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By Lindsey, February 10, 2012

What a busy week! I’m so glad it’s Friday. I’m ready to vege out!

This week, amidst many other not-as-fun things like meetings, headaches, bus rides, and blood draws, I finally began my Mitten Project. It deserves those capital letters because it’s turning into quite the time-sucking ordeal (mostly because I have no idea what I’m doing, so am inventing as I go), but the mittens are going to be awesome when I’m done. I’ve worn out my old mittens & am tired of my hands being so cold while I’m outdoors & on my bike, so I decided to make myself some super duper custom-fit 3-layer fleece-lined wool mittens out of a couple of sweaters I felted.

It’s been quite cold and snowy this week. Even our neighbor squirrels look cold (although plenty well-fed I’d say!).

I got so excited one night this week because I stumbled upon one of my favorite movies/documentaries of all time, “Alone in the Wilderness” about Dick Proenneke. Have you seen it? I love it. I hadn’t seen it in a long time, and after a long and exhausting day it felt like such a gift that it was on our local PBS station. Anyway, many years ago I read his book called “One Man’s Wilderness” and in both the book and documentary he talks about making sourdough flapjacks. I was inspired, then, to go get some of my own sourdough flapjacks going so they could ferment overnight. I cooked them up the next morning, and they made a wonderful snack eaten in the cold wintery air on my walk from the bus stop to Darlene’s house, that wonderful neighbor I talked about in my Gratitude Sunday post.

Darlene is a massage therapist and gave me a wonderful massage as a gift. It was heaven. My body has been so un-fun to reside in for the last couple years, and to have it feel so good for those two hours was so nice. Interestingly, the massage really stirred things up in my still-healing body; I actually felt quite bad and sick for the rest of the day and the day after. Hmm. Well now I know — massages are powerful medicine and they really do get things moving!

Yesterday I made minnestrone soup for lunch; it was awesome! I’ll share my recipe for it soon (Edit: here’s the recipe), but the beauty of it is that you can really deviate from the recipe which is what I did yesterday. That soup was SO good!

And today… is finally Friday! Part of the exhaustion this week was needing to be lots of places and not being able to ride my bike because of the deep snow & icy, rutted roads. Therefore I rely on city buses which introduces some stress into my journey as well as making it much more of an ordeal to get from here to there. It also involves more walking which my poor lil’ body was not really up for this week. But finally, today, I was feeling much more myself with more energy, and could finally ride my bike again as the sidewalks & some of the roads were clear enough. After a major snowstorm, I always have such an appreciation for again being able to transport myself freely and independently via bicycle.

I had another 2-hour meeting today after working hard this week on moneymaking stuff even though I felt like crap & my body was screaming GO TO BED! But today I woke up feeling good, and I liked getting up early and looking nice and going to my meeting and contributing something. At times, I feel like a full time patient, and therefore quite useless. I didn’t feel that way today.

And then it felt great to be home again! After being out and about, I always love coming home to our sweet little apartment… and today when I arrived home at 12:30 the sun was streaming in the kitchen windows, and with our new furniture arrangement it just felt especially good in here.

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I’m looking forward to a quiet, relaxing weekend ahead!

Do you have any fun plans?

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By Lindsey, February 4, 2012

We’ve gotten well over a foot of snow since Thursday night! If you’ve hung around here long, you know how much I love the snow, and especially these big blizzardy storms. What fun! Snowfall is so peaceful, too. As you can see below, we can hardly even see out our living room window anymore. I really like being snowed in!

And I love the indoor time — we’ve been rearranging some things in our apartment and I’m loving the new energy that comes from shifting stuff around. Plus, working diligently on getting rid of more stuff. Among other things, I organized the pantry yesterday and am enjoying it each time I open the door. It feels so good to be getting a handle on our house! It seems like when my illness got really bad in April, time stopped. When you’re so sick you feel like doing absolutely nothing, guess what? Absolutely nothing gets done! Huh. So I’m finally picking up projects that I had started in early April, which then got basically frozen in time. It feels great to be continuing them in earnest once again! And the crap that has piled up in the house in the space of 10 months… it feels so good to finally be addressing it.

