt stain was the chosen paint color. It was all contributing to a level of disorganization that was making me internally grumpy and out of whack. Outer calm reflects inner peace right?

Every day chores are easy to put on the back burner when other fires need to be put out. But I have to say it felt really nice to focus on my home and making it livable again. It made me feel a much needed sense of respect for what I have around me each and every day. Plenty literally oozes out of every drawer and cupboard and I think it's easy to not see the forest for the trees sometimes. I have talked about the concept of stewardship here before and it's something I truly believe in. I should act as the steward for the things I have, responsibly managing and caring for the immediate world around me right down to the oil in my car and the crumby carpet underfoot. It doesn't send a very good message to my children, or my commitment to the environment, if I let my "toys" and plenty pile up or break.

My recent lack of stewardship and home management was also feeling like a black eye thanks to the book I'm currently reading called The Egg and I. Set in the 1940s and written about that same time, it tells the story of the hilarious escapades of Betty MacDonald, who married a chicken farmer and moved to the middle of nowhere beneath the Cascade mountains on the coast of the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. The book is a fun read thanks to the wit of the storyteller, but it also makes one mindful of just how much home improvement and conveniences have taken place since the farm days of the 40s. It makes me realize just how good I have it around my house, how absolutely doable housework and home management have become. I have so many time saving devices at my disposal. Washing machine, dishwasher, hot water to name a few! We have a leaky sink faucet in the kitchen right now and we've been turning off the water directly at the pipes under the sink until we fix it so we don't waste, and I found myself getting so annoyed with the hassle of having to lean down to switch it on to wash my hands or soak a dish....never mind the fact that this woman in my novel had to walk out in the pouring rain to pump herself a measly pail of freezing cold water! She then had to boil it pot by pot with a wood burning stove for any washing or bathing required. What is wrong with me?! How easy I have it peeing indoors and touching buttons to cook food, suck up dirt, wash and dry my clothes and dishes! I fear I would have made a terrible pioneer.

We do live in a more complex world in terms of other commitments and expectations-and I feel women particularly face this modern burden. Most of us are no longer one loaf of bread short of starving or one pair shy of wearing dirty underwear everyday. We have plenty to juggle. In the literal sense of the phrase. And I'm thinking in modern times that's more the appropriate definition of stewardship. Juggling the plenty, making it count and matter rather than shoving it in a closet or rusting in the yard unused. Today's home manager isn't up at 4 am letting rolls raise and hanging wash by the coals of the wood stove, but instead has to master time management both inside and outside the home and using the words I have enough. This role might not be as physically taxing or as linked to survival as the kind played by Betty MacDonald and the millions of other housewives and managers of the recent past, but I'm not so sure it isn't just as important to happiness and a sense of succeeding on the home front. Here on Summerhill Drive, I guess I am a modern pioneer.

(Above images from Corbis. com. Aren't they fantastic?)

Pep Talk

2011-01-25T19:56:00.003-07:00

If you've been here awhile you may remember that every year I like to come up with some mantra that I would like to sum up the year ahead of me. It started with "kicking A" a few years back and progressed into just be better, then "keep your head on straight". I think I've finally settled on one for this new year. I have a lot of irons in the fire right now, so to speak. It is a huge time of transition for me personally, and I'd probably also say spiritually. The funny thing is that 2011 is also, according to numerologists and new age types, a year that represents a shift in focus and paradigm for the entire planet. We are collectively entering a new cycle of birth and growth. This idea registered with me because I'm feeling so much focus right now on creating and bringing about new growth in my own life and I sense that many of my peers are doing this too. The prediction feels right to me and it makes me extremely hopeful and excited about the year ahead for the whole lot of us out there in the world.

It takes a lot of energy to make things happen, to make life happen the way you'd like it to. I can't think of a more concrete symbol of energy than flame or fire. This is a year I'm going to need all the energy I can muster so I have decided 'STOKE IT UP' is my new mantra winner. It also makes me happy to use this phrase because it strikes a personal chord. My dad is the best fire master I know and I grew up with lots of family time around the fire and hearing "throw another log on the fire" and "stoke the fire, Alli", and now my kids regularly help do this job when they are at Grandpa's house. Anyway, this mantra feels really apt for the kind of life I want to lead in 2011. I love the word stoke and its inherent snowboarder-esque "I'm stoked" enthusiasm, but I also love that it's an action word. It is not passive; one cannot properly stoke sitting on one's ass, and that's what I need, what the world needs really, more action, less talk. A get 'er done sensibility.

I love to nerd out and watch those youtube videos showing chain reactions like this. It's impressive to see materially/physically the way one small action or movement can set a series of events in motion. It's the ripple, the domino effect at play. I can't help but believe that the choices I make in my life have this same effect on a larger whole. What I decide to do today makes tomorrow take shape. What I say to my children tomorrow effects what they will say to their children in 30 years. What I don't do or say can't ever happen, it can't ever become a ripple on the surface effecting the larger wave. It's nothing, a non-factor, and there's not much life in nothing as far as I can tell.

The truth of the matter is that we are all shaping our reality each minute of our lives. It suddenly feels very important to me to make the choice to stoke rather than to sit and watch and dream. I've done enough watching and waiting for now. I'm ready to fill a corner of the world with what I want to see.

All this self pep talkery makes me mindful of a wonderful quote by Goethe that is always at the top of my inspirato file...if this can't nudge to get in the zone of action, I don't know what can....

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized. If we treat people as they are, we make them worse. If we treat people as they ought to be, we help them become what they are capable of becoming."

STOKE IT UP!!

You say it's your birthday...

2011-01-09T22:03:00.003-07:00

My oldest child is fast approaching her 7th birthday. Next week I will have a 7 year old daughter! I find it rather shocking since that means I've been parenting, been MOM, for all that time; I've been on the clock and basically responsive and responsible for 2,555 days! It feels like quite an achievement for both me and Cleo.

Parenting is as dynamic and mysterious a process as photosynthesis, as far as I'm concerned. Parenting has shaped my heart and mind in ways that I certainly couldn't ever have predicted and it has challenged me to the breaking point on many occasions. I think one of the biggest perks, and certainly one of the most balancing principles of parenting is the way it humbles you. Daily I'm humbled by the humongous love I feel for my kids, one that seems to just keep exponentially growing. I'm humbled by all the mistakes and instantaneous regrets I feel when I mishandle or ignore something and watch the mood and problem spiral out of my grasp. I'm humbled by the way my kids seem to just keep loving me right through all those mistakes I make. And I'm humbled by the enormity of the task of teaching and caring for someone for a lifetime, knowing that whatever happens this relationship of being a parent to a child will define me and help define them.

Cleo as an almost 7 year old is so full of wonder and smart little quips that I seriously want to bottle her vitality and save it for some future rainy day when she's a teen, lying on the bed in headphones texting, dull eyes staring back at me. She can be rough and tumble or dainty and fancy. She likes dinosaurs and peace signs and owls. She is attracted to treasures and hoards small objects like, ahem, ancient skeleton keys stolen from Grandma Mia's house. She collects rocks and crystals, loves Scooby Doo, ancient Egypt, and anything macabre. I know I'm biased, but I think she's utterly fascinating. But don't get me wrong, I forget this important fact daily. I think sometimes I forget to see my own children, or maybe it's more that I tend to only see them as my children and forget to see them for themselves?

The monotony of routine as a parent, and the fact that you are responsible for creating a human who understands manners, grammar, morality, and kindness is what can make you numb to the experience. But boy, taken out of context, kids are magic. Watching Flynn walk around with his white elephant gift-a disposable camera- over the holidays was enough to remind me that everything he sees is of interest to him. The doorknob, my face, the toilet bowl. Details are interesting to kids, and as they age, I'm learning that they have such fascinating ways of putting all those details together to form a world view. I was telling Cleo a story about my youth at my Grandma Lou's the other day and she interrupted me to ask "so was all the world gray back then?" She was interpreting black and white photos and movies into her perception of the past. Isn't that interesting?

Taking the time out of my busy task mastering role to really just hang out with my kids and talk to them feels like a worthy goal. Over the holiday break I indulged and let my chatty Cleo talk my ear off while I tickled her back before bed. She's always talkative at this time of night but most the time I'm eager to get her down, get to my couple hours of uninterrupted freedom. Or I can only see it as a ploy to stay awake longer so I tend to cut it short and sometimes even get annoyed at her long list of topics she wants to discuss at such an inopportune time. But it was so fun to just listen to her with a free ear, one hungry to hear her funny thoughts and wishes. We have discussed things like why we can't be buried in our own backyard when we die, having cake shops next to each other one day and apartments in Paris where our whole family sleeps on bunk beds, why Arctic animals have white fur, and who the oldest person we know is. Our conversations have zest and depth and I think its because I'm really listening and entertained by what she has to say. I'm being present. And often I think that's the hardest thing to do as a parent and a busy adult with adult sized worries and preoccupations, but also probably the most valuable thing I can do for my kids. I believe giving attention to others is always a gift, but giving true attention to my children is as much a gift to me as it is to them. It gives me the chance to unwrap-present-like- the daily hard work and grind of parenting and transform it into a fleeting moment of discovery and connection. Who is this person I'm so driven to love and protect and nurture anyway?

My sweet father in law always wishes me a happy birthday on my children's birthdays. It's a lovely recognition of the fact that for all us parents out there on the day our children are born a new us is born as well. Our life divides, our heart multiplies. I've never felt that more than on this 7th birthday of being a parent. Happy Birthday to me. Happy Birthday, Cleo. I am one lucky lady to know you.

Be Still

2010-12-27T09:45:00.003-07:00

Maybe it is because we're in the midst of the busiest couple weeks of the year, but I have been thinking a lot about the loveliness of home time, of staying in my pjs and making bread at 1:00 in the afternoon and just being with my own little family without a laundry list of to do's, parties, projects, obligations, and work shifts. I haven't had a day like that in a long, long time and I can feel myself teetering on the brink of exhaustion. My brilliant sister once described the difference between being an introvert and an extrovert as either feeling that social situations "fill you" or "drain you." I fall firmly into the filling up category when it comes to people, and being a pleaser by nature I have a hard time saying no to social engagements and I'm always interested in planning events where I can see those I love. I also think I'm always rah rah rah party because I spend a good number of hours each day at home with kids, insulated from outside connection. Getting out really means something to me, it's a break from routine, and I tend to thrive on it. But I also tend to create, plan, and commit to a lot of extra curricular situations that tax my family's resources both financially and in terms of our chance to be together as a family unit-2 parents x 2 kids.

I think it's pretty impossible to change what fundamentally floats your boat, so I know I will never become a hermit long term. But I do think it is time for me to hunker down a bit and get re-centered with my family. Last year I read about an idea on the wonderful crafty blog Inchmark about taking a week to "BE STILL" as a family. The idea is really just what it sounds, to make an organized and committed stab at retreating to do nothing and to enjoy that state of peace. Inchmark does this at the start of the holiday season, but I'm thinking the perfect time for my family to make this a yearly tradition will be the first week of the new year. It feels like an intuitive way to start off 2011 and I'm always happy to set a worthy goal right from the get go. I'm in love with short term, manageable resolutions that can wither after 7 days!

In our week of being still I plan to resist the urge to make plans, to go out to dinner, or work late. The week will give us a chance to read books out loud and privately, do puzzles, play with our new Christmas bells and whistles, and to sit by candlelight. I imagine some walks and maybe a few craft projects but lots of time by the fire, slow simmering soups, music listening, design magazines and Roald Dahl on our laps. No friends, no play dates, no errands, no outside activities, just me, myself, and mine own at home on Summerhill Drive.

It sounds pretty heavenly, right? I really don't mean to sound all bah humbug because I truly am looking forward to another glorious week of Christmas break with friends and loved ones and fun activities and parties, but I hope that knowing that the stillness is coming January 1 will help me to soak up the love, the bubbly, and the joy of this crazy, hectic, glorious season that much more. Turn outward so I can happily turn inward.....

Glad tidings to you...

2010-12-23T14:59:00.005-07:00

I think Dr. Seuss is one of the great American literary treasures. Everything he wrote was pretty much pitch perfect (and in trisyllabic rhythm, no less!) and represent heavy ideological thinking packaged in a humorous, wacky, and utterly original style. I just ran across his "A Prayer for a Child" and thought it was a perfect little message to send out into the computering ether this holiday season. Enjoy, and please have yourselves a merry little Christmas-with peace and good will toward all.....

Prayer for a Child

From here on earth,
From my small place
I ask of You
Way out in space:
In every land
What You and I
Both understand…

Please tell all men
That Peace is Good.
That’s all
That need be understood
In every world
In Your great sky.
(We understand.
Both you and I.)

-Theodore Seuss Geisel

written in 1955 for Colliers magazine and accompanied by above illustration

Finding the fa la la la la

2010-12-14T21:36:00.003-07:00

I really do love this season. I'm no banner waving Christian so honestly "the reason for the season" is just part of what I love about Christmas. The lore of St Nicholas and the idea of celebrating the Solstice, the longest night of the year with it's thoughts of a brighter, warmer, greener future, also make me pretty giddy. I love the fresh beginning of the New Year approaching and vow every January 1 to tackle aspirations and try harder to fix stubborn habits. It's a glorious time to look both backwards and forwards.

I got choked up reading The Polar Express to Flynn last night. It happens every time I read that line about how it used to be that all the boy's childhood friends could hear Santa's sleigh bell and over time as they grew up even his sister could not hear it, could not find the magic of Christmas. It feels all too familiar now that I'm an adult. I usually feel two or three moments of full fledged excitement during the season, and like I said, I love all the history and tradition surrounding this time of year. But my heartfelt moments and excitement now seem so fleeting and are quickly over taken by the exhaustion of social engagements (seriously why does everyone have a party just this time of year? I'd welcome something say the 2nd weekend in February?); the fear of over spending and debt and spoiling already spoiled children; the wondering whether I need to have misc. gifts ready for the random neighbor or friend caller which then brings on anger about the feelings of obligation instead of generosity the holidays can incite; and lastly, hoping that I've been 'fun' and present enough to make the season as magical for my kids as it felt for me as a child. I used to spend the whole month in pretty much a state of over-excited hyper activity! My sister and I would plan elaborate Christmas Eve programs for our relatives, reading stories or acting out puppet shows or lip synching to Andy Williams' Christmas record. I would eagerly await the Christmas Eve call from Santa who mysteriously knew so much about me. (A belated thank you Charlie Seldin! I think you fooled me for 10 years.) All of December was a blur of anticipation. Now it's pretty much just a blur.

Of course a lot of the spirit of Christmas can't help but dissipate when it's my Amex, and not Santa, footing the bill to make the magic happen. I read this frightening article awhile back that said it will cost today's parents $222,360 to raise a child born in 2009. Gulp! During Christmas, it feels like that number is right around the corner. Stocking stuffers and whim buys and trying to be 'fair' to one kid and the other adds up. I try to reign myself in but its hard not to get caught up in the mania when you are out on the front lines of commerce!

Honestly probably the best boost I had at discovering the real magic of Christmas, the kind that just might still come from Santa's workshop, is when I perused Made by Joel's wonderful creations for his children. (I've mentioned him before here.) Not only do his toys and projects look great visually but they are geniusly simple and interactive. They harness the imgination, dexterity, and natural curiousity of kids. Those are the type of playthings I like to have around. And while I did make a few crumby Christmas purchases for my kids, (hello horrendous peace sign nail polish kit and squishy salamanders purchased as at the register whims) I am hoping to redeem myself and my standards by making a little something with my own two hands to put under the tree. I'm going old school and want to introduce my kids to the pleasure of analog telephoning, tin can style! Look how cute these are! It will be an interesting experiment to see if something so hands on and homemade can compete on Christmas morning in a sea of batteries, remote controls, and plastic Playmobil. Fingers crossed! Even if those fingers are painted with glittery peace sign polish...

Tis the season...

2010-12-05T15:18:00.003-07:00

I come from a small family and have just one sibling to call my own. But lucky for me, she's amazing. Amy is probably the most trustworthy person I know, capable of holding onto triumphs and confessions and heart aches with perfect loyalty and thoughtful advice. She's probably aided in this by what seems to me an adept moral compass and a keen listening ear. She's one of those people who never seems ruffled regardless of how much is on her plate. She quietly accomplishes more than most people I know, but she isn't one to get all braggadocio about it, so few people actually realize the zillion tiny balls she throws into the air every day. She's always the 3 c's-calm, cool, and collected- and since I feel I spend half my days in twits and fits- I've always deeply admired and even coveted her degree of zen.

Amy's full of good ideas too and she absolutely made my day this week by sending a lovely little holiday note via snail mail. Inside were a few photos of cute items she'd seen in catalogs and on each she'd labeled Al or Jaren. The note simply said "because I really am a lover of the idea that the thought really does count for something...here are just a few things I would love to be buying for you this holiday season!"

Isn't that fantastic? Knowing that her family and mine, along with most people I know, are in financial lock down this holiday season, I absolutely adored this note from my sister. In fact it truly felt like she'd sent me a gift. And I agree with her sentiment completely. It really is the thought that counts and I felt loved, pegged, appreciated, and thought of just as I would have if she'd actually bought me these things. (All of which did happen to be right on point, by the way. I mean, look at those boots! A match made in heaven.) It was brilliant and made me want to go on a fake vision board style shopping spree for everyone on my list this year, cutting and tearing magazine and catalog photos and wrapping them up. I would wager that a family Christmas party could still feel pretty great even if everyone opened a gift with a photo of an item, instead of the actual item, inside.

I think it's easy to forget in the mania of the holidays that gift giving doesn't have to be an elaborate, expensive enterprise. The best gifts are the ones given thoughtfully, whether they are big or small. It's an art to be a good gift giver and to me this doesn't just mean you are a good shopper and always have something for someone. When done correctly, a gift is a true manifestation of who someone is- you "get" them enough to choose something they would choose for themselves- or you have paid enough attention to someone to know what they are most in need of.

We should really think before we buy all of the time, but especially at Christmas. I believe in the ritual of giving this time of year, it's symbolic and Christian and all that good stuff. We shouldn't complacently let it become yet another meaningless display of our buying power. If you are looking for a little Christmas time inspiration, treat yourself and read the wonderful O. Henry story The Gift of the Magi. You can give it a whirl here or seek out a copy of the above version illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger. It's gorgeous and good for the kiddos to boot. Let's hope we can all be a little Della & Jim to each other and those we love this year!

Happy Holidays!

Living History

2010-11-23T19:20:00.002-07:00

In the last year, all the oldest generation of my family has all but died. I have no grandparents left, and since I started out with 3 sets thanks to a complicated family tree, that's saying something. My great aunt Shirley is the sole survivor in the 80+ crowd of my bloodline. (She's a great one to have left though. Any of you who know me well have heard me talk about Shirley. She's one serious kook and someone not to be trifled with. She embodies sentiments of another time when she says phrases like "great scott" or "my heavenly days, Alli" or "it's on the Boulevard" --meaning Foothill Blvd. She is a keeper and a true family matriarch now.) We are so lucky to have her with us still.

Holidays make me think about family. And this year, it feels a little strange not having the older set to anchor my family to our usual traditions and events. I can already see how not having my grandmother Mere around is going to mean seeing my uncles, aunts, and cousins much less. Time passes and family traditions evolve. It makes sense, times change and families grow, but I picture how difficult it must be for the person in their twilight years, who was once at the center of a family, to suddenly feel more like a leaf on a much larger tree. In one way I suppose that's what we all want when we start a family of our own, to witness something so much larger than ourselves taking shape, but it is easy to fantasize about that when you are stuck in your prime years, little family emerging and growing. It might be a bit more bitter pill to swallow when you are the old one at the table struggling to keep up with the conversation about ipads and Facebook and Toy Story 3.

One of the things I admire about traditional cultures is the way elderly people are revered and honored. Even once you die, you are still an important piece of society because the concept of respected "ancestors" is so central to many of these cultures. Some even believe the ancestor spirits are ever-present influencing for better or worse what happens in the daily life of the living. I like this belief that those who went before should inform the decisions you make in your life. It seems so comforting and smart, kind of like listening to a life coach or something. But it's simply a foreign notion in American life. I'm not saying we don't mourn our dead, of course we do, but we don't collectively spend much time thinking about what the previous generation would want us to do. It feels irrelevant in our world of personal choice and fixation with progress. Looking back isn't an American, or some might even say Western, direction of thought.

I can't say that I always listened rapt when Mere or other grandparents were telling their tales or doling out advice, but now that I can't hear it, I miss the chance to. I'd really love to ask Mere some questions about her carmel sauce technique and hear my Grandma Lou say "Raoul and Felipe" (her names for the 2 elevators in her building) in her best tongue rolling Spanish accent. I think it's difficult not to see our elderly as stereotypes. We forget to look past the wrinkles and bad Christmas sweatshirts and see their former youth spent full of days that probably really resembled our own. I wish that I could have looked further past Mere's critical eye for decadence and material possessions and focused more on the reasons behind her criticism. What was it like living through the depression and having your mother sew wedding dresses to put clothes on your back?

I find it a wee bit ironic that we fixate on our kids knowing factoids of history like "1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue", and yet most of us couldn't probably give a significant personal family history date like when our parents were married or the year our grandparents were born. Living history, that's what or older family members are. I'm a fan of living history. I know I'm always referencing, nerd-like, radio shows, but I truly adore the tiny segments on NPR made by Storycorps. Usually less than 5 minutes, they are snippets of interviews between family members or friends. It's just one person asking another person about their life and significant (or not) moments from it. I love hearing these intimate pieces of a stranger's story and how the interviewer relates to it. It is surprisingly hard to interview someone you know well. I took my Dad into a Storycorp booth a couple summers ago when they were traveling through SLC and we recorded an interview. It was an experience I treasure-emotional wreck of an interviewer though I was- and I now have a documented, recorded piece of our shared living family history. It makes me proud. But why haven't I extended this experience to pretty much everyone I know, particularly those I know who are likely in their last years?

Storycorps motto is "Every life matters." I believe this too, so this holiday season, when I am sure to see my family, old and grey and young and dewy alike, I am going to challenge myself to think like an interviewer and find out some facts and life history about those around me. Storycorps has a list of great questions to use as a stepping off point. It might not be the usual cocktail hour conversation but it is something I know I can fell good about doing. Check the list out. Maybe you will find out that you want some of these answers for yourself at your next holiday shindig?.....

An early thanksgiving

2010-11-11T13:58:00.002-07:00

I have a real affection for the radio talk show Radio West. (In fact, Jaren loves to tease me about my boyfriend being the show's host, Doug Fabrizio.) I don't listen to it daily or even regularly, but if I'm ever in the car at 11:00 you better believe I'm tuning in and likely really enjoying it. I have been exposed to so many new ideas and interesting personal stories because of this show. I think it would be a dream job to research and read about random things and people and then get to quiz someone about the who, what, where, when, and why. It's endless, really, the fascinating things we can learn about each other and this world if we choose to do so.

I was lucky to catch a good chunk of Radio West this week which was an interview with David Campbell, a guy who just wrote a book called American Grace. The book is an attempt to figure out why America remains such a religious nation compared to similar economic/social countries like those in Western Europe, and why our different religious sects don't necessarily divide us a nation. In America, we've kept our religions remarkably intact and even growing. Campbell posits that it has a lot to do with our nation's entrepreneurial take on religion-it's personal here, not a required religion adopted by the state or government, and because of that, religion is able to be really responsive and fitting to personal needs and tastes. It's rather interesting to me that this means that the vitality of religion (and perhaps our nation) still comes down to what our country's founders felt, that celebrating and honoring religious freedom is key.

One of the most compelling parts of the interview to me was when Campbell mentioned that in random samples across the US if he asked people the question whether they say any type of grace before a meal, it was pretty much universally 50/50; half say grace, half don't. This statistic was true regardless of where he was in the country, regardless of age or social status, etc. I found this surprising. I'm not even sure if I thought more or less people would still be blessing their food, but I thought the fact that it breaks down so perfectly across the country was significant and worth thinking about. What does it mean to not say some kind of thank you out loud before you eat? Is something lost if saying grace becomes a relic of the past or the fervent?

Not being a religious family, I confess that me and mine rarely say grace or a prayer before dinner, and yet in the abstract I realize how much this bothers me. It isn't about hellfire and brimstone or God per se. For me, it is really about the true meaning of grace as an expression of gratitude, regardless of what the specific words are or whom they are directed to. This is a heart of the matter subject for me since I think if I could sum up my religiousity/spirituality in one single word it would be gratitude. I have faith in giving thanks. I have faith in believing that the world around me is truly amazing and that those I interact with are unique and amazing too. As a parent, the qualities I hope to impart in my kids are kindness and graciousness. Call it Christian. Call it being all you can be. I don't really care. I just hate to think that by opting out of saying grace I might be helping to foster an environment in my home that equates to entitlement...the we have this just because we do, irrespective of the work it took to have it, mentality. We all work for our money but also someone else worked to grow it, make it, dream it into being. (And the it here is a fill in the blank, mind you. It can be anything.) Ultimately you can call it God, you can call it the Universe, or you can call it a long chain of humanity cooperatively organized to make it so....but isn't there room in all of those views for an expression of mindful gratitude? I can't see the harm in directing a few quiet minutes to thankfulness each day.

Out of curiousity, I looked up some different traditions around saying grace at the dinner table and was quite inspired by what is out there. I thought this list of Christian/God centered texts had some nice ones. I also thought this list compiled from all different religions was interesting. None of them feel quite right for me but I think I'm going to try and experiment and see if I can come up with one that suits my family. I started simply last night by asking everyone to say one thing they are grateful for. It wasn't earth shattering--Flynn's was Santa for heaven's sake--but it set a tone for the meal that made me quite happy.

It's fitting to bring this all up in the month of Thanksgiving, isn't it? I adore Thanksgiving and hate that it gets swept under the rug in the vaccuum between commerical Halloween and even more commercial Christmas. I love that the holiday is about the simple act of appreciation and giving thanks. I love the Mayflower. I love the Pilgrim story and even have a soft spot for crazy Pilgrim dress. I'd wear a pair of square toed buckle shoes any day and this is 300 years later! I intend to make these cute paper Pilgrim hats the required dress code at the Harbertson family turkey day meal. And you'd better believe it, this Thanksgiving we'll be primed and ready for grace!

Dollar store woes

2010-10-31T17:49:00.002-06:00

In my life as a parent, there is no retail hell quite as visceral as taking my children to the Dollar store. It's a fate I try hard to skirt, avoiding the places like the plague that they are. They are just so full of constant temptation for children-balloons, obnoxious holiday decor, sparkly crap, plastic toy wonderlands, and cavity inducing treats. And it doesn't take a 6 year old long to figure out just how cheap $1 is compared to normal shopping experiences. Because of the toll it takes on my psyche we rarely go to the Dollar store, but every major holiday seems to chip away at my resolve and we always end up there for something random-this Halloween it was glow sticks for trick or treating. So the dollar store conundrum is fresh on my mind.

I really don't think dollar stores are responsible for cultural decay, but I'm not joking when I say that I think places like it have contributed directly to it. I think All A Dollar, Big Lots, and the like have done a lot to harm our mindset as a culture, and especially our consumer culture, so central to the American way of life. The value we place on goods is irretriveably altered when we pay only $1 for them. We don't expect much out of the product's design, we don't expect it to exude taste, we aren't supporting the labor market that produced the product, and we certainly don't expect it to last. I have issue with all of these things going by the wayside, but encouraging disposability is to me really egregious. I bet 50% of land fills are now filled with the broken down rejects someone bought at the freaking dollar store! Trust me, I tried this summer, and it is hard to unload the stuff at a garage sale, let alone have it hang around for years in your own closet.

Last summer I read an awesome book called Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. It was an enlightening read about the global practices behind producing goods cheaply and the psychology of how good deals and cheap goods have infiltrated our consumer experience and mentality. The book depressed me on a lot of levels--thinking of the plight of the foreign worker making silly products for hours on end that no one needs in dangerous conditions is a hard pill to swallow-but the thing that really struck me most was the way cheap goods have changed our expectations of products and therefore our expectation of workmanship and quality. It is frightening to think that we have traded in the concept of heirloom quality for sheer quantity or the hope of a larger bank balance in exchange for inexpensive goods.

Being married to a craftsman, someone who can build actual useable things from scratch, I've learned the value of creating by hand. I've seen the work it takes to produce a chair from a hunk of wood, and it is something so hard to put a price on. It's someone's time, sure, but it's also someone's knowledge and someone's pride in what they produce. It is intensely personal work to make something by hand. And it's that sense of the personal that sets the creation apart from mass production goods. Anyone can buy a dresser from IKEA and save a bundle but is there a story behind the item, a point of view, other than how cheap it was or the frustration of putting it together?! Can you name something you own that you feel you would want to pass on to your children? Why do you feel this way about it? What sets it apart from everything else you own? I'm willing to wager you aren't looking at something you bought at IKEA or the Dollar store.

Things that we truly value are priceless. Literally. You cannot put a dollar figure on them and yet that is the only criteria shoppers use when perusing the aisles of dollar store establishments. "But it's so cheap!" "Can you believe this is only a dollar?" And that's exactly the mentality that gets all of us. These places thrive because it feels good to get a big bang out of a little buck. A 6 year old feels it, we feel it. It's a difficult thing to combat and a very difficult thing to say no to, especially in tight times like these. But I think it's worth considering the impact buying cheap has on us as a culture and on us as a personal consumer.

I've accepted my impact politically and socially as a consumer, but I'm not willing to accept the classic American consumer moniker if it means increasing trash, not treasure, on the planet. If we as Americans are consumers above all, let's be good ones. Let's elevate our possessions to being bastions of good taste, design, sustainability, and personality. Ghandi's old saying "we must be the change we wish to see in the world" was surely never meant for consumer practices, but I'm convinced there isn't a more political, or aesthetic- altering, stand we can take as a culture. I think we could change the fabric of culture more quickly by refusing to buy cheap than by the ballot box. It's an interesting power to wield, the power of the wallet, and definitely something worth our thoughtful attention when making those purchases that make the world, our world, go round.

p.s. The author of Cheap was interviewed on Radio West last year. I seriously heart our local radio west situation, and this episode is a great one hour program on all these topics and more. Give the podcast a listen if you can!

Big ups and trying not to fall down

2010-10-20T21:52:00.003-06:00

I love when the inner world of my heart and the outer world converge. I've had a lot of sunny moments this past week that match the absolute golden beauty of these late fall days. Exciting things are afoot for me and for Jaren and the kids seem to be happily progressing. Feelings of deep gratitude for my uber-lovely parents and all the support and gracious generosity they bestow on me and mine are making me feel full. I am so lucky to have the kind of parents who are equal parts friend, confidant, and cheerleader. They have gotten me through rough patches since I was a wee thing and here they are still, at 35, stepping up to babysit my kiddos, allay my fears-both real and imagined, and buoy my reality. I am so, so lucky.

And to top it off, I got to go to the desert this weekend! I think Utah is a gem on many levels, but I don't think words can describe the magic of the red rock desert. When I head south, I feel like I'm going home. I love Southern Utah in the spring when the desert landscape is alive with flowers and life that defy the arid landscape, but Fall is pretty damn spectacular. The huge Cottonwoods lining all the rivers and washes were blazing yellow, and against the blue sky and deep amber rock it was almost too much contrast, kind of like technicolor or a hand colored photograph. We treated our kids to their first Goblin Valley experience and they were just the right ages to scramble and climb among the rock formations and really take it in. We spent the time hanging and hiking with dear friends and admiring the grandeur of a very mighty landscape. Again, it made me feel full of light and love.

It's a lucky life to lead and I know I'm blessed or fortunate or whatever you want to call it. I get worried when things feel like they are on the uptake, though, like something is bound to come crashing down. It's the "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" equation. Is it human nature to feel this?

I can't recall where I first learned about the term momento mori, a Latin phrase that translates to "remember you must die" or "remember you will die" but I've been pretty fascinated with the idea for awhile. Manifestations of momento mori occur in a lot of architecture and art, especially from the Middle Ages and Puritan era--most are dark paintings full of grumpy old men holding skulls or oversized time pieces or the occasional church with human bones and skulls prominently displayed, symbols of impending death. Macabre though it may be, I love this concept. I've been considering carrying a little momento mori of my own, something that cautions me to think about the now. I love the idea of reminding myself, even in my most light hearted and happy state, that time is always short, life cannot be lived forever. It's counter intuitive, but I find this comforts me. My biggest fear just might be letting my very own life pass me by; to feel regret or that I did not live to the fullest extent of who I am. To me, that can really only be achieved if I stay mindful about TODAY. This very minute is really all that we can control right? Who knows what will happen next?

I like skulls and black. And a pocket watch is cool, but I don't think I can go that literal with my momento mori. So I'm thinking, for me, what better manifestation of momento mori than to carry around the perfect little smooth rock I collected in the desert this weekend. It feels good to my fingertips and fits perfectly in my pocket. Rounded by eons of time, rinsed by flood and rain, and baked over and over again in the scorching desert sun, it is a tiny fragment of one of the most beautiful pieces of this Earth. Let's hope its tangible presence in my jeans helps me strive to be a beautiful fragment in this crazy world too......

Who says you can't teach old dogs new tricks?

2010-10-04T16:46:00.003-06:00

Just when I think the state of things is in the toilet and that humans have successfully destroyed the delicate balance of the planet for good, something comes along to make me re-evaluate and feel hopeful. I do believe progress is being made on the waste front. I've never understood why when one company discovers a great, eco-friendly solution, all other companies aren't required to follow suit. Interestingly, it seems that consumers (more and more) are forcing this issue, not government, and maybe that is the genius of the capitalist culture? We are taking a stand and requiring our products and our companies to consider the waste and the pollution their businesses create. Money talks way louder than politicians, I guess, and that puts us as consumers in a pretty powerful position, but one that also requires responsibility.

Plastic water bottles (think Dasani, Aquafina) are a huge pet peeve of mine. I can't think of another product that more appropriately represents all that is wrong with mainstream America. Buying something in place of something you already pay for via your faucet at home is itself ridiculous, and then made even more so since consumer protection places have consistently revealed that fancy "spring" water is rarely from any place more pure than a faucet anyway, and in fact is subject to fewer regulations. It's just tap water that has been repackaged and refrigerated for your convenience. Plus plastic water bottles have become a serious blight to our environment. Though plastic bottles are recyclable, less than half end up in recycling bins, the rest of the billions go to the landfill where it will take several hundreds of years for the plastic to photodegrade into smaller bits, which still never completely disappear from the soil and the water system. And to make matters worse, it takes barrels and barrels of oil to manufacture the bottles in the first place, a definite waste of finite resources.

Americans drink more bottled water than any nation on Earth and we probably have the easiest access to plumbed water. Ironic, right? Consumer awareness creeps in, however, and I have started to notice just how many people carry stainless and plastic water bottles now, filled at home, rather than purchasing yet another plastic bottle. Not only is it budget conscious, it is so much more earth friendly and those stainless bottles are indestructible (unless you put them full in the freezer and forget about them like Jaren did-in that scenario they explode!) Even the plastic bottles themselves are beginning to be made from biodegradable components, the best ones being 100% plant based and able to degrade completely in 75 days. That's progress, folks!

I'd love to see the same thing happen with the Ziploc style plastic baggie business. Fabric, oilcloth, and glass containers are much better looking anyway! Check out these cutie pies sold on Etsy, they are my personal favorite. But I'm seeing a lot of things like this pop up in Whole Foods and even my "normal" grocery store. Change creeps in. I mostly remember to bring my cloth bags to the store now. (Finally realizing I needed to keep them in the car was a major boon for that issue.) And I am watching to see if California will become the first state to completely ban single use plastic bags from retail stores, a measure that hopefully will lead to an eventual national ban, or at least increased consumer awareness.

Perhaps these are small peeves to voice, but seriously, en masse, think of how much plastic waste we as the biggest consumers in the word could avert with just small decisions and small lifestyle changes. Lord knows that if the American public doesn't put up a fuss about these issues, nothing will change. Big companies will just keep pumping out unnecessary products that are bad for the Earth and therefore bad for humans. It's back to the old "you must be the change you wish to see in the world" Ghandi deal. I believe we can do it if we stay vigilant and stay open to changing our habits.

But if you need a little more incentive to stop buying those flats of bottled water at Costco, or pretty much any other plastic item, check out these photos from the amazing Chris Jordan taken of albatross chicks near Midway Island in the North Pacific ocean. Our oceans are becoming a wasteland of floating plastic, and sea birds and other sea life are eating our trash and dying because of it. The photos are tragic and telling and hopefully a true harbinger of hopeful change.....

PARLEZ VOUS MONEY?

2010-09-23T15:46:00.002-06:00

I hate money, or more properly said, I hate the lack of it. It's a super drag to be poor! Prioritizing needs and not factoring in wants takes a toll on the psyche. I've recently had to say no to an expense that meant something to me-an annual trip with girlfriends whom I dearly love. It just wasn't in the cards, or the bank account this year, and owning up to this truth, as right as it was, has been surprisingly difficult.

I don't know about you, but we live with a certain amount of subterfuge in our finances. Absolute zero is never actually absolute zero, thanks to modern day credit and card-age. It is so easy to live beyond actual means, especially when means fluctuate as wildly as ours do. We are used to a feast or famine cycle around here, and it is all too easy for us to think we are just paying for something now, in the interim, until the big money comes up or the paycheck gets sent from the last job or whatever excuse we offer up. Saying no to the recent trip was a manifestation, an exercise, in acknowledging what I can actually afford RIGHT NOW, with the bottom dollar, rather than what I would like to afford. I do that neat "what I would like to afford" & purchase trick all the time. And it feels good in the moment, whereas this no/denial thing hurts a lot in the moment. I hate to miss out on fun. I hate to miss out on memories and chick flick movie marathons, and Ketel One popsicles, damn it! But big picture me is attempting to focus in on what is gained from a sacrifice like this. It's a pretty tidy, short list at this point, but I have to admit to feeling a nice sense of responsible control and a good dose of putting family needs first. It gets down to brass tax sometimes, and I have to be willing to ask myself whether a trip for me or snow boots or dance lessons for the kids is priority. Kids will win every time when you put us head to head. And that actually feels good to acknowledge. It makes me feel like a bona fide grown up, even if grown ups do get to have less fun.

I think one of the interesting things about money is that it definitely makes the world go round, but in my world, no one ever talks about it. I don't know what a single friend or family member in my life makes or how much they live on. I don't know whether someone could retire young or whether they hoarde food stamps in their purse. It's simply not a subject we breach. It feels awkward to even write about money to me. I feel exposed, judged, and gauche. What is this about? Is there a reason to keep money a behind closed doors topic, whether you are talking about wealth or poverty? Why does it feel so strange to "admit" that I can't afford something? And why do I so rarely hear others express this simple fact? There is no way every single person I know has massive savings and plenty of dough. Financial statistics for my generation, not to mention the current financial climate, just don't bear that out.

It makes me wonder if the language of affordability is a bit like learning a foreign tongue, something that only practice can make fluent? Perhaps it is time for our entire culture to take a little Rosetta Stone course in money talk? I wouldn't mind having a few well rehearsed phrases in my arsenal, ways to politely explain to a friend or loved one that I can't afford a certain something, or "I've exceeded my monthly budget for eating out, oops!", without feeling any ensuing awkwardness and/or pity. I guess that's the crux of it all. We seem to be trained in this culture to believe that when we talk about our money we are revealing something private, personal. But in a way, money couldn't be less so. It's cold, hard cash at the end of the day; flimsy paper. It represents facts and sociology but not really an iota of personality. It reveals something about me, but more in a text book way than anything interesting. Talking about money in the positive or in the negative seems like it shouldn't be dirty laundry. It should just be about admitting the status quo and making decisions based on it.

And probably there are plenty of people out there who do treat it that way, I've just never been one of them. But I'd like to try to be. I'm a huge believer that silence on any subject gives it an unnamed power; the if we don't name it, we can't fix it (or we continue to fear it) paradigm. I hope that owning up to my own patch of scarcity right now is brave. It feels brave. It feels a bit like I've been caught with my pants down too, but I'm going to go ahead and assume you won't mind the view. :) But let's be clear. There's no pity party going on here. And there shouldn't be. Good things come out of want, that's something I know: reinvention, creativity, and honest to goodness gratitude. I see A LOT of wealth in that trio.

Summer's bounty

2010-09-08T09:28:00.004-06:00

September feels like a big, lickery kiss. The breeze is soft and whispery and feels like such an antidote to the hot heat of the previous months. The chill in the morning and the evening makes for the best "windows open" sleeping weather of the year. I've always loved September. It brings the changes of Fall to your door, but gradually enough that you can still soak up the last gasps of summer. I can see the clumps of orange starting to form on the mountainside and all the edges of my aspen leaves are ringed and crispy, getting ready to change, but for now I'm still in my t-shirt and shorts working in the garden with my sunglasses on.

My garden still isn't quite up to snuff (learning curve!) but I'm proud of the successes we've had this year. We've harvested lots of beets and carrots, herbs of every stripe, cucumbers, and cherry tomatoes. My big tomatoes are just barely ripening which means once again I've started them off a little too late. I would have liked to get the BLT situation up and running back in August! Jaren and I have a tradition of planting morning glory seeds every spring along whatever fence line we live by. It has been fun to watch them creep up the fence all summer. This year's patch is glorious, a mix of solid sky blue and blue and white striped flowers. I love their trumpet shape and the fact that they only open until the heat of the day takes over. It's like a little welcome to this day sign to me every morning.