I hope you all are having a wonderful and relaxing weekend! Tomorrow we’ll head to my parents’ place for the Super Bowl. It’s all about the food, the commercials, the company, and yeah, we might even watch a little football too…

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By Lindsey, January 20, 2012

Some scenes from our house on this bright, sunny, kinda warm, and very windy Friday:

Cranberry-Pumpkin Muffins

Sagebrush on the bedroom wall

Hanging dragonflies

The Ficus

Homemade basket

The hoosier

Heat register

Crown of Thorns - Euphorbia milii

Taken in Sydney

Peruvian Rug

Typical

In the living room

Bits o' nature

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Comments (7)

By Lindsey, January 6, 2012

Yesterday when I went to the alley to spread out some too-fibrous-to-eat winter squash seeds for the squirrels, I spotted this little prize waiting for me next to the dumpster! It seemed to say “I thought you’d never come!” so I scooped it up and back into the house we went. I surprised F with it when he got home from work — he loved it! If you get really close it has a heavenly smell, just like a grown-up evergreen. F wants to re-pot it into something larger and nicer.

I sometimes have a hard time identifying evergreens, so I pulled out my Grandma Helen’s book, Hardy Evergreens, from 1934. Helen was my dad’s mom, and sadly I never got to meet her; from what everyone says about her, though, we would have been two nature-loving peas in a pod. Anyway, it’s pretty hard to tell, but our tree might be some kind of fir (from the flattened needle shape, needle growth habit, and bud shape). At first I was thinking spruce, but the needle cross section shape suggests more of a fir. Ah well, it doesn’t really matter.

I’m not sure if it likes to be inside in the warmth… I’m thinking outside against the south wall would suit it better; does anyone have experience with these?

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Comments (3)

By Lindsey, January 5, 2012

It was a beautiful day today! 60°+ temperatures and sunny. So spring-like, and it made me feel like doing some spring freshening of the house. Consequently, there was lots of laundry-doing, floor-sweeping, vacuuming, and airing out of rugs and bedding. The windows were open, and I burned a stick of my favorite piñon pine incense that I bought in Santa Fe. I carried it around to all the rooms, and into the corners and crevices of each room, clearing any stagnant energy that might be lurking. In addition to making the house smell wonderful, the incense smoke is thought to be good for cleansing the energy of your home. Many cultures the world over use it for this purpose. I find it interesting when divergent cultures all happen to share a common ritual, because then I think ‘hmm, there might really be something to that.’

I took a break to sit in the sun, and was reading random pages in the book 168 Feng Shui Ways to Declutter Your Home, and came across a section that talked about the energetics of living near a hospital (and how to remedy that energy), and another section talking about living near a cemetery. I realized while reading this that my whole entire life has been lived — in one place or another — within a few blocks of two or three hospitals. And the apartment we currently live in is actually sandwiched — within just a couple blocks — between a cemetery and two hospitals! And not only that, but the very house we live in was used during WWII as a makeshift hospital. (And I hardly dare go this far, but I’ve always said “this house is cursed!” much to my hubby’s chagrin…because many of the plants I bring here have quickly died for no apparent reason.)

The hospital section says:

“If you live near a hospital, you are in close proximity to yin spirits. This is because hospitals are where the yin chi of sick (and dying) people accumulates, and this is not healthy for yang living abodes. It saps the vitality of your home. Even apartment houses and mansions on land where a hospital used to be are said to be afflicted with left-over energy. This energy can be so yin as to cause residents illness and problems. … Fire energy, in the form of incense smoke, absorbs yin chi and dissipates it, and so is an effective way to balance the yin emanating from hospitals or hospital land, and also police stations, abattoirs, and other places where there is death, sickness, and dying energy present. Many Chinese, who observe space-cleansing rituals purify their homes with incense smoke each Friday evening just after sunset. …”

The cemetery section says:

“If your home or apartment house is located near a burial ground, it is a good idea to cleanse your home regularly with incense. … Homes located near cemeteries are vulnerable to what is known as yin spirit formation, an affliction that often brings illness to children or those whose astrological timing is low and weak. The Chinese are especially sensitive to this kind of affliction and often combat it with fire-energy cleansing, which makes use of incense and smoke. It is believed that smoke from holy fragrant incense that is placed on a burning coal keeps yin spirits away from your home.