I think the garden treasure I'm happiest about this summer is our peach tree. Neglected for years and under watered, we babied it this summer. We pruned it really hard last fall following the traditional rule to keep the tree to 3 main branches. We read up on the proper way to thin the masses of hard little green fruits that pop out by the hundreds in the spring after blossom time, and were shocked to learn that you take 90% of these off so that the tree can concentrate on growing the peaches you do leave on into delicious, big fruits. We've watched the 100 or so peaches left on the tree ripen all summer, going from pale yellowish green and fist sized to baseball round and a deep orange kissed with heavy burgundy. We fondled them until we were sure they were perfectly ripe and a little bit soft to the fingertip before we picked. Last night we celebrated our patience and filled an entire bucket with huge, perfectly ripe, beautiful, peaches. I made cobbler and we sat on the deck soaking in the fact that we grew these little puppies from scratch! It was one of the most satisfying moments of my summer.

Celebrating harvests is a great end of summer ritual. In a future year when I get the tomato thing down I want to have a tomato tasting party like this one I saw in Martha Stewart Living. The last couple years have taught me that I love to can and preserve and I'm eager to put up salsa, peaches,pickles, and jam over the next couple of weeks. The steamy kitchen should also make for a nice antidote to the fresh chill in the air.

Enjoy your last gasps of summer.....it's a special time of year.

Farm Fresh

2010-08-29T10:27:00.003-06:00

It is difficult to express the devotion I feel to our three chickens without sounding completely nuts. But over the 6 months or so we''ve had them, the relationship has become, well, a relationship. When we started down the road of chicken raising, I figured it was going to be a great learning experience and an opportunity to connect directly with an important and every day food source. I didn't expect that my family would be charmed to the point of love by the actual chickens themselves.

Matilda, Honey, and Macaroni have become a part of the family. They are legitimate pets (something I am grateful for given the fact that due to allergies this family will never have a conventional cat or dog) and a source of nearly constant entertainment around here. They have distinct personalities and excel at different things. Honey is our best insect hunter. She can find, or steal from the others, an insect faster than you can believe. Matilda is skittish, but self-assured. She has a regal long neck and does a funny side to side neck wagging thing when you hold her, almost like a dance. Macaroni is our crowd pleaser. She is so full of personality and spunk, I really feel like we've had conversations. She's the most aware of us and seems to genuinely want to interact. And as if all this weren't enough, they eat our leftover food scraps and fertilize our yard!

My kids are in love with having chickens. Cleo is the mother hen and takes her role as chicken boss, protector, and trainer quite seriously. She spends a good hour at least with them every day-petting, handling, and no doubt, torturing them with attention. She attempted to teach them some skills this summer like walking around a maze of golf balls and getting them to sit after a pat on the head. Those efforts haven't been all that successful, but she did manage to get each chicken to jump up to her head height (4 ft) to retrieve raisins and sunflower seeds to eat. When they free range around the yard, both kids hold them and do things like swing in the hammock or dig in the sandbox with a chicken on their lap. I believe all three chickens have taken rides on bikes and scooters-please don't call PETA. The interactions are hilarious and I admire so much the fearlessness and love both Cleo and Flynn show for these animals.

Being chicken owners has had a few annoyances, of course. We used to let them free range all day in the yard but when they went from cute little baby chicks who would stay by our side and aimlessly peck the ground to full grown chickens capable of scratching up and pecking at every single beautiful plant in the yard, we started to get mad. As of last month, Jaren and I both felt the damage was enough to require that they stay cooped and in their run full time. (Luckily we were able to move the coop to a new area to create a much larger space for the chickens and kids to roam together.) The poop is pretty annoying and definitely has a way of sticking deeply to shoes. They are messy eaters and spoil their clean water with dirt the minute you set it down. We've had a scare with a neighbors dog taking a nip at Matilda, and one night we accidentally shut the gate to the coop area when the chickens were out, and when we came home after dark, found all three chickens asleep roosting in trees and on the fence out in the open in our yard.

But seriously these issues are nothing compared to the fun and enrichment the chickens have brought to our family. And let me tell you

the very best thing that has happened to us in weeks was coming home from our vacation to learn that MACARONI IS NOW AN EGG LAYING HEN! Hip hip hooray! Now fully mature, Macaroni has started laying daily eggs and they are lovely; small in size, perfectly oval, and a light brown creamy color. Cleo runs down to the coop in the morning and gathers the egg and every day her excitement is just as much as the day before. It is like a daily treasure hunt for her. I personally love the sound Macaroni makes once she's laid...it's like a triumphant little announcement: BBBOKKK! BBBBOK! BBBOOOKKKK! You can't help but feel her pride embedded in the sound.

It is pretty great to have a pet give you something back-something useful and edible even! Mac's eggs are delicious. The yolks are bright orange, not yellow like the ones I buy, and they taste seriously creamy and rich. I like eggs but I know once all three hens start laying I'm going to have to get serious about ways to use up all the egg plenty. I see lots of crepes, german pancakes, quiches, and egg sandwiches in my future. Tough life!

P.S. Lucky, lucky me...my sister in law, Lisa, is a wonderful photographer and at Flynn's recent bday party captured the above shots of my kids with their chickens. I am so glad to have these moments captured! Thank you, Lisa! Check out her work at http://www.3peasphoto.blogspot.com/

I still love summer and am a very official Motorist.

2010-08-20T00:03:00.002-06:00

I certainly hope absence makes the heart grow fonder because I have been plain absent around these parts, haven't I? Chalk it up to summer travels, minor states of emergencies, and a general feeling of my life being on fast forward. Oh, and school is starting and I possibly went a bit mad and joined the PTA board of Cleo's school! Hello, time commitment!

I'm sad for summer to be coming to a close-there will never be enough days at the pool or bbq'd chicken in my book- but I am feeling ready to usher back some structure in my household. I've been sadly delinquent in crafting and reading and cooking anything that requires time in the oven. My heel callouses are out of hand and it is probably time to put on a pair of socks again. But man, it has been a fun summer. Swimming and tubing on rivers, learning to fly fish, hiking and smelling like campfire, sticky sheets and fans in the window; gin and tonics and fun bbqs and new groovy vintage patio set out on our deck; dirt under my nails and hummingbirds zooming overhead; clouds of white roses and cascades of blue morning glories; training chickens to jump; watching Flynn learn to ride a scooter; sandbox digging, Cleo's fairy house making; road trips and camping plans and happy babies being born and made. Life fairly overflows during summer doesn't it? And summer, I'm still not done with you yet!

We just returned from our annual summer road trip. For the last three years we've made a plan with one of my best friends from college to meet up and camp or spend a few days in a cabin somewhere we want to explore. It has become a great tradition, one made even sweeter by the fact that our daughters are only 3 months apart and fast friends. (We are pretty sure they think they are some kind of relation-some hybrid form between cousins and sisters.) I've gone off about my love of the road trip before, and I can't help but do it again. It is truly the best way to travel if you like landscape and regionalism and believe in the luxury of time. That is probably the single most ironic thing about road trips-the method of transport may not be luxurious and its definitely not convenient- but the act of meandering state to state without regard to time truly is. As a culture, we pride ourselves on quick flights to Vegas and convenient non- stops direct to Paris from Salt Lake, and yet there is nothing in those kind of journeys that makes me feel relaxed, and even less that engages me or piques my interest about where it is I'm traveling to. LIfe looks lifeless when seen from 30,000 feet.

When I lived in New York and rode the subway everywhere, the whole city felt to me like a disorienting mish-mash of disparate locations; walk up a set of stairs at 59th Street stop and you get Bloomingdales, walk up another set at the Bowery and you get restaurant store supply shops and cheap booze. It always felt like a puzzle (or teleporting) and it wasn't until we bought a car and drove the city more that I started to notice the subtle ways the pieces and neighborhoods fit and flowed from one to the next. The same thing happens for me on road trips. I love to watch the land flatten out into grassy plains and deep gorges and then rise up again into voluptuous mountains. You can literally see the tectonics and erosion at play. I like to watch the idiosyncrasies of local places-how some farmers in an area are suddenly partial to circular hay bales and others stick with the tried and true rectangles. Or the way that American cars take over the road as soon as you leave any sizable city. I like that I know that pretty much every small town in America has something called the Knotty Pine. And I love that road signs on forgotten highways often refer to drivers as "motorists" in the very 1950s technical way that we still call our summer cooling devices "air conditioners".

It's really satisfying to me to be thorough, I guess. And road trips are nothing but thorough. There is no way around the hundreds of miles of sagebrush plains that is so much of the West. But instead of noticing the expanse of more of the same, I try and relish it, waiting in suspense for the land to shift and the next town to come into view. It's really great work if you can get it, but believe me, you can get it if you try.

(All photos above are from the recent trip and courtesy of the awesome Hipstamatic app and Shake it app for the iphone. Everything looks better all old-timey doesn't it?)

Words to the wiser...

2010-07-26T20:36:00.003-06:00

It's been the kind of day where high expectations turn sour. My kids started swimming lessons at a new place and I was eager for them to recreate the kind of memories I had growing up swimming and diving on teams, making lifelong friends, enjoying the sun and the chemical smell of chlorine on brown skin and greenish hair, as well as learning a skill that has led me to a lifetime of healthy exercise and pride. Both my kids have become pretty good in the water this summer; Cleo just on the brink of figuring out freestyle and actual strokes and Flynn suddenly fully able to submerge his body and figure out how to come up for air without the choking/gagging fits that make early swimming pool adventures so freaky. So needless to say, it felt like the right moment to pull in an "expert" and take things to the next level with some lessons. Wrong. Cleo was self conscious about her new earplugs (she just had ear surgery and adenoids taken out) and complained throughout the lesson about the frigid water and the too tight googles, and Flynn, who was fine swimming before the lesson started, showing off for the teacher and everything, utterly and completely lost his shit as soon as two little boys got in screaming and crying for their moms. He was all of the sudden terrified and started crying for me and basically punching and kicking the teacher in the face for 20 minutes. My expectations once again did not match reality which led to lots of disappointed tension around these parts. And then my increasingly not so trusty Volvo conked out again putting it a wrench in plans and now I'm staring down the barrel of a $2000 repair bill that I can't afford and thinking, how did this glorious Summer Monday go so wrong?

I have a delightful best friend with an equally delightful mother who once told me years ago that she loved to clean her house because "it was the only area in her life she could control." It made sense to me then and it makes sense to me now. It made a lot of sense to me today as I seethed and anxiously wrung hands wondering what I should do with the car, with the day, with the crazy children fighting at my feet....I realized that folding laundry and doing dishes and organizing my toiletries was the only clarity I had. I don't think it made me any less grumpy, but it definitely calmed the nerves and made me feel a sense of much needed control in a world where everything was starting to feel like an aimless spinning top.

Maybe it is my semi-Mormon upbringing, or the Pioneer "put your shoulder to the wheel" genes, but I've always had trouble settling into being idle. Don't get me wrong, I still indulge very frequently in non-productivity, but it never feels as natural as I hoped or want , certainly never as guiltless. I go out on the deck at dusk to sit and watch the aspen leaves quake and all I can think of is the laundry I need to change over, or the email I need to reply to, or the fact that I didn't vacuum my car or call Grandma Great. I think idleness feels too often like indulgence in our culture and it is probably to our detriment. I once read a book called How to be Idle which I thoroughly enjoyed and would recommend, espousing the art of idleness alla Oscar Wilde--watching clouds move, taking naps, playing ukelele, coming up with delightful quips, drinking gin at midday--.and though on the face of things I love the idea of "chateau relaxo" ways of being (a phrase my once guru and boss Chrisanne coined and i dearly love) and not having an agenda, in practice, I find I end up getting depressed with myself. I think I need to have purpose in my day. I need to have goals and be able to make decisions, otherwise I become stuck. But a day like today teaches me that there is a difference in having purpose and having expectations. Purpose is having hopeful definition, a road map of sorts, expectations are plain fallacy. The world works in mysterious ways and believing that it's my way or the highway seems only to lead me to disappointment....and lots of cleaning!

i heart my main man

2010-07-19T22:25:00.004-06:00

I'm single moming it again and I've been really missing the influence of my main man on me and on the kids. There are just some things in the parenting world that seem to naturally be a Dad's domain. In my home, Jaren reigns supreme at being the joker and inserting laughter into the house when it is most needed. He's renown for his bedtime story voices. He does "the bubble", "the westerner", "the singer" and "the robot" with equal gusto. He also cleverly inserts the kids names (or the word poopie) into just about every story we read to the endless delight of both Cleo and Flynn. We have two children who are unable to fall asleep without back tickles and since both kids are primarily used to my magic fingers they sometimes put up a fight when it is Jaren's turn to tickle their backs at bedtime. Being the genius Dad he is, he invented a game to compete; he tickles according to animal. The elephant tickle being a hard pound like big ole elephant hooves beating up and down your spine; the bumblebee brings light pinches all over the back; and the whale a big thunk from way above once and only once. His clever approach to parenting is always a delight to me and a definite delight to our kids. They are so lucky to have someone in their life who can make them smile and teach them that life is just not much fun without humor. Come to think of it, I'm pretty lucky too.

I also thank my lucky stars that I married someone who knows a thing or two about working with his hands. Jaren is a skilled craftsman in just about every respect, he can build furniture and entire kitchens for heaven's sake! But what really gets me is his ability to just get in there and figure something out, no previous experience required. He is inherently capable. In the time I've known him he's taught himself how to be a plumber, an electrician, a landscaper, an IT guy, a drywaller, a car mechanic, and a father. Pretty impressive list, no? I know not all men are created equal in the do it yourself or spatial/mechanical vein, and there is no shame in hiring out, but what a gift it is to give your family that kind of hand's on capability. I love that Flynn already knows what a socket wrench and a screw gun are. And Cleo has already swung the hammer and watched her Dad, legs sticking out from under the engine, changing the oil. They get to see their Dad being a do-er and that means something in today's culture of instant gratification. And me? I get to day dream about endless house, garden, and kids projects knowing full well who I can rope in to do the job. :)

Three cheers to Jaren and to the men out there who keep traditions and knowledge and capability alive. And just so you don't think I'm only tooting my own man's horn, check out this A-mAZING blog made by joel. Now here is a Dad making and doing all in the name of parenting and entertaining his kids. The projects are simply too awesome to be described. (Not to mention being aesthetically perfect and sophisticated.) You must go check them out for yourself.

A good capitalist

2010-07-13T22:46:00.002-06:00

Almost regardless of where you live these days you can depend upon seeing the same brand of chain stores and restaurants springing up around you. I would guess most modern chains have a radius of 20 miles or less before they feel the need to pop up another location. It gives us as a culture a boggling array of strip mall-age, but increasingly I'm realizing it gives me a much more limited sense of choice, and an even narrower sense of personality and regionality. Having just traveled the roughly 1200 miles between Salt Lake City and Dallas, Texas it is quite bizarre to note how similar the retail offerings actually are. Newer suburbs of bigger cities are especially plagued by the chain mentality. What few local businesses may have once existed in these outposts are quickly replaced by the IHOP, the Sonic, the Olive Garden, the Walmart, the Barnes and Noble. Increasingly, even our powerhouse cities of mom and pop offerings like NYC are not immune; a friend just updated his Facebook status to say: "Walking past the new Union Square TGI Fridays. :("

I was mulling all this over because of a series of small business encounters I had today that completely made my day and felt like the antidote to corporate take over.

I am working on a little wedding flower project and I needed to source some burlap upholstery webbing for a bouquet. I consulted the oracle first (google) and saw that Walmart supposedly carried the stuff. I called the closest store and not only did the person who answered the phone have no idea what upholstery webbing was, she didn't know where to send my call within the vast store. So I, the customer, said "I don't know, maybe the sewing or home decor area?" She said "great!" and transfered me over where I proceeded to wait 5 minutes on hold and still no one ever answered the call. Frustrated, I hung up and called a little local upholstery shop I dealt with years ago. A woman picked up on the first ring and when I explained what I needed and politely asked if she'd sell the webbing to me or would be willing to point me in the direction of a supplier, she cheerfully explained that the burlap industry is in trouble and no one is able to import it right now from the Philippines where most suppliers get burlap these days. (Who knew?!) But she did give me the names of 2 local places they deal with and suggested I get on their waiting lists. She couldn't have been more knowledgeable or friendly and I hung up satisfied and happy even though I hadn't gotten any closer to getting the actual item I needed.

While I was out erranding today the check engine light on my car lit up and even though the car was driving fine, I figured I should take the light seriously and not blow the thing up like I have in the past. Ahem! We have a trusty Volvo mechanic, Herm, who has a small Volvo only independent shop and so I drove straight to him, fingers crossed. Not only did he stop what he was doing to come out and check the code on the engine to see what was wrong, he and I chatted pleasantly about life, family, and the hot heat of summer while he was doing it. It ended up to be nothing major, but it was sure nice helpful service and great peace of mind to have him take that time out of his day to help a girl out, no cash required. I highly doubt the Volvo dealership would have done the same in the less than 15 minutes it took Herm.

And finally....probably the highlight of my week and certainly my momentous for the day. Salt Lake has a lot of stores, gems really, under independent ownership and representing a very independent, quirky spirit. You have to suss them out a bit, but they are here, banners held high. One of my absolute favorite little shops is downtown on the newly hip stretch of Broadway and 200 East called Frosty Darling. The shop is a haven for unique handmade gifts and interesting art objects, but it is also the kind of place that is loose and fun enough to bring your kids and not worry that you will get the "you break it, you buy it" face when they check stuff out. Today my kids got sucked in to all the fun stuff they were surrounded by: pins, vintage candy confections, funny plushy dolls, vinyl wallets with lighting bolts, worn out in the best way metal dime store pony ride, and they were completely smitten with the idea of playing the dart toss balloon game behind the cash register. Gentry, the owner, filled up a bunch of fresh balloons and for a buck gave my kids 3 darts each to toss and attempt to pop a balloon. Neither did the deed, but both were rewarded with 4 tickets they could use to buy various old school treats like candy lipsticks, Neccos, and bubblegum cigars. It was the highlight of all our day to throw those darts and giggle and to be rewarded with an experience in the shop rather than just stuff. Cleo has already asked me twice to go back there "just for fun". Now that's my kind of retail!

I suppose the message of these anecdotes is simply that I don't want to stop having these kind of small business encounters and I definitely don't want to see our culture lose them entirely. We would be left with so little if the small shops died out completely and all that remained is the faceless glare of neon signs and parking lots, or worse the glare of the computer screen. It isn't the same to buy something from a behemoth who knows not what they sell. It feels good to support the little guy, who in turn usually supports the even littler guy, but in the end by supporting them you really are supporting a facet of culture that is endangered and needs some serious love. So go out and be the good little capitalist you were born to be, only try to spend your dough where it truly morphs into something you can hold in the palm of your hand, maybe a little something like a dart.

You are what you eat

2010-07-11T22:12:00.003-06:00

Thanks to a very generous soon to be brother-in-law, Jaren and I scored tickets to the annual Park City Food and Wine Classic yesterday. It is a great event with hundreds of vendors offering tastes of wine, spirits, food, and treats. We indulged, and indulged some more, and had a fabulous time.

I came away boggled by the bounty and sophistication of tastes and the intensity of food culture these days. I feel really proud of the awakened state of our country's food culture. Living in a city a bit off the beaten track, I pretty much know that if the buying/eating local thing is happening here on every corner, then it is happening every where across the country. Careful consideration of what we eat and where it comes from has moved into the mainstream consciousness. It's wonderful to feel like something in our culture is heading in the right direction. Hallelujah! I wanted to give a plug for an awesome new publication here in Salt Lake City focused on the local food scene called Edible Wasatch . I was impressed with the magazine and thought it had a lot of great information about businesses, farmers, and citizens doing their part to promote healthy, sustainable food--all in all a venture very worth supporting.

In celebration of food and drink, I thought it would be fun to share a few inspirational sites I love that have food at their core.

I have to confess to a serious weakness for food styling. I love love love the blog Sunday Suppers which showcases cool chefs throwing awesome dinner parties. The photography and styling are always pitch perfect and the recipes consistently make me drool. It also entices me to want to throw a zillion parties. Dangerous!

Whenever I need a pick me up, I like to listen to a killer podcast my sister turned me on to called Good Food, a weekly radio program out of KCRW in Los Angeles hosted by the wonderful Evan Kleiman. (I'm telling you just her voice alone will cheer you. It's so snappy and happy and real.) The show is a true foodie mecca: restaurant reviews, farmer's market reports, interviews with street vendors and food purveyors of all stripes. I also really appreciate that they talk about the politics of food-the true cost of farm labor, environmental impact of what we eat and when, etc. It's a well rounded show and definitely entertaining. And downloading the podcast is FREE!

And lastly, I have never been a huge rum fan, but I am so in awe of the graphics and ad campaign behind the new spiced rum brand The Kraken that I've become a convert. It's actually super delicious stuff and the bottle label alone is reason enough to buy it and imbibe.

Cheers to mindful food and drink! Enjoy the bounty of summertime.....

p.s. photos above are from a talented food stylist named Linda Lundgren.

Inspirato: learning a new word, especially something obvious but revolutionary

2010-07-07T22:10:00.003-06:00

Today I came across the above photo on one of the feeds I subscribe to called designboom and the caption said this: "supertramp is a micro-sized mobile living concept part of the lehman b project. lehman b is a do tank which explores future strategies by actually doing them, like supertramp."

Reading the word DO TANK was like flipping on a light switch. Duh. How cool is the idea of a do tank rather than a think tank? Some might call it semantics, but I call it genius. The older I get the more I realize the importance of doing rather than talking, taking action versus plotting for days and days. Life is short and I think I'd rather test stuff out than figure it out. Experience usually has a way of figuring it out for you. I am so starting a DO TANK so if you area joiner, let me know.

And just to be word nerd accurate, here are the definitions of DO TANK listed on word spy:

n. A research institute that focuses on actions rather than ideas. Also: do-tank.

Do tank is the action-oriented version of a think tank (a term that dates to 1959). A not-so-surprising synonym is action tank (1987).

Don't you just love it?

inspirato: visual odes to a hot summer day

2010-07-02T15:25:00.004-06:00

I'm a big art fan and I have grown quite fond of the site 20x200. It features amazing limited runs of original art prints for the equally amazing price of $20 bucks! There are a lot of works that I don't much care for, but I have always liked that about art too, sometimes its just plain healthy to see things from a different point of view. It's a hot summer Utah day and the 4th of July holiday weekend is upon us. I love summertime and the hot heat of a dry wind. I even love tiny beads of perspiration and raccoon eyes from too many hours with sunglasses on. And don't get me started on the nut brown beauty of my children's skin this time of year. Aye yai yai!

It's a good feeling to have nothing stretching out before you than the prospect of a cold popsicle or a trip to the ice cream truck. In that vein, I thought I'd share these two great prints featured on 20x200, Frozen by Katie Baum and Koolman Truck by Kevin Cyr-- both odes to the pleasures of a hot summer day.

P.S. I just ran across this amazing list of 50 homemade popsicle recipes....I think I've just figured out what my afternoon will consist of. Lovely!

momentous no. 3: take a walk

2010-06-29T13:47:00.003-06:00

Texas this time of year is hot, hot, hot. I have been down here near Dallas visiting my sister and her family for the past week. It's been a wonderful trip full of summertime fun in the sun. We have been graced with sunshine a lot, but the past couple of days have been filled on and off with terrific claps of thunder and shocks of lightning. I love a good storm any old time, but down here the cooling effect of the rain makes me especially appreciative of them.

This morning, post-rain, the air was humid but so much cooler that I decided it was the perfect chance to take the kids on a walk to a nearby trail which runs parallel to a slow moving creek. I was hoping the cooler temps and rain would bring out some interesting wildlife and I was blown away at what 4 attentive kids were able to spot! We saw silkworms spinning a pod like web, a baby turtle resting on a log, a seriously camouflaged toad, 2 squirrels, and a bright green caterpillar the length of a stick. Cleo managed to collect 2 dead cicadas with their stained glass-like wings to bring home to her insect loving Dad. It was a very successful morning!

The level of enthusiasm and enjoyment each kid showed was especially poignant to me because just last Friday we traveled to a very cool wildlife safari, one where you drive your car through acres of preserve filled with exotic African animals like giraffes and ostrich and strange looking antelopes. This place was seriously impressive and we had a great time. But it also cost a lot of money, relatively speaking, and it took considerable effort to drive there. And though clearly the kids and Ame and I enjoyed the experience immensely (nothing quite like hand feeding a giraffe out of your sunroof!), I can honestly say that the shock and awe factor exhibited for this wee little turtle spotted creekside 5 minutes from home was right up there with those giraffes.

I love to be reminded of how little children need to have their imaginations and curiosity ignited. As parents and loved ones, we like to give them the world but I think sometimes we just need to remember that its really as simple as opening the front door and stepping out with an exploratory mindset. You just never know what you might find out there!

inspirato: recognizing that the moment at hand should trump the technology in your hand

2010-06-28T07:28:00.008-06:00

I'm a little bit of a hippocrite posting this today since I am currently out of town and very much connected to my iphone. But I have saved this little nugget from an interview Gretchen Rubin featured on the Happiness Project awhile back because it struck such a chord in me:

Is there anything you find yourself doing repeatedly that gets in the way of your happiness?
I spend too much time screwing around with my iPhone, to be honest, on email and Tweetdeck and so on. It makes me feel connected and productive, but it also prevents me from being present in the moment. I met my husband on a long bus ride 15 years ago; we were sitting across the aisle from each other, we had finished our respective newspapers, and we started chatting because we had nothing better to do. I think about that all the time, and how if we were on that bus today, we would never meet at all, because we'd be tip-tapping on our tiny keyboards, totally preoccupied, missing what was right next to us. I also fret about what message I send my kids when they say something to me at the bus stop and I answer "uh huh" with one eye on the keyboard. So I'm trying not to use my iPhone at all while I'm with them, and once this book launch is behind me, I'll take another big step back from the social media.

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Isn't that amazing to think that this woman met her husband on a bus ride? I think she is dead on that for most of today that kind of unadulterated moment of just sitting there looking out the window, being "available", would be few and far between. Our devices (or maybe I should call them vices?) mean we are very plugged in to technology, to information, and to interconnectivity with those far from our current reach. And yet because of that maybe we are losing the chance to touch, to connect with the ACTUAL person sitting right next to us?

I think it is important to consider how these little miracle devices are taking daily miracles right out from under us. Jaren and I like to joke about how the iphone has terminated any sense of mystery in casual conversation. If one of us says something like "I wonder what language they speak in Macao?", we don't speculate, we ask the oracle. If we are freaking out in a movie unable to place what an actor has previously been in, we check the IMBD oracle. We don't let much lie in terms of gaining knowledge,and I can't help but wonder what kind of effect this has on my actual body of knowledge. Is it making me smarter, or is it making me actually value information less--this fact that I think of a question and find the final answer in under 30 seconds?

I'm not advocating junking our prized hand helds, I just think it is worth prioritizing when we use them. It's something to think about and I don't think it's a question the iphone will have the answer for in an instant.

abundance no 1: birding

2010-06-24T06:55:00.003-06:00

In the past few months I've realized how much I enjoy watching birds. I like to watch them in flight most of all. The movement of wings is so surprising, not nearly as effortless as it looks on first glance. I've become pretty serious about wanting to identify what I see and hear in the trees around me. I think it must answer some anal niche in my personality to understand my surroundings.

Birds are perhaps the wild animal we humans interact with and see the very most. Even the most dedicated urban dweller can identify the pigeon or the swallow. I love the way birds are always in our sight line but never within in our reach. I think that is what grabbed me about Andrew Zuckerman's latest photo book called Birds. He photographs each bird subject with an entirely blank white background. The resulting shot is so pure BIRD that you get to see each and every detail of the beak, the feathers, the eye with extreme clarity, something those quick little buggers never afford us when they are out on the branch or flapping high above our heads. I found the details on each bird ridiculously beautiful. And a great manifestation of the perfection of every creature on the planet. Take a minute and scroll through the photos featured on birdbook.org. It will make you want to don a pair of binoculars and check out the robin or sparrrow in your own backyard.

MOMENTOUS=people enjoying perfect moments of everyday life

2010-06-21T13:47:00.001-06:00

I am sure it has been more than apparent that I've been a little off my A game with this thing lately...not much to report because I've been relatively busy and relatively uninspired! Summer living may be easy, but thoughtful living is always hard!

I recognize that I live an exceedingly lucky life. I spend a lot of time pondering that I could be poor, impoverished, denied my liberty, could be riddled with disease, could lose the people I love...and instead here I am alive, free, middle class, educated, healthy, and loved. So it can feel curious to me sometimes that I spend so much of my energy on this blog seeing the failings and trappings in my own life, brain, and in the world around me. And though I know my goal is to be constructive and thoughtful, I think it can also be a fairly negative place to reside.

So in an effort to combat this negativity and rejuvenate myself and my inspirato, I'm going to dedicate the next couple weeks to presenting to you some plain and simple abundance. I will showcase tidbits I find online that inspire me or make me happy or share experiences that I'm referring to as MOMENTOUS. In the past week I've caught people enjoying perfect little moments of life that grace all of us each day. And it made me wish I had the presence of mind to document it with a photo or a line....

MOMENTOUS no. 1: The other night I was driving home and happened to notice a man on a busy road in town called Foothill Blvd. who had stepped out of his daily routine and was standing on the curb of that traffic-y thoroughfare watching the sun sink low in the west. It was a particularly lovely sunset that night, and Foothill has a perfect view perched as it is up on the Eastern bench to the valley stretching out below-- clear down to the Great Salt Lake, where the sun sets this time of year. It was a sunset worthy of stopping the car and slowing down and yet no one did; not me, or anyone else. And yet there was that lone man stopping and looking westward, taking in the lovely moment playing out before him. I found it very inspiring and the mental picture I have of him still and smiling will stay with me forever.

MOMENTOUS no. 2: I was driving down yet another busy street, running errands, both my kids hot and cranky in the backseat. I was stopped at a red light and looked over to see these two adorable teenaged girls in outlandish outfits and purple haired wigs, each holding a sign that says "Wave if you believe in being FRIENDLY." How awesome is that? I rolled all our windows down and we honked and waved like mad to support such a simple, wonderful plea for camaraderie. It was a reminder that at our best we humans are humorous, kind, and willing to use our energy to promote happiness in others. It inspired me.

So there you have it. I hope you enjoy the next few weeks of daily posts. I hope they lift your spirits and inspire.

Our patron saint....

2010-06-08T16:05:00.004-06:00

Trust me, I am not a big fan of hang overs, but occasionally over-imbibing creates the perfect reason to slow down and laze out. This was the state of things in the Harbertson household on Sunday after a very fun and indulgent bbq the night before. Both Jaren and I were moving a little slow and the kids had stayed up late and were right there with us. We were all content to just stay in our pjs and hang out with no agenda all day. We read books and played with blocks and made lots and lots of buttery toast. Even with a head with a dull ache in it, it felt blissful and indulgent in a wholly different way.

I must credit Jaren and this hangover-induced mellow mode, for providing us with the perfect situation to spend time introducing our kids to a very important artist. On Sunday as a family we watched the documentary Rivers and Tides about the work of Andy Goldsworthy. Years ago in NYC, Jaren and I happened on Goldsworthy, a well known British artist who creates work outside in Nature using all natural materials. He does miraculous, insane things like building a large egg shaped sculpture out of random stones on the beach for hours and then watches it slowly break away and fall to pieces again as the tide comes in. He lays down on the ground in the rain and waits for enough time to pass so that the outline of his body will be perfectly left imprinted on the ground because the area where he laid is left dry instead of wet from the rain. He takes freshly shorn wool and covers miles of rock wall in the Scottish countryside and then just lets it blow away in the wind. He builds amazing structures out of broken icicles and then watches them melt away in the heat of the sun. And hundreds and hundreds of other interesting, beautiful, and compelling sculptures of Nature, inspired by Nature. He truly must be the most patient man on the planet. If it weren't for the photographs he takes of the projects, there would be no record of them since most float/drift/blow/melt away in just hours or days after completion.

Both our kids like to be outside, but Cleo in particular has a penchant for collecting and creating with natural materials. She spends hours collecting petals or rocks or sticks and then usually creates some sort of scene with them. It struck Jaren as very Goldsworthy-esque and he thought showing her the film about him would make an impact on her. It did! It made an impact on all of us. It was so inspiring to see our 6 year old watch intently as an adult artist created things that she could wrap her brain and creativity around. She saw the connection between the "work" she does in the backyard and the work of a famous artist! It brought a smile to my face for sure.

And it inspired me and Jaren to think about patience and parenting and how we can encourage the spirit and simplicity of what Goldsworthy does in our home. Watching him work, you can't help but feel the peace around his process. It is quiet. He is collecting lovely minutia for hours in a beautiful setting, breathing in the fresh air. And then he channels all this into a beautiful visual treatise on the ephemeral nature of Nature-the fact that nothing ever lasts. To me seeing his acceptance of this basic rule of life manifested in his work was like hearing a bell ring. It is a reminder to attempt to be ego-less, to embrace patience and the details of life, and above all to spend time creating and being inspired with those I love.

I took this to heart today. I took the kids hiking and Cleo completed her first official Goldsworthy inspired project. Check it out! A pocket of carefully placed dandelions ready to drift out into big water....I think its pretty beautiful and the hour it took to collect the dandelions on the mountainside, hike down to the water, and sit on the cool rock watching my daughter place them gingerly in the foam was even more so. Thank you Andy Goldsworthy. You are this household's new patron saint.

(Images above are an Cleo's work followed by a few lovelies from Mr. Goldsworthy himself. If you have a minute google Goldsworthy and check out the great images and youtube videos available on his geniusness.)

Boots and Bread

2010-05-24T14:51:00.002-06:00

I am not at all psyched about this continuous May theme of rainy/sleety weather, but I am, however, completely smitten with rubber boots. I can't believe I have held off on owning a pair of rubber boots in my adult life. I remember good old duck shoes as a child, but I think it's possible that I never owned a full on pair of rubber boots. Until now! Flynn inherited a great pair of "Dairy Farmer" boots (available at any Walmart or IFA) and has been wearing them nonstop this spring. Mud, water, rocks, sand, gutters--these are Flynn's constant playmates so the boots have come in awfully handy for him and have saved me countless laundry hours. He pretty much wakes up, has breakfast, puts on the boots and heads out the door-usually with footed pajamas squeezed down inside the boots. It's a pretty good deal if you ask me. Cleo has a more stylish pink argyle pair and wears hers with equal gusto. I found myself jealous of them wading in a large gutter puddle the other day and decided it was high time I added some boots to my shoe arsenal. I now own a pair of adult sized dairy boots and I couldn't be happier! And funny enough, when we were in Spring City this week checking on the bees, Jaren added a pair to his collection and went wading around in the stream with the kids with impunity. This family is now a boot clad one so bring it on Mother Nature!

And what better thing to do on a cold spring evening then to slice into some warm bread? I promised a second installment on bread making so here goes.....

As I said in the previous post, learning to make your own bread from scratch is really surprisingly easy and it will make you feel like a million bucks in the self sufficiency and nutrition categories, and make you ooze pioneer-esque vigor. And your home will smell better than a new car. Bread making is alchemy, really. By introducing yeast, a living organism, to basic ingredients of flour, warm water, and salt, you transform ordinary gooey paste into a smooth, elastic, air pocket filled, dough that transforms once again when baked into the luscious life giving thing we call bread. It's cheap, it's filling, and it is the ultimate accompaniment to so many meals, or sometimes IS my meal of choice as long as there is lots of butter to be had!

I have a few whole wheat bread recipes that I like, but my go-to recipe below is the one that is the easiest, has minimal ingredients, and seems pretty much to be fail proof. The only ingredient you might wonder about is gluten. Vital wheat gluten is a great additive to use in bread making because it adds extra protein to your dough which provides the yeast with more oomph to make your bread rise. It also ups the protein content of the bread which is a nutritional plus. Glluten is available on the baking aisle of pretty much any grocery store. The only other ingredient worth mentioning is time...this recipe kinda requires you to be home, or near home, for a block of about 2 1/2-3 hours.

When I bake bread, I grind my wheat fresh from whole wheat berries because the nutrition from fresh whole wheat is much better than packaged, but that said, whole wheat from the store is just fine and is a serious step up on the nutritional ladder from Wonder Bread or all purpose flour. King Arthur brand is my favorite. (But if anyone wants to learn about grinding wheat and what it entails, ask away! I'd be happy to help.) Lastly, I'm sure the kneading portion of this recipe could be done easily with a Kitchenaid stand mixer but try it at least a few times by hand-it really helps to learn to "feel" the bread change from mush to smooth dough and it is also the perfect space of time to listen to great music or space out with your thoughts.

BASIC NO FRILLS WHEAT BREAD-Makes 3 standard size loaves

3 cups warm water

1 T yeast

1 T gluten

1/3 c. canola oil

1/3 c honey

1 T salt

7 1/2 c. whole wheat flour

In a large bowl mix the water and yeast. Add gluten, oil, honey, and salt and about half of the flour. It starts to get difficult to mix when about 6 c. are in so I usually dump it out onto my counter at some point and start kneading and adding the remaining flour. Set a timer and knead for 7-10 minutes. To my untrained mind, there really is no right way to knead. My technique is just to push down with the dough with both hands and then rotate a 1/4 turn and on and on. I sometimes throw in a flip the dough over move or two. I seriously don't think it is possible to ruin bread by kneading it "wrong" so I say find your own way! You will know you are done when the dough forms a soft, smooth and basically unsticky ball. (If your bread dough is ever cracky and crumbly you've probably added too much flour and the bread will be a little brick like but still taste pretty good!)

Grease the mixing bowl with cooking spray and put the dough ball back in covered with plastic wrap and let rise for 45-and hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

Grease 3 loaf pans with cooking spray. Punch the dough down to "deflate" all that good rising you've just witnessed, and divide dough into 3 equal chunks. I do this by cutting with a knife or dough scraper straight through the dough. Shape each dough piece into a little log shape that roughly fits the length of your loaf pan and set down in the pan. Cover with plastic wrap and let the loaves rise again 45-hour.

Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. (My oven runs hot so I usually bake mine at 325 for 25 and they come out nicely cooked.) Cool for a couple minutes in the pans and then take them out of the pans and let cool on a cooling rack or else the bottom of the loaves get soggy from steam.

Treat yourself and your family and try this bread stat! Bon appetito!

Making Bread, Part A

2010-05-16T09:29:00.002-06:00

With the coming of spring and warmer weather, I tend to naturally start cooking lighter meals. More bbq'ing and salads, less lasagna and roasts. Tragically, I've also been baking a lot less bread. When a family gets used to having homemade bread, the lack of it is pretty torturous, and I've been taking quite a bit of heat from my tribe wondering where all the good bread has gone. I have a firm belief that if anyone wants to start living more simply and cooking from scratch, learning to bake bread is a natural first step. It will convert even the most avid critic. Sure it is more work than buying a loaf at the store, but just like a garden fresh tomato, the taste of homemade bread is so superior, you can't even lump the two into the same category. I have a psychological reaction to bread making too. It makes me feel like a pioneer woman-capable and industrious. All that kneading, working with elemental ingredients like yeast and flour and salt and transforming them into something utterly tasty and filling. And the smell of the yeasty bread baking in the oven triggers in me some deep seeded feeling of well being. It makes me feel like my home is comfortable and safe.

Bread making is surprisingly simple. Really! And once I had the basics down and my confidence up, I've found that I'm not afraid to try-and add- all different kinds of breads to my repertoire. Basic whole wheat loaves are the standard around here, but I also make a lot of pizza crust and some artisan style loaves. This weekend we made falafel and we had delicious home made pitas from a recipe in the Bread Bible. These pitas are so good and so easy, fluffy and delicious, I have to share the recipe with you! The only piece of special equipment they require is a pizza stone, which is a worthy investment since it is also the key to great homemade pizza crust, which will be PART B of making bread in a post later this week.

Pita Bread

3 cups plus 1/4 cup unbleached all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons instant yeast

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 1/4 cups water, at room temperature

1. Mix the dough. In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients except for the 1/4 cup of the flour. With a wooden spoon or your hand, mix until all the flour is moistened. Knead the dough in the bowl until it comes together.. Sprinkle a little of the reserved 1/4 c flour onto the counter and scrape the dough onto it. Knead the dough for 5 to 10 minutes or until it is soft and smooth and just a little sticky to the touch. Add a little flour or water if necessary. If it is too sticky to work with you can always invert a bowl over the dough and let it rest for 10 minutes and then start kneading again.

2. Let the dough rise: Using an oiled spatula or dough scraper, scrape the dough into a bowl, lightly greased with cooking spray or oil. Press the dough down and lightly spray or oil the top of it. Cover the container with a lid or plastic wrap. At this point, you can put the dough in the fridge and either use it anytime within 3 days or just let it chill for a few hours so it will be easier to work with when you are ready to use.

3. Preheat the oven: Preheat the oven to 475°F one hour before baking. Have an oven shelf at the lowest level and place a baking stone on it to get ultra hot during this preheat.

4. Shape the dough: Cut the dough into 8 or 12 pieces. Work with one piece at a time and shape each piece into a ball and then flatten it into a disk. Cover the dough with oiled plastic and allow it to rest for 20 minutes at room temperature. Then roll each disk into a circle maybe a 1/4 inch thick. Allow disks to rest, uncovered, for 10 minutes before baking. They will look like puffy little ovals.

5. Bake the pita: Quickly place disks of dough (maybe 4 at a time depending on size of your baking stone) directly on the stone and bake for 3 minutes. Amazingly, the pitas puff up immediately just like a true pita! They should look puffy but not beginning to brown when you remove them from the oven. (The dough will not puff well if it is not moist enough so if necessary, spray and knead each remaining piece with water until the dough is soft and moist, then reroll and try again.) These pitas are the real deal...floury and a hair crisp on the outside with a steamy void in the middle, perfect for stuffing full of falafel or hummus or even basic sandwich fixings.

6. Go directly and make these pitas. You won't be sorry!

happy mother's day!