I was reassured, however, by reading this particular paragraph regarding negative energies in your home:

When negative chi has seeped into the spirit of a home in this manner, it must be released. Releasing it is not difficult. It is not hard to cleanse spaces of their left-over energy, regardless of how strong the negative energy is.

Thank goodness for that! And you can bet I’ll be carrying out incense space-clearings on a more regular basis! I also like using the Australian Bush Flower Essence Space Clearing Spray and will most certainly be making up a fresh batch of that spray for much more regular household use!

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What do you do to clear the energies in your home?

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When the weather gets warm, the rugs get put out on the roof!

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Comments (2)

By Lindsey, December 17, 2011

We’ve got the lovliest little Christmas tree in our apartment!

F. and I decorated it together Thursday night. My favorite trees are the sparse and spindly Charlie Brown type, and I think this one is just perfect. I love it!

Last year I made ornaments out of sea shells from my stash. I’m really glad I did that, because we don’t have enough windowsill space to display them. So instead of them sitting in a box in the closet, they get to be beautifully displayed on the tree each Christmas. And that way they become even more special because I don’t see them every day, so they aren’t just becoming part of the scenery.

My two favorites are the miniature abalone (‘paua’) shell, and the giant scallop shell. Both I found in New Zealand; they hold special memories!~

And this year we have a beautiful pink flamingo at the top of our tree. Hubby put it there and I love it! I also decorated my little Norfolk Island pine, and you can see it has its own little flamingo too.

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Comments (3)

By Lindsey, December 13, 2011

So how do you transport — on a bike — an 18-inch loaf of fragile and delicious 6-braid challah bread? Funny you should ask, since I just did that last week…

You take the bottom of the box that your new canning jars came in. You fold it in thirds and tape one end shut. You wrap your challah like a mummy, lay it in its box, and keep everything together with a couple rubber bands.

Stick it in your backpack, taking care to tie your zippers together with a couple of twisties twisted together to make an extra-long twistie…lest the zippers unzip and the challah fall out.

And voila! It will arrive perfectly intact after its ride across town:

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And join me a little later this week when we’ll bake challah together and I’ll show you (in a video) how to do a 6-braid loaf.

Update: click here for challah recipe & instructions.

♥

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Comments (7)

By Lindsey, December 8, 2011

A couple weekends ago, my mom and I were admiring some beautiful wreaths and swags at the local garden center; they smelled so good, and were so Christmasy! There really is nothing like the real thing when it comes to greenery at Christmas… and really, there’s nothing like the real thing with just about anything in life, I’ve decided.

But instead of buying them, we wanted to make our own — and so yesterday we did. Across the street and through the snow we went, clippers and bags in hand, to the park across the way. We gave some of the trees a ‘light pruning’ while filling bags with fragrant boughs, then cleared off their dining room table, turned on some Christmas music, brewed tea, and got to work.

We learned quickly that gloves are a must for a project like this!

Our creations began to take shape, and we admired each other’s work, exclaiming how that wreath and those swags were even better than the ones we could’ve bought. And how they were totally local, totally fresh, and totally free. What satisfaction to make something so beautiful! They smell incredible, too — something I didn’t really expect from city pine trees. Like a mix of fresh Christmas trees and wood smoke.

Here’s the wreath my mom made for the front of their house. Isn’t it beautiful!! I love how she added pine cones and some bare lilac branches.

Here’s the swag I made for inside our apartment:

A miniature one for the bathroom:

And a table centerpiece:

I love fresh winter greenery in the house!

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Comments (9)

By Lindsey, December 6, 2011

Except in storybooks, you don’t really hear about nightcaps much, do you? But if you’re a cold sleeper like I am, they’re so helpful! I began wearing one to bed during the winter a couple years ago, and couldn’t believe the difference it made! So I wear one each night and stay a lot warmer now.

Do you ever wear a nightcap to bed on cold winter nights?

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