2010-05-09T21:13:00.003-06:00

being a mother is unlike any other experience i have ever encountered. it is completely all encompassing. it is relentless and real and definitely more about guts than glory. (though the glory moments, when they come, knock me off my feet and send me into the ether in a way that nothing else ever has.) the love, the sacrifice, the tunnel vision, the expectations, the hopes, and the growth i've experienced since becoming a mother define me. i've never been something-played a role so completely- that it becomes my identity. and now i realize on this my 6th mother's day, that this is the thing that i struggle and love the most about motherhood. i hate to feel like i've lost myself to my kids, and yet i've never felt more myself than to be their mom. does that make sense? it's a beautiful conundrum and a high wire balancing act, and i'm guessing that will never go away, even when i'm 70 and my children are full fledged adults.

ages ago my sister-in-law sent me a gorgeous little piece by the equally gorgeous writer anna quindlen that i have saved in my "inspirato" email folder and regularly read when i feel i've lost my way in motherhood. it is one of those great pieces of recorded perspective-a reminder to live in the moment more and to trust your children above all to tell you what they need and when. and i love quindlen's point that children "excavate our essential humanity". i believe this so much that i have a hard time imagining how people who do not have children can ever experience the fullness of their hearts, minds, and souls. i feel my kids excavating me daily; sometimes uncovering the treasures and warmth buried beneath and sometimes tugging at a raw spot that would rather stay deeply hidden. i think my children reveal my most honest self to me and they certainly bring out in me a desire to be better, to do more, to educate, and to face fears. i am forever grateful to cleo and flynn for challenging me an making me more me than i was before. happy mother's day to all of you out there growing and nurturing human beings, whatever their age. may we all do good work!

and here is the piece by anna quindlen. enjoy!:

All my babies are gone now. I say this not in sorrow but in disbelief. I take great satisfaction in what I have today: three almost-adults, two taller than I am, one closing in fast. Three people who read the same books I do and have learned not to be afraid of disagreeing with me in their opinion of them, who sometimes tell vulgar jokes that make me laugh until I choke and cry, who need razor blades and shower gel and privacy, who want to keep their doors closed more than I like. Who, miraculously, go to the bathroom, zip up their jackets and move food from plate to mouth all by themselves. Like the trick soap I bought for the bathroom with a rubber ducky at its center, the baby is buried deep within each, barely discernible except through the unreliable haze of the past.

Everything in all the books I once poured over is finished for me now. Penelope Leach., T. Berry Brazelton., Dr. Spock. The ones on sibling rivalry and sleeping through the night and early-childhood education, have all grown obsolete. Along with Goodnight Moon and Where the Wild Things Are, they are battered, spotted, well used. But I suspect that if you flipped the pages dust would rise like memories. What those books taught me, finally, and what the women on the playground taught me, and the well-meaning relations --what they taught me, was that they couldn't really teach me very much at all.

Raising children is presented at first as a true-false test, then becomes multiple choice, until finally, far along, you realize that it is an endless essay. No one knows anything. One child responds well to positive reinforcement, another can be managed only with a stern voice and a timeout. One child is toilet trained at 3, his sibling at 2.

When my first child was born, parents were told to put baby to bed on his belly so that he would not choke on his own spit-up. By the time my last arrived, babies were put down on their backs because of research on sudden infant death syndrome. To a new parent this ever-shifting certainty is terrifying, and then soothing. Eventually you must learn to trust yourself.

Eventually the research will follow. I remember 15 years ago poring over one of Dr. Brazelton's wonderful books on child development, in which he describes three different sorts of infants: average, quiet, and active. I was looking for a sub-quiet codicil for an 18-month old who did not walk. Was there something wrong with his fat little legs? Was there something wrong with his tiny little mind? Was he developmentally delayed, physically challenged? Was I insane? Last year he went to

China

. Next year he goes to college. He can talk just fine. He can walk, too.

Every part of raising children is humbling, too. Believe me, mistakes were made. T hey have all been enshrined in the, "Remember-When- Mom-Did Hall of Fame." The outbursts, the temper tantrums, the bad language, mine, not theirs. The times the baby fell off the bed. The times I arrived late for preschool pickup. The nightmare sleepover. The horrible summer camp. The day when the youngest came barreling out of the classroom with a 98 on her geography test, and I responded, "What did you get wrong?". (She insisted I include that.) The time I ordered food at the
McDonald's drive-through speaker and then drove away without picking it up from the window. (They all insisted I include that.) I did not allow them to watch the Simpsons for the first two seasons. What was I thinking?

But the biggest mistake I made is the one that most of us make while doing this. I did not live in the moment enough. This is particularly clear now that the moment is gone, captured only in photographs. There is one picture of the three of them, sitting in the grass on a quilt in the shadow of the swing set on a summer day, ages 6, 4 and 1. And I wish I could remember what we ate, and what we talked about, and how they sounded, and how they looked when they slept that night.

I wish I had not been in such a hurry to get on to the next thing: dinner, bath, book, bed. I wish I had treasured the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less.

Even today I'm not sure what worked and what didn't, what was me and what was simply life. When they were very small, I suppose I thought someday they would become who they were because of what I'd done. Now I suspect they simply grew into their true selves because they demanded in a thousand ways that I back off and let them be.

The books said to be relaxed and I was often tense, matter-of-fact and I was sometimes over the top. And look how it all turned out. I wound up with the three people I like best in the world, who have done more than anyone to excavate my essential humanity. That's what the books never told me. I was bound and determined to learn from the experts. It just took me a while to figure out who the experts were.

**IMAGE ABOVE VIA POSTSECRET.COM, a site so worth checking out i can almost guarantee instant fascination and lots of time suckage.

Magical Thinking

2010-04-28T22:22:00.004-06:00

I'm having a less than stellar week. I'm on emotional overload and running very empty on single parenting and have felt pretty near getting in bed and not getting out multiple times this week, and its only freaking Wednesday! I'm not normally much of a poor me, or I like to think I'm not anyway. I've got a good life and a million reasons to be grateful, but the ruts in my mind have been running me off into the weeds. Thank god for the help of a warrior confidant and dinner maker tonight! Lisa, you are a life saver.

The other life saver appearing just in the nick of time was a reminder of the power of positive thinking, or maybe I will call it magical thinking. I happened upon this wonderful idea over at I nchmark to keep a glass mason jar on your desk to record all the magical little quotables children say; the things that make raising kids so damn precious and worthwhile but are usually so quickly forgotten in busy adult brains. The thought of getting up in the morning prepared to document something wonderful my kids are bound to say is enough to help me face tomorrow. And I love the thought of getting to revisit something wacky from Flynn's 2 year old mind down the road.

I also got a big boost from reading 1000awesomethings. As ever, its the little stuff in life that is worth considering and so many of the things posted here are examples of all that we look past daily without realizing we just might be experiencing a perfect moment of joy.

Inspired by 1000 things, I officially started my awesome summer things list. Part to- do and part hopeful, it instantly made me feel happier to put it all down on paper and focus on future. Sometimes living in the now ain't all its cracked up to be! I really am a list maker at heart. I have miles of lists sitting on my desk right now and I have gotten satisfaction from writing every single one of them. I should start saving all my lists as proof positive that the road of my life was paved with good intentions.

Here are a few of my good intentions for this sure to be very glorious summer:

play croquet in someone's backyard

throw horseshoes as much as possible. ringer!!

have a fire in that amazing, huge outdoor fireplace at liberty park that i've fantasized about for the last 5 years

watch a roller derby match

make gazpacho

can pickles and jam and salsa, peaches and tomatoes and applesauce

pick berries at the mcbrides berry farm

take the kids to vernal to look at dinosaur stuff

project a movie onto a sheet and watch it outside under the stars

camp in the red rock desert and look forward to the sensation i always get that i'm home

camp in the uintas (maybe moon lake?)

camp at bear lake and let flynn dig in the sand all day

go to the drive-in movies in mt pleasant with my dad and eat popcorn and red vines til we're sick

keep my humming bird feeders full and let cleo attempt to "train" a hummingbird (one of her recent goals)

hike mt olympus

get a fly fishing lesson from nile

take my cruiser bike out for a spin with my mom on her cruiser

skinny dip

do shadow puppets in a tent, jeff reed style

have weekly bbqs with friends

make homemade granola bars

go to bees baseball games

make lots of lipton sun tea just like my nanny marcie used to make with secret ingredient:cinnamon sticks

help cleo run a lemonade stand

go to lagoon

take someone, anyone, out to see spiral jetty on the great salt lake who hasn't ever been there

enter something into the state fair

turn 35 and hope for a good 35 more....

Green is the New Black

2010-04-22T00:03:00.002-06:00

Today is Earth Day, people. It's an important day to me because the Earth--Nature--is the closest thing I have to religion. I'm an earth lover. There is nothing that makes me feel happier than to be out-of-doors and in the fresh air. It always cures what ails me. I am in love with the tallest tree and the smallest leaf. I admire dew drops and fern curls and sparkly chips of hard granite. I like dirt under my fingernails. I watch wisps of clouds and limbs swaying in the breeze. My breath has caught in my throat at the sight of an apricot colored butterfly and the iridescent green throat of a humming bird. I've felt actual triumph at seeing a rainbow suddenly appear in the foreground of a dark thundercloud and fear to my toes watching a black bear lumber toward me. The exuberance, the creativity, the PERFECTION of every facet of Nature floors me. It gives me reassurance and makes me believe in something, somewhere, orchestrating this flawlessness.

I saw Avatar tonight. I think my mother in law and I were the last people on the planet NOT to have seen it, so we joined forces and went. I bring this up because I felt so amazed by the world depicted in the movie; unimaginable creatures and unique beauty and awesome scale as far as the eye could see. But seriously, has anyone watched Planet Earth or LIfe on Discovery Channel lately? There is nothing in Avatar that eclipses the beauty and the diversity of what we have right here on our very own planet. It's an amazing world out there and I for one hope that we can help find the balance in our lifestyles that will preserve what we have before it is too late.

It is cliche to say "Make Every Day Earth Day" but I'm going to recommend it anyway. There are so many little things we can all do to help our MAMA out. Small things add up when done by millions. In honor of Earth Day, here's a round up of some great links to ideas on little things we can all do to increase our GREEN. Enjoy!:

Simple Mom's 40 Ways to Go Green

Small Notebook's 20 Tips to Waste Less Food

Maya Made's How to Create a Paperless Kitchen

Crafty Crow's awesome s election of crafts using recyclables

My new line of work....

2010-04-18T22:25:00.002-06:00

Wow, I think I was just graced with the perfect spring weekend. The weather cooperated beautifully from Friday to Sunday, allowing me to spend maximum time outside with no discomfort. If there's a heaven, I'm pretty sure it is 72 degrees there.

I took the kids down to the lovely Spring City this weekend to install our new bee hive with my Dad. As novice bee people, we decided to place the hive down on my Dad's property in the very rural and very bee friendly countryside of Spring City rather than make a go of it in our traditional suburban neighborhoods. It was a nervous moment, for sure, loading up the car with 2 kids and thousands of bees.

To start a new hive, bees are delivered to you in "packages" consisting of 1 queen surrounded by her thousands of workers all humming and buzzing at you from the inside of a wooden box with wire mesh sides. Bee behavior is fascinating and the whole reason one can start a colony fresh from a package like we did is because of the highly organized nature of bee society. The queen bee is literally the head and the begetter of the entire hive. Her job is to make sure the hive never runs out of bees and she does this by laying thousands of eggs every day. (In just three weeks, the queen lays enough eggs to completely repopulate the hive with new bees.) Every single other bee in the hive is a worker bee, and, interestingly, other than a small percentage of male drones whose only job is to mate with the queen, the remaining thousands of workers are all female. Egads, a matriarchal society! Worker bees have a lifespan of a couple months and in this short time they hold a series of jobs within the hive that make bee society run. Worker bees clean the hive, feed the bee larvae, make wax cells which store the honey, care for the Queen, guard the hive, and others are the bees we see out and about foraging for the all important nectar that bees use to make the honey which sustains them.

The experience of opening up our bee package and releasing the bees into the hive was nerve wracking, but it was also really cool. It definitely helped that both my Dad and I had suited up in our bee outfits so our skin, faces, and hands were protected from stings. It ensured a false sense of confidence! It also helped that the goal of all those worker bees is to be near their Queen. As soon as we put the queen into the hive in her little cage (she is kept separate from the workers while in the package) the bees want to be near her. They want to free her and they want to get to work. We literally dumped thousands of bees on top of the hive and in front of it and in a few short hours, there wasn't a bee in sight. They were all inside getting down to business. The devotion struck me as beautiful. And that feeling, that humanizing thought, provided me with perhaps the best answer for why in the hell I would want to get into bee keeping. Sure, I like honey, but I certainly don't feel obligated to produce my own. I've been stung by a few bees in my time and can say it is an experience I'm not eager to recreate. But what I really loved, and what I think will make bee keeping addictive, is to see something lowly like the bee and realize that there is a whole world there within my world. Bees have their own jobs, their own family, their own rhythm and knowledge. They are a creature being as much itself as I am. To peer into that hive world, something so new and so hidden, was tantalizing. I feel hooked. I feel like a bee keeper.

Signs of Spring...

2010-04-13T21:04:00.004-06:00

Climbing trees, sleeping in the stroller after a nice walk, dirty hands and fingernails, going shirtless and shoeless, seeds and pea shoots and plant starts, new garden beds, pile of freshly washed (and previously very muddy) boots sitting by the door, painting white our soon to be working bee hive, wrestling in matching spring time pj's, making dinner on the grill, watching our baby chicks pecking and playing in the garden for the first time...... O SPRING, I adore you.

And so does my favorite poet of all time, the venerable ee cummings, who says it so much better than i.....

III

Spring is like a perhaps hand

(which comes carefully out of Nowhere)arranging

a window, into which people look(while

people stare

arranging and changing placing

carefully there a strange

thing and a known thing here)and

changing everything carefully

spring is like a perhaps

Hand in a window

(carefully to

and fro moving New and

Old things, while

people stare carefully

moving a perhaps

fraction of flower here placing

an inch of air there)and

without breaking anything.

O sweet spontaneous

earth how often have

the

doting

fingers of

purient philosophers pinched

and

poked

thee

,has the naughty thumb

of science prodded

thy

beauty .how

often have religions taken

thee upon their scraggy knees

squeezing and

buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive

gods

(but

true

to the incomparable

couch of death thy

rhythmic

lover

thou answerest

them only with

spring)

Magic afoot.....

2010-04-09T08:36:00.003-06:00

I love being the boss of my kids, but like any job, I sometimes have managerial issues. I often can relate to Michael Scott on The Office, cheer leading to a very unappreciative pair of disgruntled employees. Sometimes my crew doesn't seem motivated to listen or achieve, and quite often both Cleo and Flynn choose not to follow our house rules (which pretty much all restate the GOLDEN RULE in various ways) and instead try to scratch each other's eyes out over who has the blue marker or the chair next to mom or the pink plate or other such silly dramas. And that's frustrating, especially when I'm at the end of my line with a long day, or worse when Jaren's away traveling for blocks of time and I'm plain desperate for receptive ears and cooperative hands and minds. I find that my frustration with my kids and their behvaior can outweigh the fun of parenting and then its like a weird graph chart or something, as my frustration and theirs increases so does the level of our voices--much higher and louder! Things devolve very quickly around here when we have reached that point with each other. I hate going to bed feeling like I spent the day yelling at my kids. About a month ago I decided I needed to try something new to try and alleviate power struggles and to help my kids learn to make better choices on their own.

There are a gazillion techniques that parenting books or online resources suggest for motivating kids toward better behavior. One of the ones I come across most frequently is the marble jar. Basically parents reward kids with a marble for good behavior which they then put in a jar, and when the jar is full, the child receives an agreed upon reward or treat. It is a simple concept but very effective, thanks to the tangibility of seeing actual marbles pile up. I think kids really need to SEE results not just have you ask for them. I also like the fact that a marble can stand in for just about anything in parenting world....doing a chore, using the potty, washing hands, finishing homework, cleaning their plate at dinner, sharing, and especially for those unexpected moments of kindness kids bestow on each other and a parent happens to witness.

Most marble jar users seem to only "give" marbles for positive behavior. Maybe I'm a meaner mom, or just in the throes of the terrible two's, but I felt I had to tweak the marble system a bit for my family and instead have come up with the pebble system. We use glass beads (normally used in flower arrangements) as our pebbles and Cleo and Flynn each have their own color and own clear glass mason jar. Next to each jar both kids have 2 cups-one with a happy face on it and the other with a sad face. We keep the jars and cups right on the ledge above the kitchen sink so its a very prominent spot. Each morning I put 4 marbles on the top of the jar and throughout the day the kids either earn happy or "magic" pebbles for good behavior and random acts of kindness, or sad pebbles for sassing, fighting, hurting each other, etc. They can always earn back pebbles in the sad cup but I can't take away pebbles from the happy cup. At the end of the day the pebbles in the happy cup get poured into the jar and the sad ones go back into the pool to be earned again. They each have a reward card on the fridge where we wrote down what they decided to work toward. Last week we completed the first round of full jars and Cleo got to go swimming at our Rec Center and Flynn got to go out for ice cream--pretty small rewards for 3 weeks of much less yelling and way more cooperation!

I think a key reason the system has been so successful around here is that before we got started, I sat down with the kids and really discussed what we would be doing and asked them what kind of behavior would earn a magic vs. a sad pebble. I tried really hard not to feed them the answers and I was really pleased to see that on her own Cleo already clearly knew the difference between behaviors that are positive and behaviors that make me crazy! We worked together to make a list on our chalkboard and I haven't had the heart to erase it since it is so cute and keeps us all motivated. I had to work a little harder to get independent answers from Flynn, but he was able to articulate on his own "no hitting" "listening to mom and dad" and "staying in my bed." A pretty good start for two.

It really has changed my life to be able to "threaten" with the very idea of getting a sad pebble rather than yell and hiss, and to have a tangible means of rewarding my kids for good deeds. It makes the whole transaction of parenting a little less fraught with emotion. I half believe there really is some magic in those pebbles; lightening the mood, easing frustration, and feeling like we are all having more fun together--those are magic accomplishments to me. Cleo and Flynn have both told me seperatly that they think me or Jaren should get a magic pebble for something nice we have done and I'm thinking about trying that experiment too...making a parent jar and giving the kids a chance to reward or deny us some pebbles. Even as an adult, I can still use a reprimand and a reward every now and again!

P.S.I love the wonderful blog Let's Explore's version of the marble jar because they use one jar to motivate both their kids to work toward a reward for the whole family. It's a team effort and focuses on the positive. Check it out.

Meet Honey and Matilda....

2010-04-01T17:35:00.003-06:00

I have a habit/fault of talking about things way before I ever actually do them. My mind, it seems, works much faster than my body and my motivation. This is precisely the case with the idea we had 18 months ago to delve into the backyard chicken movement that is currently sweeping across the country. (If you don't believe me that this is an actual trend see this article and this one. Chickens, as Susan Orlean in the New Yorker article puts it, are the "it bird".)

Jaren and I were excited from the outset about the idea of keeping chickens. Having our own fresh eggs, getting to experience raising an animal that actually produces a useful edible thing, and watching the effect taking care of our chickens would have on our children--especially since our household is cursed with animal allergies and some deep running cleanliness issues that pretty much rule out our ever having a conventional indoor pet-- these all played into the desire. So did the fact that I am so eager these days to reconnect with traditions of domesticity that are useful and have needlessly fallen by the wayside of modernized culture. Chickens have only NOT been a part of most people's home life for about 50 years. Before that, they were a commonplace and utilitarian feature of the domestic landscape, albeit the more pastoral landscape of the past. And unlike bigger livestock, chicken raising was normally relegated to the realm of women and children, something that makes me love it all the more in this current phase of my life as a stay at home mama.

So anyway, there I was broadcasting our plan to have chickens to one and all, collecting scrap wood for the coop, looking at online sites like Backyard Chicken and Urban Chicken and then we just sat on the idea...til now! This spring has found us finally ready to catch up to our talk. Jaren has been working on the coop this past week and it will be completed whenever this infernal fickle Spring decides to really become itself. Yesterday we went to IFA and just bit the bullet and bought ourselves 2 fuzzy little balls of peeping cuteness: one Buff Orpington which will lay gorgeous pale brown eggs and 1 Ameraucana the famed "Easter Egg" chicken which lays lovely aqua colored eggs. We will probably add one more to the mix this weekend. Does 3 make a flock?

I'm very excited about the whole adventure. I worry about my neighbors; I worry about pests and critters and predators; I worry about odor and chicken shit; I worry about the fact that all birds have the capacity to weird me out with their non blinking and darty movements and strange scaly feet. But it is funny the way mother nature puts potentially difficult and tedious things in perfectly manageable and cute packages. Babies and chicks, who can resist them? And just like with parenting, I know that if I devote myself to caring for these little somethings, in the end the shit and the worry and the weirdness end up being such a small piece that can't hold a candle to the overall joy. I'm counting on that. I'm also figuring that if I ever start to doubt the decision, Cleo will come to the rescue and be the chicken cheer leader. In the less than 24 hours we've had the chicks, Cleo has already told me "now our family's bigger!" and made a card "introducing" the chickens to the world, and said "Mom, it's not about the eggs, it's about them!" She's in love. Let's hope I will be too.

YUM

2010-03-25T21:49:00.003-06:00

Sometimes very good things come in surprising packages, don't they?

I had the lovely shock recently of finding that perhaps the simplest recipe I've ever come across is also an absolute keeper. I had a big plan last week to make homemade pasta. The truth is I have a soft spot for it since it was something of an entertaining staple in my house growing up, something we did as a family when guests came over. And I do believe I even had a few birthday parties where making noodles was the main event. Cranking the floury, salty dough through the Atlas pasta machine was a fun, exciting thing to me at eleven, and it turns out it still is! Jaren and I bought our own shiny metal Atlas machine years ago, but we haven't busted it out a single time since we became parents. I thought the kids would get a kick out of watching their pasta noodles "born", but like so many of my expectations about what my kids will think is fun, they were absolutely indifferent to the pasta making process and were just ready to eat.

Lucky for us, the best part of the night was the secret tomato sauce recipe I had read about on Smitten Kitchen awhile back. The simple trio of ingredients (peeled tomatoes, butter, and onion) had made me avoid jumping to make it because it just sounded too simple to be very good. But since I really trust Smitten Kitchen on these matters, I figured it was worth a go. Its been a week and I've wanted to make the sauce pretty much every day since. YUM! The sauce is delicate and subtle and seriously good. I would recommend you make it with the high quality San Marzano canned tomatoes, though, since the tomato flavor is the main event. I can't say it is the most amazing thing you'll ever eat but I can say that the flavor in its simplicity will refresh you and get under your skin. And let's not forget that this puppy costs next to nothing to make and is ready in 45 minutes with minimal stirring required. Like I said, keeper!

Tomato Sauce with Butter and Onions

Adapted from Marcela Hazan’s Essentials of Italian Cooking

Serves 4

28 ounces (800 grams) whole peeled tomatoes from a can (San Marzano, if you can find them)*
5 tablespoons (70 grams) unsalted butter
1 medium-sized yellow onion, peeled and halved
Salt to taste

Put the tomatoes, onion and butter in a heavy saucepan (it fit just right in a 3-quart) over medium heat. Bring the sauce to a simmer then lower the heat to keep the sauce at a slow, steady simmer for about 45 minutes, or until droplets of fat float free of the tomatoes. Stir occasionally, crushing the tomatoes against the side of the pot with a wooden spoon. Remove from heat, discard the onion, add salt to taste (you might find, as I did, that your tomatoes came salted and that you didn’t need to add more) and keep warm while you prepare your pasta.

Serve with spaghetti, with or without grated parmesan cheese to pass.

The gift of attention

2010-03-22T21:45:00.002-06:00

Thank you Spring for entering my life at just the perfect moment! I really needed your clear skies and soft light and the gentle nudge nudge nudging of tiny green life reaching up around me. I've waxed on and on (see here or here) about my love of this faire season, but seriously, what is not to love about spring? It is an insta-cure for the funk and blahs of winter and it is giving me a much needed energy boost. I've been mired in what feels like a complex life recently, and I feel so reassured watching Nature unfold and gain momentum all around me, doing it without question and in such small, subtle increments. Maybe I've just been on some sort of hibernation/auto pilot winter mode myself, pushing up in my own tiny increments toward the warmth and sun again?

As I was out turning the soil in the garden today, I stood and watched a hawk doing concentric circles in the sky; going ever higher then gliding back down. It was mesmorizing watching its wings beat and realizing that the motion requires so much effort, a constant jumpity flap flap. I'd never sat and stared like this at a bird in flight, allowing myself to be transfixed until the hawk flew out of view up the canyon. What a gift attention is and what a gift it feels like when I can capture it in my own cluttered mind. It is such a big, fast paced world out there. And in the mania of screens and tech and rushing around, it is so easy to just fail to notice the small details and even harder to just stay in the moment at hand. But taking the time to really look is such a wonderful source of relaxation and awe. I think that is why I work hard (perhaps even subconsciously) to cultivate hobbies and habits that actually take time instead of save it. I have learned to love the 10 minutes it takes me to knead my bread dough because in those 10 minutes there is nothing else I can be doing. I stand in the kitchen and mellow. I think gardening is a great hobby for these modern days because it forces patience--there is no short cut or fast forward button. You just have to wait and see, water and hope. My Dad and my little family are raising bees for honey this summer and I'm hoping this hobby will turn out to be much the same, a delightful waiting game and an opportunity for all of us to unwrap more little gifts of attention.

I'm not a religious person so I've never truly observed a Sabbath day, but I really love the idea of having a set day in your week to rest and encourage a change of pace, whether it be to worship or just to avoid doing what you normally do. I was intrigued to learn that Sabbath comes form the word shabbat which in Hebrew means "to cease". I learned this nifty little tidbit from a very cool web initiative called Sabbath Manifesto, which aims to help people slow down and unplug every week. I love the ten principles they came up with to help encourage a weekly time out:

Avoid Technology

Connect with Loved Ones

Nurture your Health

Get outside

Avoid commerce

Light candles

Drink Wine

Eat Bread

Find Silence

Give Back

I think I would like a day each week that had me following that gospel. Between sabbath and spring, I think I'm saved! Hallelujah.

cures for the kitchen

2010-03-15T13:41:00.002-06:00

A few weeks ago I signed up for a genius thing called the Kitchen Cure on the lovely site the Kitchn, which has provided me with so many good recipes and tidbits in the last couple of years. The cure is basically a challenge to purge, organize, clean, and spruce up your kitchen in four weeks. As my primary "workspace" these days, and the center of our home, my kitchen takes so much abuse. There are smoothie splatters on the blender and goldfish cracker smashes under the stove and all my equipment feels like it is covered in gooey film of kid-ness and cooking grease. Its not that I don't clean my kitchen. I do. I just don't normally go deep. I maintain and never force myself to face the toaster crumbs on the lazy susan or the goop by the waste basket or tossing out the package of rice flour from 2004.

These past fews weeks I've been following along with the cure assignments: cleaning out the fridge, freezer, and pantry of old and under used food, de-cluttering drawers and shelves and finding all those random kitchen tools and appliances that I never use or are not in good working order, and then deep cleaning everything including the appliances. It has felt so good! I think every room in my house probably needs a monthly cure every so often. Breaking big tasks (like undoing and then redoing your whole kitchen) down into weekly assignments is such a smart way to efficiently and effectively tackle them. I haven't felt overwhelmed even once and I easily complete each assignment because I have a whole week to finish. And frankly, being the pleaser that I am, I really like being "assigned" tasks because I love to relish in the glory of completing them. I'm a list maker at heart and take freakish amounts of satisfication in those little checks and x's.

The cure did make me appreciate two things that I have started doing in my kitchen this past year that allow for easy maintainence and order. Awhile back I started labeling all the left overs in my fridge. I have a thin roll of masking tape I keep in my utensil drawer and whenever I put leftovers in a container I write the contents on a strip of tape with a sharpie and stick it to the side or the lid. It is nice to open the fridge and know what's in it at a glance. Things don't get lost in the shuffle and mold anymore! And I've found that I now eat pretty much all of our left overs because if I read on a label that there is chicken tortilla soup, I am way more likely to eat it, especially when I'm starving and feeling the "we don't have anything to eat" dilemma which seems to strike me at lunch when I'm very vulnerable to the pull of the Oreos or chips.

The freezer inventory is the other trick I'm really keen on. I started it back when I was living on the $15/week budget and needed to know exactly what food I already had to work with. Basically all I do is keep an active log of what I put in the freezer (meat, berries, butter, dino nuggets, phyllo dough, ice cream etc.) and I cross things off when the items are gone and I add them back when I've repurchased. It may seem silly to inventory your freezer but between my small freezer capacity which forces everything to be crammed in disorderly piles, and places like Costco that encourage buying big portions of things at once, I find it is a pretty useful way to make sure you aren't wasting completely useable food. I also find the inventory to be an amazing meal planning tool. If I see I'm heavy on ground beef and pork then I know meatball time has come. After all, ingredients I have on hand can and should direct the meals I decide to make. Its budget conscious but its also waste conscious.

Part of this week's cure assignment is to beautify the kitchen space through a special project like fresh paint, hanging art, or keeping a vase of fresh flowers. I haven't decided on mine yet, but honestly just going into the kitchen and opening the ordered, clean drawer has made it feel more beautiful to me. Good stewardship clearly has a beauty all its own.

Love affair with tangibility

2010-03-03T21:21:00.003-07:00

Thank you all for the sympathetic well wishes! It has been a tough week bouncing back from my Grandma's death and still having Jaren gone and my Cleo sick in bed. But I'm attempting to persevere, and have a lot to look forward to in the coming weeks, not least of which are the nearly spring-like temperatures outside. Our snow is all but melted and I got out in the yard today with Flynn and raked the tired old leaves and mangy mess of winter out of the garden beds. It was cathartic, and reminded me how life just moves us forward, whether we are ready or not.

Having someone close to me die seems to be making me have a love affair with tangibility. Its like I want to fight life's ephemeral nature and capture it any way I can. I have been interested all week in the idea of documentation. I have taken so many photos of my kids and have been relishing even the smallest gesture: the wrinkling of a nose, the dirt caked under fingernails, a wiggly front tooth. I've been mindful to write down the funny little things they say, the ones I know I will one day forget. How can I hold on to these little beings when they change daily? How can I capture what it feels like to be a mother to two young children? How will I remember this day, this moment in time?

I have always been drawn to collecting things, especially vintage stuff, because I love the story encased in every object. Old stuff, in particular, conveys a sense of the life lived around it: the creases, the yellowed pages, the cracks, the dents. For me, this patina is what turns mere things into precious somethings. Collecting is so expressive of personality. It explains materially what one finds beautiful, unique, or captivating. And a collection is a tangible legacy to leave behind. The "you can't take it with you" adage is definitely true, but precious objects sure can step in and inform and continue your story for you.

I feel so grateful that Mere was someone who hung on to stuff. She didn't collect per se, she was just loathe to part with anything. It has been a wonderful gift to inherit some of her treasures, as well as every day objects, and get to put them into rotation in my own household. I now have her metal measuring cups and measuring spoons and some simple pyrex dishes. In my quest for tangibility, I found myself cooking and baking Mere's recipes all week (recipes being another great example of documentation of a life and memories) and loved the fact that I was doing it with some of her ordinary things she must have used for the very same purpose. It felt comforting to me to know that even though the players have changed, the game remains the same. Her things are now my things, her story is now my story, and it will hopefully one day be told in a voice never known to me.

**The gorgeous photos above are from an amazing photo blog called A Collection A Day by artist Lisa Congdon, which is a project to document a different collection of objects each day for a year. I love the fact that some of the collections are real and some are imagined...things you would wish to have and collect. The project inspires me, the objects inspire me, and it reminds me to think about the things that surround me and how best to honor them and let them tell my story. Hope you enjoy it too......

A well-deserved tribute, and a cherished family recipe

2010-02-22T20:40:00.003-07:00

Since I started this blog, there is one person I continually think to write about because as the most frugal person I've ever known, and a talented home maker, it turns out we have a lot of similar interests. I've mentioned Mere, my grandmother, a few times here and here, and it is with bittersweet feeling that I say she died today. At 87, she was ready to go, but it doesn't make it any less hard to imagine living my life without her. She has been an anchor in our family as long as I've been around. There is much that we differed on in life choices and in overall outlook, but I always found her to be real, honest, and completely unlike anyone else in my life. She refreshed me the way an icy bath would, not altogether pleasant, but very stimulating.

I've been rummaging around in my storehouse of memories today and realizing just how much she imparted to me during her life. She introduced me to the smell and taste of freshly baked bread. And homemade jam--apricot with or without pineapple flecks being her favorite. She used to spin a lazy susan in her kitchen and let me and my sister pick a treat from one of the famously stale candies she kept in random, assorted jars with screw lids. I picked my first raspberry and carrot on her watch. And ate my first prune. (Another item on the lazy susan!) She taught me a nugget of wisdom about cleaning and staying organized that I think of often when my house is in shambles: R.U.R. Reach. Use. Replace. She never wasted something useful and always put things like old yogurt and cottage cheese containers to good use. I'm pretty sure she never bought a ziploc bag, opting instead for her homespun version which consisted of a left over produce plastic bag from the grocery store secured either with a bread bag twist tie or a rubber band from the newspaper. I really don't think I ever left one of our visits without holding one of these contraptions full of coupons, a handful of fruit she'll "never eat" , a few loose hot dogs, a collection of odd medicine cabinet items, or some of her famous Matheson sugar cookies. She valued fairness and always sent every person in the family a card with the same increment of birthday money: $15. She loved flowers and spring time and working the soil. She liked taking a dip in a swimming pool. And cashews. She had lovely hazel eyes. She cleaned and cooked and took keeping her home very seriously, something I admire so much in these modern times. Right up until the end she was fastidious about her house and kept herself busy and active with projects like washing bucketfuls of rocks from her window wells (not kidding you), or hosing off the garage floor, or vacuuming the leaves that fell onto her patio. She was task oriented and remarkably spry and full of energy, even at 87.

What does one do when someone close to our heart dies? I was a little lost today when I returned home from the hospital. I tried to lay down and rest but my mind got the better of me. Before I knew it, I was up organizing my pantry. And then mopping my floors and scrubbing the tub. I washed every pan in the sink and then I wiped the cabinet fronts. It was a little insane, but then again, it was also the perfect tribute to a woman who was never idle and took great pride in her home and her duties there.

Rest in Peace, Mere. I will miss you dearly.

winter cleaning

2010-02-17T21:34:00.003-07:00

i just returned from a little trip with my family. it was a great change of scenery for me and the kids and a hit of much needed sunshine. we've had endless grey days this winter and it felt positively shocking to have the sun on my skin and sand in my toes.

i've said this before, but there is nothing like going somewhere (especially with little kids in tow) to make you appreciate going nowhere. it feels so nice and relaxing to be back at home. i've been puttering all day today; looking through closets and doing some much needed straightening and purging. i have been on a big kick to eliminate all the under utilized things that roost. i always think i've already done this and yet i keep finding ways to refine and pare down in every room of the house. it must be mood or bank balance related; sometimes i can let go and sometimes i can't!

we live in a culture where we all have things we keep but never use. plenty of storage is one of the top attributes in a home these days, for heaven's sake. we are well beyond the bare necessities and far into multiples, and bedecking and bedazzling, and cherries on top. going to the thrift store is amazing on so many levels. there is the whole generosity of spirit part--wow, people gave all these things up to those in need. but there is also a part that is pretty freaky to consider. if all these things are here because someone didn't need them anymore, it probably means they have plenty of things to spare. and it also means there is just that much stuff out there in the world that things can literally be homeless, without an owner. our world is overflowing with goods as far as i can tell. bins and piles and aisles and pallets, truck trailers, and shipping containers...it's endless. we're swimming in a sea of items these days and it has become no small task just to keep our literal things managed.

i've started asking myself some pretty strict questions when i'm sorting through drawers or closets. when is the last time i used/wore/admired/loved this? it has been five years, will i truly ever patch this moth hole in this sweater? in reality, will i ever bake a bunny shaped cake? do i really need so many vases? sentimental stuff is clearly the hardest to part with. i'm especially prone to cling when it comes to clothes. they remind me of different eras and choices of my life and i find it really hard to admit that i'm past it or that i simply could never squeeze back into it! when i really assess my stuff and force myself to admit that i don't need it for reasons xyz, i'm almost always relieved. and it even feels good. i finally got wise and started a few bins for donations to good will, things to sell, and things to pass along to friends. it makes the purging and sorting feel organized and less about piles that sit and waste away and get forgotten once again. and this way if i don't get around to going to good will or sending clothes off to my sister's little girl right away, i know the exact spot to go to when i'm ready to tackle the errand.

the "things to sell" category may take some people by surprise, but i am a big utilizer of websites like craigslist, ebay, and our local Utah KSL classifieds. sure i could send everything to good will and still feel really good about it, but, for me, selling some of the "good stuff" i no longer want makes me feel like i'm really putting a value on what i have. and i like that; it means i respect the attainment and the disposal and that means something to me. and of course earning back a little cash from the things we've previously bought is nice too. but my favorite part is that, in general, the person who responds to my ad is really looking for that particular item so i know it will go to good use.

if you are interested in taking your stuff management to the next level, i think the site unclutterer has a lot of valuable tidbits and advice.

today i kept thinking i was onto something....why doesn't everyone say winter cleaning instead of spring cleaning? who wants to stay inside and clean and organize when its blue and dazzling out? in my book this is the perfect realm of activity for these cold, grey days!

The best medicine

2010-02-07T19:45:00.001-07:00

I've felt the need for a little boost this weekend. I've been feeling a little off, a little sick, a little bit tired of my own self. I tried to take Gretchen Rubin's advice to "act the way, you want to feel", but it wasn't resonating. Instead, the best medicine I found was making a gorgeous chicken pot pie, watching the entire 5 hour BBC version of Pride and Prejudice last night, and letting myself be inspired by random tidbits from the modern day oracle-the web.

There are so many people out there in the world making things a little bit brighter. And on the days when I don't feel I'm doing anything of that sort in my own little realm, it is nice to be able to view things from someone elses' eyes. I freaking loved this video project, The Beckoning of Lovely (great name too), by the children's author Amy Krouse Rosenthal. (Her books, incidentally, are fabulous and get my kids giggling every time.) Click the above link and watch for 7 minutes and get all choked up and awed just like I did.

I also was very happy to discover thankfulfor.com, a constantly streaming, communal list of what people feel grateful for. It is addictive to read. People list things big and small, and all of them make me feel happier. I signed up and post something each day too. It's a good reminder that even when grey skies loom and whines are never far from earshot, there are things to smile about.

Brown baggin' it...

2010-02-02T13:38:00.005-07:00

I am grateful that little things still have the power to impress me. I wanted to share with you one of those amazing little things that is dumb simple, but may even be able to change your life for the better. My kids have a love affair with popcorn. Cleo is not really a great eater of anything not covered in butter or salt, so, by those parameters, popcorn is pretty much manna from heaven to her. The kid can put away a large bucket of popcorn at the theater and still find time to bat your hand away if she thinks you are taking an inappropriate share. Flynn seems to be following her lead and popcorn is one of the most requested snacks and treats in our house. I shuddered when I first heard the awful stories about people going to the emergency room with mysterious breathing problems only to find out that the culprit was their daily bag of microwave popcorn laden with chemicals and fats that stick to lung lining and other precious innards. Yuck! After that, I switched to the healthy Newmans, 0 trans fat variety, but it is expensive and made Cleo root around to find the "buttery, yellow" ones which equalled a lot of waste and a big mess.

Enter my brother in law Brooks telling me offhandedly that you can pop raw kernels in your microwave in a simple brown paper bag! What? Maybe I'm late to the show on this, but I'd never heard of it. I looked online and found loads of recipes and instructions. And here I am months later ready to tell you....stop buying chemical laden, expensive, packaged popcorn and pop your own! No air popper or other contraption required. All I do is scoop 1/4 c. raw kernels into a regular brown paper sack, fold the top a few times and set it to pop. In my microwave, my "popcorn" button cooks it just right at about 2:00. Once it is done, I put it into a bowl and pour a couple tablespoons melted unsalted butter and some sprinklings of kosher salt. It is delicious and tastes so much better than the store variety. If you want to go even more upscale, this recipe from Food Network's Alton Brown is delicious too. The olive oil really changes the flavor.

And while I'm telling tales of culinary revolution, another little joy we've discovered at our house is juicing oranges. Years ago for Christmas my in-laws gave us a small juicer designed for citrus only. It was one of the best gifts I've ever received! 10 years later and it's still in great condition. Lately, I've been filling a big basket of navel oranges and placing it on the counter. Every few days the kids have a heyday juicing a big pile. It is a great project to keep their little hands busy. They can last 30 minutes doing this which is seriously amazing in my book. (The towers of halved oranges turn out to be pretty fun stacking toys and provide counting practice too!) Plus the juicing infuses my kitchen with the smell of a much warmer clime, something I'm really appreciating at this point in a snowy, cold winter, and it gets us all a good dose of healthy vitamin c.

Like I said, little things.... but more and more I find that is what the joys of life really are about: simple pleasures and new discoveries.

Steam up those windows...

2010-01-21T14:53:00.003-07:00

For me the stretch of winter between January through Feburary is always about hunkering down. I tend to get rooted to home and projects and day dream about the warmer days to come when I can be outside doing the things I really love. I find myself dreading January and February, but in actuality, I think the record would show these are good months for me. I get a lot done when I'm staying focused on home, and though my expanding waistline might disagree, I get so much enjoyment out of cooking in the cold, winter days. It is interactive entertainment (especially if you involve your kids) and it is thoughtful attention to a task that I find really relaxing. And then there's the eating. It's hard to beat summer produce but a comfort laden winter meal comes close. Love you hot cinnamon-y oatmeal, Mmmm pasta with alfredo sauce and peas and ham, yum bread pudding, ahhhh french onion soup smothered in gruyere, yes roasted chicken with mashed potatoes, more please chipotle spiked roasted squash and salty oven roasted brocooli..... so many good tastes and sensations. And I get inexplicably warm inside when I see the stock pot steaming up the windows in my kitchen and then look out to the snow covered trees and roofs beyond. It's a gorgeous feeling, and such a good reminder of the safety and comfort and blessings I have within the walls of my home.

Cooking is a powerful thing. It is one of those uniquely human acts....can't think of a time I've ever heard about a monkey or a dog boiling up some pasta...and since cooking ultimately leads to eating, it is a cornerstone of our species' survival. But let's not forget that it can also be very fun. I might be somewhat biased with that statement since I've always liked to cook, but I really think it is true. The process of making food, especially for loved ones or to celebrate a special occasion is galvanizing. I love the tradition of taking food to a family with a brand new baby. Funeral food and baby shower food are distinct and recognizable breeds. Funeral cheesy potatoes anyone? Chciken salad with grapes on crossiant? I love the way food and certain dishes or tastes can link to memories and to people. My dad? He's swedish pancakes and cucumber and swiss sandwiches on rykrisp or limpa. My mom? She's hot fudge sauce and pork roasts with perfect gravy. My sister? Sugar cookies and banana cake. My grandma Mere? Swedish spritz and apricot nectar. Jaren? A perfectly cooked fried or poached egg with feta and spinach. Food creates legacies and merriment. I really believe that. It's a belief I hope I'm instilling in my kids each and every day they watch (and help) me in the kitchen.

Yesterday was Cleo's 6th birthday. (Unimaginable!) We spent literally a few hours of the morning making her birthday cake, a delectable and insane 6 layer rainbow deal inspired by this picture of baked loveliness I randomly found online. Though our final product bore no resemblance to that one (and lost 2 layers to a tragic pan sticking incident), it was really fun to spend the birthday morning in our robes, spilling sugar, splattering egg whites, and swirling vibrant colors into batter. It felt celebratory, and like so much in life, I think the effort made the taste all the sweeter.

Shake it like a polaroid picture...

2010-01-13T21:56:00.002-07:00

As a stay at home parent, my job description is constantly morphing. Somedays I feel I'm the entertainer. Others more of the referee or disciplinarian. Somedays I'm a coach running defense and sometimes clearly in charge with offensive plays up my sleeve. Sometimes I'm slave and short order cook and others I'm master and chef. And let me tell you as a temporary single parent ,and one that hasn't left the house or my two children in 48 hours thanks to little sickies, I could currently be described as potential sadist!

I don't know if you've seen this or not, but I've noticed that some stay at home parents fill out assorted forms at school, or on social media, or wherever, with a job description that says CEO of Smith Household or employed by Emma (7) and Kate (5) or some kind of cute spin. I'm not a big fan of this in general, but I did, however, happen to recently see a description, still tongue in check, that I actually thought brilliantly applied: Director of Development. As parents, we really are the central source for encouraging our childrens' development into self sufficient and hopefully productive, happy adults. We directly expose (and sometimes indirectly, oops) expose them to information. We are their first touchstones for making sense of the world around them. It's a huge position to field and one that has oh so many strings and expectations attached.

I've had this in mind the last couple days even as I fight the urge to impatiently wring necks....here I am developing my child each and every waking minute we interact. Am I actively or passively doing this? I've been picturing myself shaking the polaroid, with just a little bit more of their images "developing", becoming clear each day.

Interestingly, I have been reading a bunch about Maria Montessori, the founder and theorist behind the education system commonly referred to as Montessori, lately and her philosophies dovetail so nicely with this idea. (Let me say in advance that I have no direct experience with Montessori education and neither do my children. We've done straight up preschools and public school thus far. ) But learning somewhere that Montessori was the first woman to practice medicine in Italy in 1896 initially piqued my interest about her. As did lots of little tidbits I'd see around on other blogs about Montessori methods with kids which all seemed to point to creative exploration and inner development.

It turns out that Montessori's main theory is that we are incomplete at birth. We require adult nurturing for a period of time before becoming fully functioning adults. Montessori thought this period of formation lasted until the age of 24. (And random or not, neural scientists have recently concluded through studies that the foundational neural structures in the frontal lobes of the human brain are not complete until around age 24!) Montessori believed education was an aid to life, it was a way to help children build their inner selves, their minds, from infancy to maturity. She once said "a child's work is to create the person he/she will become." I love her rationale that no two individuals learn the same thing the same way, so in essence no two individuals will ever build the same brain. Montessori originated the descriptor "Kids are like sponges" though it sounded all old-timey and professional when she said it since she used the words "absorbent minds" instead. Anyone who has spent anytime with children knows how much information they are capable of swallowing and with such gusto and enthusiasm. They are a rapt audience just waiting for the show.

And though I'm focusing in on children because of, ahem, my very important job description as Director of Development, I don't see any reason that this line of thinking can't be applied to one's own life, regardless of age or station. Aren't we all really directors of our own development each and every day? Wouldn't you hope that your most important job in life is to become exactly who you want to be?

Build Routines

2010-01-04T21:21:00.002-07:00

Happy TWENTY TEN to all of you! I hope this new year is exactly what you want it to be. I want to start this off by telling all of you lovely readers out there how much it means to me that you read this blog. December 29 was the one year anniversary of this project! I am pretty proud of that fact. It makes me so happy to put my thoughts, passions, fears, and personality out there and I appreciate your support and readership so much. I plan to continue developing this site and hope to unveil some improvements shortly. So, please stay tuned. And I don't think I say this enough...please feel free to make comments, queries, and pointers on any and everything I write about. I love to hear from you and would love this place to feel more like a meeting of the minds. So comment away if you are so inclined! And thanks again for making this so worth it for me.

With the new year fresh as the morning dew, like most, I have fresh starts and goals on the mind. I really do love a good resolution and this year one of mine is to create better routines for me personally and for my family. I came across this phrase "building routines" somewhere awhile back and have had it scrawled on our chalkboard for months. I realize that I am drawn to the phrase because of the inherent implication that a routine has to start from zilch and grow into something more, establish itself as it were. You can't make new habits materialize and work out of thin air. And yet this is the approach I normally go for...I try to force very specific changes and want them to happen overnight. My family has braved all kinds of iterations of my good intentions relating to our tv watching habits, creative aspirations, chores, exercise plans, and reading. The best laid plans...but somehow everything disintegrates fairly quickly and I'm back to my free form sense of each day where pretty much what happens just does. I tend to be pretty laissez faire about life, and since Jaren's schedule being self employed is super flexible, our weeks look really different from one to the next. Sometimes we're all home on Wednesday and stay in our PJs until 12:00 and sometimes Jaren is out of town and I get the urge to be up and at 'em by 9:00. It just depends, and there isn't much rhyme or reason to it. I think Cleo's school schedule is the most rigid thing in our life. Isn't that funny?

Lately this lack of repetitive routine has been bugging me. Maybe I crave more structure because of the semblance of control it brings to life. But I also think my family would benefit from something they could recognize as a standard course of events. (To hear kid pros tell it, children thrive on routine, right?) I like to think about milking everything I can out of each day in terms of enjoyment but also in terms of learning and productivity. I always have a lot of to do's floating around in my head and some fall into the honest to goodness chore or must do category, but a lot fall into that nebulous personal fulfillment area. I want to make time in my life for things like reading a good book and creating something with my own two hands. I want to be sure that my kids get to hear us read stories aloud to them each and every day. I want to spend time outdoors, regardless of the season. I would love to listen to a podcast of This American LIfe every Sunday with Jaren over our morning coffee. I could call each of these items goals, but what I actually would like them to be is just part of my life.

And this, I realize is the key clincher when thinking about building a routine. I think I may have been looking at it all wrong all these years, highlighting what I should do instead of what I want to do. What do I want each week I live to include? What balance do I want to strike? What do I want my kids' days to be filled with? Asking myself these questions rather than mumbling dishearteningly "I should be reading more", "I should be exercising daily" etc. etc. has really helped me isolate the routine I want to build. And true to my, and my family's laissez faire nature, I think I've hit on a format that can still resemble a routine without being too stringent and inflexible for our oh so flexible lifestyle. I don't have to assign a day or a set time to each thing, just a goal to hit each one at least once during the week with a very basic category check off list.

Here's how I envision it working: basically I've broken the routine down into the different elements I want to include within each week. They are: create, educate, clean, exercise, organize, entertain. Each category functions on two levels, one personal and the other family. For example each week, I want to create something and I want my kids to do this as well. We can craft, write a story, take photos, draw, that kind of thing. For clean, I have to do the normal household cleaning but I want to make sure my kids get in the habit of doing cleaning chores that effect their immediate surroundings as well. Educate will hopefully ensure that I spend adequate time reading this year and exposing myself to new info via print, podcast or computer. And the same thing for my family. Organize is the umbrella term for tackling household and personal things like sorting my iphoto, going through my massive magazine clipping stash, restacking the linen closet, going through all the tiny baby clothes that have no business being in Flynn's closet anymore--pretty much all the things I put off because I never assign myself a moment to do them. Exercise is self explanatory, though including the kids on this one is important to me because, especially in the winter, we don't always move, move, move as much as we should. Entertain is the purely fun one. This includes time with friends, tv and movie watching, and random social and family activities out and about.

If we manage to actually do something in all those areas at least once a week I think I'm looking at a pretty balanced, good life. I think its the life I want to lead, and if being a little type A about it helps me get there then I'm willing to try it. So don't make fun of me. And fingers crossed, if it works (and I will report back in a few weeks on our progress) you may just want to give it your own little mini type A whirl.

December 21st is an important day to acknowledge....

2009-12-20T23:46:00.005-07:00

Today marks the shortest day, the longest night in our yearly calendar. I know I mentioned that one of our advent activities this season is to celebrate and understand the winter solstice. I've been reading up on the solstice and I've learned so many interesting things and I am just bursting to share so indulge me, please....

I don't know how much you remember from your junior high science class, but, basically we on planet earth are in constant rotation on a daily, 24 hour basis; our planet spinning around in a full circle on its axis creating day and night. Its day for you when your side of the spin is turned toward the sun and night when it is away from the sun. Just to help make your head spin a little more (ha ha) our planet is also in constant rotation on a yearly basis, taking 12 months to make a circle (okay ellipse) around the sun. This, along with the way Earth tilts as it rotates, is responsible for how much light hits the northern part of the Earth and how much hits the southern part on a daily basis. This change in how much light from the sun we receive is what creates our different seasons. On the winter solstice, we in the northern hemisphere are tilted away from the sun and the sun has reached is lowest and southern-most point in the sky giving us the shortest amount of light of the entire year.

Now why is any of this of interest? Well way back when people were actually trying to figure out the world through observation rather than school and books and iphones, and life was just generally more precarious, having the sun reach its lowest point and face long, dark days was a very scary thing. Interestingly, the actual Latin root meaning of solstice is "sun stood still" because the sun pretty much ceases to move for 6 days in December, right around the solstice, appearing to set and rise in nearly the same spot. And being the keen observers they were, the ancients were concerned that the sun wouldn't move again, leaving them in a state of darkness with plants unable to grow, cold seeping in, and life around them dying.

Festivals celebrating the solstice were born out of this fear really, born both to thank the sun and to cajole it into continuing to shine to light our way and our ways of life. Religions and spirituality then were completely tied to Earth and to its constantly changing nature. And though we today have the luxury of being fairly divorced from this type of thinking and direct observation about the world around us, I think it is really interesting to point out that regardless of specific religion, nearly all the ways we celebrate the holidays around this time of year contain traces of ancient solstice celebrations. Here are a few connections I loved:

-Romans 2,000 years ago celebrated the shortest day with merrymaking and by decorating their doors with evergreen wreaths to symbolize that spring (and green growth) would return.

-Miseltoe, called "all heal" was an important good luck plant used in solstice celebrations by Druids.

-In Sweden, for the festival of light called St Lucia, girls wear crowns of evergreen and burning candles to help "rekindle the sun's fire"

-The twelve days of Christmas originates with the 12 "intercalary days" honored by the Romans linking the solar and lunar calendar cycles.

-The word yule is not only shorthand for this time of year but is also a large log set afire to "teach" the light to return.

I think I am eager to celebrate the solstice because it is such a direct way to acknowledge how miraculous the workings of the world are. The complexity of the sun and the earth locked in this dance of movement that gives us all life and rhythm and variation. It's beautiful and scary and completely out of our control. I love the idea of reveling in this and letting myself enjoy this super long day of darkness and reminding myself that the light will return. Tomorrow will be just a little bit lighter, a little bit longer.

HAPPY WINTER SOLSTICE EVERYONE! I am hopeful that in your own life and family you will take a moment to honor this unique day by turning off your house lights, lighting a few candles or a big fire, and opening your door, if only for a second, to the deep darkness outside.

p.s. I loved all the above books-good for me and the kids. I would absolutely recommend all of them.

TWENTY TEN

2009-12-15T15:05:00.002-07:00

Hard to believe we are approaching a new year and a new decade. I love writing out TWENTY TEN instead of 2010. It looks graphic and more fun than the numerical. And so much more official, just as if I was announcing the new year on some kind of authentic new year's letterhead belonging to Dick Clark. I dig making resolutions and over the past few years Jaren and I have had fun coming up with a yearly mantra, of sorts. Last year was Just Be Better and I think we pretty much rocked it. We have some loose strings, of course, that can always use tightening, but it has been a killer year for buckling down and setting new priorities for simplicity, family, home, and productivity. We haven't decided on this year's mantra yet but I'm gunning for KEEP YOUR HEAD ON STRAIGHT since I think if we keep going down this path we're on without getting all disorientated looking over to the weeds, I think we will be in good shape. But I will have to wait for Jaren's vote before this mantra becomes cross stitch material.

I haven't set down a full list of resolutions for the new year yet but I took a step toward one this weekend that I'm excited about. In TWENTY TEN I am hoping to feed my family only locally raised, sustainably produced meat. Through the wonderful local chapter of Slow Food International, I learned about a small family farm that raises hogs and allows people to purchase as little as 1/4 of the pig which is a lot of meat, but isn't so much that you need a full meat locker in your basement. I have a second fridge in the garage and the meat is packed tight in there, but it is manageable. So the farm is Christiansens Hog Heaven and I had the pleasure of meeting Christian and his wife, Hollie, this Saturday when I picked up my 1/4 pork from the back of their white Ford Superduty 150 in the parking lot of Home Depot. I loved the gritty fact of picking this meat up in a random parking lot, straight from them and their truck with their 3 kids watching a movie in the cab. It was fun and it felt good to support them so directly. There was a line of other people waiting for their meat (they had 44 orders!) and it was heartening to see this and to know that other people out there are looking outside the grocery store case to find a more natural order in the food chain. I made a couple rashers (look at me and my new butcher talk!) of bacon this weekend and it was delicious--thick and chewy and not too salty. I love the look of all those wrapped freezer paper bundles stamped with the cut of meat. I am now the proud owner of a ham hock! Wow! Beginning this February, the Christiansens' are going to be adding grass fed beef to their offerings--all pasture fed, free range, and humanely treated. And they will be offering it in small 1/8 sizes too which is lovely for small families and small freezers. I think you still may even get some choices about what cuts you want. They may have pasture raised chicken and turkeys ready by spring too, which means they may just become my one stop local meat shop. If you live in Utah, eat meat, and have concerns about where your food comes from, check out their blog via the above link and consider supporting them. All you need is a freezer and the will to help change a broken system!

Another resolution I have for the new year is to move to a cash only spending situation. I have to face facts. I am not responsible enough to have a credit card in my wallet. It is just that simple. I am a flibbertigibbet and so full of impulse and attraction to beautiful, shiny things that I might as well be a magpie. I just don't do well without parameters. If I am to ever stick to a budget it has to be one that I can relate to in a tactile way. I've tried spreadsheets and mint.com and setting goals. I've had a piggy bank and a high interest cd. But somehow it is never real to me if I only see the balance on the screen. It is real to me, however, when I see the thread bare lining of my wallet. It's that simple. I'm 5 when it comes to money. If I see it, I have it. If I don't see but have a debit or credit card handy, I just pretend to see it. But if I don't have an alternate form of payment and I don't see it...well, you get the idea.....it's gone! I have no more money to spend. I'm done. Again, so simple my kid can do it. So maybe I can finally do it too and stick to a hard and fast budget in TWENTY TEN? If I keep the old head on straight, I don't see why not.

advent...follow up

2009-12-03T13:45:00.002-07:00

i've gotten a couple requests for the actual list of activities we are doing each day for our advent, so here goes:

01. breakfast for dinner by candlelight

02. make a homemade gift for someone

03. make gingerbread houses

04. go pick out our christmas tree and then decorate it

05. watch a christmas movie with popcorn

06. take a moonlit walk

07. have a holiday song sing a long

08. read christmas books at the foot of the tree

09. family spa: manicures, pedicures, foot rubs

10. cut out paper snowflakes

11. make 5 ornaments for our ornament exchange via Crafty Crow

12. bake & decorate Christmas cookies and share with family and neighbors

13. drive to Christmas street and look at holiday light displays around town

14. have a shadow puppet theater night in our PJs

15. read the nutcracker and listen to the music

16. make gift tags and more homemade presents

17. take a wintery walk and make snow angels

18. pray for peace and take food to the food bank

19. play christmas bingo & help mom make yearly hot fudge sauce for friends

20. celebrate the winter solstice with an outside bonfire and hot drinks

21. ride the polar express!

22. make fancy hot chocolate with homemade marshmellows

23. sit by the fire and read about baby jesus

24. wrap presents and leave santa a plate of cookies and thank you note.

advent. the big count down begins.

2009-12-01T15:51:00.003-07:00

ah, back to a normal week. as the photos attest, it was a marathon holiday weekend of activities with cooking and eating being the thread that linked them all. i think i enjoyed the quiet moments of creating and cooking the most-making a flower arrangement for the turkey day table and trying to perfect my homemade piecrust top the list. with my piecrust, i think the flavor and texture are there but the rolling out technique still needs work. where is a pioneer or southern woman circa 1920 when you need one? it was a pretty fugly looking crust, though that would be par for the course with me since i like to say that i specialize in making ugly desserts.

cleo and i decorated the kids' christmas tree on friday. i am plenty anal when it comes to holiday decorating and have declared an adult christmas tree and a kids' tree a necessity since i won't let nary a colored light or a stray ornament touch my tree. i like to style a new tree every year, and inspired by my new glossy white living room floors, i have a hankering for an all white luxe themed tree this year....just plain clear glass ornaments and maybe some feathers...something really airy and simple. but alas, after checking our current bank balance and going through all the boxes of things i currently own, i can't justify buying a new batch of holiday decor. the white tree will have to wait and i will have to breathe new life into last year's woodland inspired tree full of pine cones, tree branches, and moss.

christmas decorating can be so much fun, but like so much of the holiday crap, if i let it stress me out or make it feel like an obligation then the purpose, and the joy, are lost. i think one of the most successful ways i've found to keep the fun spirit of the season in mind is to do a christmas activity advent calendar. there are many versions of the advent tradition which is basically just a count down to the arrival of christmas day. there are lots of cute iterations swimming around online by far more crafty and talented folks than i (check out the link to see a listing of some great ones.) but i keep mine super simple and it works just fine by my standards. this year i cut out 23 little squares of green construction paper (and one brown one for the trunk) numbered them, and taped them up in the shape of a tree. i write a simple holiday or family activity on the back of each square, one for each day leading up to the big dec 25th.

and since i'm trying hard to hum a homemade and frugal tune this holiday season, there is only one activity out of 24 that will actually cost us money. lucky for me a two and five year old have pretty manageable expectations! a sampling of the activities i included: reading the nutcracker together then listening to the music, making hot chocolate and homemade marshmallows (something i've been dying to try), taking a moonlit walk, baking christmas cookies to deliver to our neighbors, etc. i tried to think of things that were simple to do and wouldn't take too much planning on my part and would encourage the kind of pace, home time, and thoughtfulness that i want this season to represent in our home.

one of the things i'm most excited to include in the advent is a real acknowledgement of the winter solstice on dec 21. this is the longest night of the year. the shortest day. and i think i've always focused on this aspect of darkness instead of realizing that what traditionally cultures are really celebrating is the return of the light; the return of warmth and the growing season and plenty. each winter day going forward from the solstice is a less dark one, a longer day in which to live. i think that is such a beautiful sentiment and definitely worth my family's notice. and not coming from a decidedly christian point of view, i feel very happy to embrace and teach about yet another reason we gather to celebrate this time of year. yay for jesus! yay for light! yay for a reason to be with those you love and party! that's what i say.

so if you have a spare minute this week, create an activity advent. it's like a fail-safe for christmas joy, ensuring that at least once a day you will share a moment that consciously sets this season apart from any other. added bonus: your kids will think you are nearly as fun as santa and they just might give you a small breather from the "is it christmas yet" chanting.

giving thanks

2009-11-23T09:24:00.002-07:00

thankful |ˈθa ng kfəl|

adjectivepleased and relieved : [with clause ] they were thankful that the war was finally over | [with infinitive ] I was very thankful to be alive.• expressing gratitude and relief : an earnest and thankful prayer.

when it comes to holidays i play favorites. thanksgiving is the best. i love that it centers around simple joys like food and family. i love the origins of the story as well, pilgrims and the mayflower, plymouth rock, and squanto. it really is the story of the start of our country-venturing out, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, and defying expectations--and our collective legacy of combining cultural backgrounds to make something new and different. that thanksgiving continues to be a yearly tradition in our lives means something. i think we as american people recognize the value of reflecting on all that we have and that is a cultural trait i am very proud to claim.

today i wanted to give lip service to the obvious. thanksgiving is truly about being thankful and letting the gratitude i feel for my life and my circumstances take center stage. and in my world this means articulating what exactly i feel thankful for. living as most of us do in relative plenty and nearly absolute freedom, i have so many things to name. i live a very lucky life. i am healthy. i am surrounded by good family and love. i am happily married to a soul mate. i am raising two children who delight me and make me understand the meaning and importance of selflessness. i have friends, near and far, who buoy my spirits and inspire me with their smarts, creativity, wit, and caring. i have choices about what to do with each day i live and i know that there are places and people and circumstances not so lucky. i feel a profound gratefulness toward nature for all it teaches, inspires, and provides in my life.

i could rattle on and on and am guessing you could too. one of the things i try to be mindful of is that even when life is really going awry and down the tubes, there is always something worth my gratitude. on a really shitty day the fact that i am breathing in and out, alive, comes to mind. on a better day, i can get a little more specific! i think that's a trick to contentment, to just remember that there is always something worthy of our thanks, or if you want to put the half empty spin on it: things could always be worse!

so this week as we're all feasting, sitting around various tables with those we love, let's let ourselves be awash in gratitude and attempt to name it in whatever way feels right and let's celebrate that for this one day a year there is a collective moment, a national mindset of thankfulness.

a crafty mindset

2009-11-10T15:39:00.004-07:00

a momentous thing occurred yesterday: cleo has her first wiggly tooth! she has been aching to join the ranks of her toothless cousins and friends and lose that first tooth. she was beyond thrilled to feel that rare twinge of pain and ache that a loose tooth brings. for me those little baby teeth falling out signal the end of an era and so i feel it is worth commemorating in some small way. i want to be ready when that first one falls out and i have noticed a slough of cute little tooth fairy pillows and things in stores and online. i actually went somewhere yesterday to buy something like that for cleo but didn't find anything i liked. then i remembered seeing a super cute tooth fairy bag project from the purl bee. (this site is great if you like to get in there and DIY and get crafty.)

now, let's be clear. i have long thought of myself as a creative, but i rarely get crafty, and when i do the results are almost universally disappointing and non-spectacular. i am not very gifted with patience for finite details, i'm more of a broad swath kinda gal. so let's just say that i was more than pleased to realize that this little bag was absolutely within my limited range of craft ability and know how. and to my utter surprise i even had decent felt in my fabric box that was perfect for this purpose. i was able to bust out a tooth fairy bag for cleo in one night! a personal best for my crafting record. it definitely isn't perfect, stitches are off kilter and different sized, as is my sewing way, but it is cute, it functions, and cleo is thrilled. actually i could be more thrilled than she, but that's the way it is with handmade gifts right? i think they often give just as much pleasure to the maker as to the getter.

this little project was a perfect thing for me to have accomplished on the cusp, as we are, from holiday mania. if the onslaught of catalogs and end cap displays at the stores are any indication, then christmas is next week. (well, it is actually in 6 weeks, but holy crap, that's soon!) i love christmas and i love to be a giver of fantastic gifts. i felt tangible magic around this time of year as a child and every year of my adult life i notice that magic shrinks a little bit more and gets replaced with what i would call a frenetic pressure that exhausts me and make me forget to sing along to andy williams in the gleeful way my sister and i did every single year of our childhood. it doesn't take a genius to realize the reason i feel less magic around the holidays is because i let less magic in....i have replaced the spirit of the season with over scheduling and obligations and frantic buying and not left enough spare time to entice the peaceful, carefree, 'hap-happiest time" (insert jonny mathis voice-over) moments the season was created to entice in our lives.

so maybe one of the ways i can achieve more of these kind of moments this year is by carving out more mindful time at home making gifts for the special people who surround me. this little bag project reminded me just how much satisfaction comes from truly thinking about someone and their needs and dedicating the energy to make something just for them. i don't think every gift has to be handmade to be a good one--thoughtful, perfect buying is an art form too and lord knows there is plenty of great stuff out there to hope and pine for--but in my own experience, the handmade gift is always so full of love, so full of care and attention, it can't help but stand out and be treasured. it is the opposite of generic, it is utterly personal on both sides of the equation and it is as much a gesture as it is a thing. and i think cultivating that during the season that is turning into excess on every front, mindless shopping sprees, and hectic exchanges, is a quiet magic all its own. i can't promise 100% homemade this year, but it is something i'm going to work toward starting now. nothing worse than rushing and feeling pressure over a handmade gift!

anyone else out there need a tooth fairy bag? i'm on a roll!

Nurture Nature

2009-11-01T21:37:00.002-07:00

When was the last time you and your family spent time together outdoors? Do you allow your children the chance to play unsupervised outside, whether it is in the backyard or down the block? Do your childhood memories contain experiences in nature? Have you splashed in a puddle or looked at the stars in your adult life? Do your children regularly do these things? Do you take your children to places outdoors besides the park and the zoo? Have you ever been in true wilderness, untouched by man? Do you look out the window when you are in your car? Do your kids?

These questions have been on my mind because of a very interesting book I've been reading called Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. Writer Richard Louv makes a strong, empassioned case that today's children (and actually beginning with my own generation of children of the 70s) are disconnecting from Nature because of a steady decline in the amount of time people spend outdoors, and particularly a decline in time having direct experience with Nature--meaning time that you aren't just playing soccer at the park or riding your bike down the block, but truly interacting and engaging with the natural surroundings. Louv cites a lot of reasons our kids are spending less and less time outside roaming free as many generations before did. The top ones are simply having less free time for both family and outdoor play, diminishing access to true "wild" nature as communities and suburbs expand, being literally plugged in more than unplugged whether it is to play stations, tv, computer, or ipods, and of course the modern day fears of letting children play unattended in a dangerous predatory world, as well as the legal/liability fears about children getting hurt while doing something 'dangerous' on community or personal property.

That's a tall list in my book and all of those reasons are things that I contend with when I think about why my own children don't spend more time out-of-doors. I feel a sadness that the current generation of children doesn't have the access to wide open space and the freedom to roam that I did as a child. I really do notice a difference. I know the world is a busy place and our private lives are busy too. But it seems crazy to think that there is no place, no time in our lives for Nature anymore. I just don't believe that can be true.

So what are children (and we adults) losing if they don't spend time engaging with the natural world? Louv, and a rising number of psychologists and educators, believe that by losing touch with Nature, children are losing touch with a vital source for a huge array of skill sets. Playing outdoors provides access to hands on, direct experience and generally experiences that engage all the senses--something plugging into a screen can never hope to do. Nature play encourages attention to detail and the sort of unstructured playing that fosters creativity and intelligence.(Studies have linked ADHD with Nature Deficit as well as Nature as a remedy for increasing children with ADHD's capacity to maintain attention.) Children who spend time in Nature glean basic knowledge and understanding about the natural sciences and the process by which life grows and changes. They develop a bond with their surroundings that can naturally bring about an understanding of the need for wilderness protection and conservation. And of course as anyone who has watched children running around in the wild knows, playing outside without fear of strangers, cars, or safety builds a child's sense of wonder and delight. It is endlessly entertaining and I think really cathartic for kids. It gives them a chance to blow off steam and be truly free of agenda.

I feel really connected with this line of thinking because in my own life, and in my life as a mother, I have seen the transformative power of Nature to bring focus and mental and emotional clarity, and to provide endless teachable moments and endless streams of questions. The environment around us was the original thing we humans had to figure out to survive and I still think there is a yearning deep inside each of us to continue to uncover it. Maybe part of the modern day depression epidemic is that we have begun to deny ourselves this most basic desire?

Nature can't help but be fascinating. There is so much there, so much at a glance that we don't immediately understand. This is just as true for adults as it is for children. I think of Nature as being the most direct empirical evidence we have for something bigger than ourselves; the perfection of it, the majesty, the absolute diversity of creatures and climates and details. It is astounding and it makes sense to me that if we don't encourage ourselves and our children to spend time being outside then we risk alienating ourselves from what makes us tick. We are a part of the landscape even though we try very hard to deny this.

Though I think my children are lucky to have already spent a good portion of time outside hiking, camping, and playing, this book has been a very nice reminder that it will take commitment to keep this as a continued goal in my home, particularly as my children grow and undoubtably become more and more plugged in. I agree with Louv, a relationship with the outdoors shouldn't be an elective course in childhood. It is something we need to nurture and allow.

We live in one of the most beautiful countries on Planet Earth. I'm almost certain that there is something beautiful to see and discover around every bend and in every town. And unlike a lot of the modernized world, we still have some open space to explore. We still have true American Wilderness. But even if we can't always jet off to Yosemite or Alaska or manage a hike, there are so many ways to encourage an awareness and a love of Nature in our lives. I have been making a little list of some of the things I do in my house to help make Nature accessible to me and to the kids and thought I would share, but I think the most obvious one is the most important..> JUST GO OUTSIDE!

-Encourage collecting: leaves, shells, acorns, rocks, bugs, berries. Kids are natural born collectors and this teaches them to take note of the little things and see that Nature is the sum of its parts.

-Have a nature table or spot where nature collections can be displayed inside. I use simple glass mason jars for Cleo's collections.

-Clip flowers and leaves from the yard or a walk and display them in a vase. Give Nature pride of place.

- Plant seeds together and watch them grow. Garden!

-Let your kids work in the yard with you and talk about what you are growing or why you are raking, weeding, etc.

-Go outside, even in bad weather. Taking a walk in the snow or in blustery wind and rain engages the senses and makes it an experience instead of just a walk down the block.

-We love the park and zoo but I try to sometimes offer other outdoor settings-hikes in the mountains, arboretums, throwing stones in a nearby river, etc. One of the great points Louv makes is that Nature happens in the edges, in places between places. If you have a usual park, try going off the path a bit into the bushes or under the trees instead of hitting the playground or grass.

-Mix it up at the library and try to find good nonfiction books about Nature. Subjects like weather are fascinating to kids and I have found that I'm pretty rusty on these subjects too and end up learning a lot myself! We also love field guides about bugs, birds, plants, and animal scat (poo!). It is pretty empowering to be able to name what you see.

-Install a bird feeder in your yard and watch birds.

-Take the time to comment about Nature to your kids...if you see a beautiful sunset or flower, tell them!

warning: winter ahead

2009-10-18T22:28:00.002-06:00

it has been the most beautiful weather weekend. the temperature was perfect and the fall leaves are at their peak. i think it was the last "transition" we will have before it gets truly chilly and turns to winter. i love fall but i have to confess to a feeling of melancholy about it this year. i don't think i was ready to put my garden to bed or say goodbye to long evenings out on the deck. there is so much futurity, so much growth, so much to look toward in springtime and summer. it is a busy time, full of activities, but somehow it never feels hectic to me, just ultra fun. i'm already getting that hemmed in winter time fear...the what will we do to stay sane and entertained riddle.

to combat this, i came up with a big list of little plans i have for the long, dark winter days ahead. the ideas, so far, are:

+take up cross stitch/embroidery and start a sewing basket for cleo with beginning hoop and tapestry needle and get this nifty little starter sewing deal for flynn.

+have craft play dates frequently with cleo and her little friends. i love to watch what kids can create with minor instruction.

+make big batches of stock and read up on good soup and stew recipes. i love hot soup and fresh bread as a winter time meal.

+perfect roasted chicken. this recipe for cooking the whole bird in coconut milk sounds like a good start!

+brew beer with jaren and seth.

+have weekly reading night with the kids where we read a big stack of books or a bunch of chapters and then listen to a book on audiblekids.com

+eat by candlelight

+take lots of baths. and freeze treasure cubes for the kids.

+enjoy our fireplace and start to teach cleo and flynn about the art of building a good fire (lucky she has two fire masters in her life...grandpa and dad.)

+prepare some special celebration for winter solistice, longest night of the year on december 21: a fire pit, staying up late, and mulled wine will have to be involved.

+organize my iphoto and make more photo books to thumb through and enjoy. warm myself by the light of the mac!

+go through and purge my backlog of magazines once and for all!

+go snowshoeing, maybe even by moonlight, something i've always wanted to try.

+ski at least 5 times. a pretty silly goal considering i live 15 minutes from world class slopes.

+convince someone that they need to take me to hawaii, or other warm locale during slushy grey yucky phase of winter. taking children, optional.

+order specialty plant seeds from seed savers and day dream about spring!

THOSE are my best laid plans. How will you brave the long, cold winter? Tips, tips, pass them my way please!

Canning 101

2009-10-13T15:59:00.003-06:00

I don't really do how tos on this blog because I don't feel qualified to give instructions on much! But there is one subject that I feel might warrant a half witted tutorial: canning. I think canning is one of those things that has gone by the wayside needlessly. Canned goods from the store quite simply bear no resemblance to things you can yourself, especially if the things you are canning are fresh and ripe from the garden.

I hestitate to call canning old fashioned because I hate to think of something so smart and sensible as being passe. Before I did any canning, I remember thinking what an arduous process it seemed....behemoth pots of boiling water, submerging something as fragile as glass jars down into it, and then doing something mysteriously called "processing". It seemed complicated, intimidating, and completely unnecessary. I'm happy to report that I am in my third year of canning and I couldn't have been more wrong.

Canning actually is a very simple process and the pay off is huge both in terms of the personal kudos you get when you show up with a jar of homemeade something something at a party, but also in terms of your own family's food supply. When you can a quart of peaches rather than go to aisle 11 for a can of Dole, you are controlling what you and your family eat. If you grew your own peaches, then you are putting the bounty of your harvest to work and creating something that will give your tastebuds immense pleasure in the barren stone fruit winter months. And if you simply bought the peaches at the market, then you are still one upping the Dole variety because you have bought those peaches in season and at their prime, and hopefully supported a local farmer in doing so. The actual peaches you make at home contain less preservatives, less sugar, probably fewer chemicals if said peaches happen to be organic. It's a serious boon to the pantry shelves too. Suddenly you have storehouse shelves worthy of a Martha Stewart set. Pretty little jars all in a row, only instead of being cutsy, these jewel toned concoctions gracing my shelves are pratical too, waiting for the blahs of winter to brighten my spirits and my tastebuds.

The biggest requirements in canning are patience and a chunk of time. But not as much as you'd think. Give a day over to it and you can put up a surprising amount of food. And since it's basically a mindless task once the food you are canning is actually made, I find it to be pretty relaxing, and even better if you have invited a friend to share the time with. One of my favorite canning traditions is to spend a day making and caning salsa with my friend Sally, someone I seldom see. At day's end, not only do we both net a great amount of delicious garden fresh salsa, we have chit chatted the day away and spent quality time together.

My kids are still pretty young to be able to hang with standing next to a pot of boiling water all day but I can see that down the line, this will be a fun family tradition. All of us dicing and slicing and listening to the satisfying pop of jar lids. Come to think of it, a family canning tradition has already been started. For the last two years my Dad and I have made jam with his gorgeous wild plums from Spring City and then give them as Christmas gifts. It is so much fun and we've even started getting a little crazy with our recipe, including hot peppers in this year's version just to make it interesting.

So if you are interested in trying canning, the equipment needed is manageable and pretty low cost. The most important thing you need is a large size pot so you can create a water bath to sterilize and process your jars. Though you can use whatever huge pot you have, I would recommend spending the $30ish to get an actual canning pot because it comes with a metal rack with handles that fit down inside the pot and holds the jars all snuggly and allows you to lift them out of the hot water easily when the jars are done. If you don't want to buy a canner then ask your grandmother if she still has one on the back shelf, or check the thrift stores. (Maybe it is because this is Utah, homeland to food storage afficionados, but I reguarly see canners and lots of jars at thrift stores in town.) But canners are readily available from just about any online retailer you can think of. Once you've got the canner all you need are glass jars, metal jar rings, and a fresh pack of jar lids which contain a wax seal that when heated adheres to the top of the glass jar and seals in all the foody, fruity goodness of whatever you are canning. A funnel or a plastic measuring cup with the bottom cut out is also nice to keep spills at bay when filling the jars. And if your canner doesn't have a rack a jar lifter or sturdy pair of tongs.

In a nutshell, here are the basic steps for canning:

1. Prepare the food, fruit, or jam recipe as directed.

2. Fill canner about 3/4 full with water (or enough so that jars will be submerged and covered with an inch or two of water) and crank the heat up until it comes to a boil.

3. Sterilize glass jars you plan to fill either by submerging in boiling water in canner for 15 minutes, then fill, or run through a quick dishwasher cycle and then use the jars directly afterwards while they are still hot from the drying cycle. This prevents the glass from cracking when you fill the jars with hot stuff.

4. Fill all jars with your chosen yumminess (use little funnel apparatus to prevent major mess) and then wipe rims of jars with a clean, damp towel.

5. Put on lids and then twist metal rings on tight.

6. Fill metal canning rack with jars (or strategically stack loose jars in pot so they don't bang into each other and break.) Lift rack into canner, set timer and process jars for recommended time. I use Ball's chart in the Ball Blue Book to figure out exact times and then I tack on an additional 15 minutes because I live over 6000 feet. I periodically double check the water level in the canner to make sure all jars remain covered by at least an inch of water.

7. When time is up, remove rack carefully from boiling water (or remove jars with a jar lifter or tongs) and line up jars on counter until cool. Listen for the lovely popping sounds the lids make that indicate they are properly sealed and will keep your food fresh for at least a year or more!

There are so many great online resources for canning instruction as well as recipes. I was excited to come across this awesome site called Canning Across America with super cool tagline: JOIN THE CANVOLUTION that has great recipes and resources and even sponsor events around the country like demos and home canning parties. I love the thought of a home canning party. I may just have to have one. Maybe you should too?

homecentric

2009-10-07T14:34:00.001-06:00

there is no doubt about it, having a home is better than not having one. we have been experiencing a week of impromptu homelessness thanks to some floor refinishing gone awry, resulting in our house REEKING of toxic fumes for nearly 7 days. i hardly have room to complain, i know, since we do in fact have a house to call our own and the problem was of our own making. but nonetheless, i've been moaning and groaning and a tad ornery because the whole deal has been pretty trying. we have been lucky to have had other places to land (thank you Bev and Nile and Dad!) but i've felt a real sense of purposelessness without my home. i think so much of what i'm about these days is tied to embracing being home and relishing the comforts and sense of daily routine this creates. i would go so far as to say that my current philospohy about simplfying my life and my wants could be summed up as being homecentric. i differentiate this idea from being an agoraphobe or a misanthrope because the desire and urge to be home has nothing to do with avoiding other people or society at large but more to do with me taking control over my own time, my values, and my daily schedule.

the last 9 months have taught me that for the most part staying in seems to breed contentment. my kids don't seem to miss being shuttled to and fro and they get lots of free time to play and create. my bank balance is happier when i don't go out and shop needlessly and this in turn makes my marriage more peaceful. the physical home around me looks better because i have more time to keep it tidy and organized. i feel more creative because i make the time to write, read, and work on projects. my family eats better because i cook more and eat out less. i feel better because i'm spending the kind of quality time with my family that i think is key for happy little souls and minds and this makes me feel like i take the job of being a mother and a partner seriously and i like that. becoming homecentric has been a huge epiphany for me over the course of the last year and something that this week away has laid plain all over again. though the week has been a tough one, i'm grateful for the reminder that home is where i want to be. especially a home with shiny, glossy, luscious new floors!!

swooning over art & ideas

2009-09-25T21:05:00.004-06:00

I love, love, love the artist, designer, and person extraordinaire, Maira Kalman. When I lived in NYC she was one of the people I got to meet via my job at the Museum. She was amazing. Her work wowed me then and wows me now. Her children's books are genius-written equally for the child and the adult, and she has done a lot of memorable covers for the New Yorker. Her illustrations always hit a very unusual mark for me in terms of art. They are whimsical and sweet yet sophisticated and smart.

I am thrilled to discover that she is doing a monthly visual blog on the NY Times website called "And the Pursuit of Happiness" exploring themes of America and American democracy through her quirky mind. I am loving it! All the entries are extraordinary but this one called Can Do about Ben Franklin and American Invention-ism made me swoon. Check it out. It may be a little off topic for me, but I think this piece and Kalman in general is a great nod on the side of abundance; in spirit, in deed, and in your heart. Hope you enjoy.