Kitchen / Garden / Sanctuary - Urban Homesteading to Nourish Body + Spirit

Month: February 2012 (Page 3 of 3)

TGIF!

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.

The first one is nearly complete & fits beautifully!

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. 🙂

***

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

Do you have any fun plans?

*****

Gratitude Sunday * February 5, 2012

~ I’m once again joining Taryn over at Wooly Moss Roots in her Gratitude Sunday tradition. ~

Gratitude Sunday is a time to slow down and remember those thankful moments that graced our week. One reason I love keeping a daily gratitude journal is because it helps keep things in perspective for me. Each Sunday, I open my journal and share some of those moments with you here. If you’d like to join in, just leave a comment!

Gratitude is powerful energy. I love hearing others’ gratitudes!

***

– Receiving over a foot of snow!

– Accomplishing a few things that had been weighing on me more than I realized, and once I did them I felt so much lighter.

– Watching some Seinfeld episodes. I need to do that more often — they always make me laugh!

– Eating lunch of soup & bread with my mom at their sunny kitchen table one weekday this week. Simple pleasures.

– Bad days ending well.

– Hugging my Honey tightly after we both had a really bad day; how comforting just to hold each other.

– Taking a brisk walk in the deep snow.

– Watching our hilarious neighbor squirrels straining to crawl through the deep, deep snow on the roof outside our kitchen window! CUTE!

– Seeing a couple of inspiring shows this week on TV, especially one about Joan Baez.

– Talking with my neighbor Darlene this week both in person and on the phone. She is such a loving, accepting, forgiving, heartful, enlightening soul. In the majority of our interactions with other people in this world, we are not seen for who we really are, and what we say is not honored. Depending on the situation, this can wound us very deeply. And so to actually, truly, be seen and honored by someone feels like salve to your soul. Darlene is one of those people who sees you and honors you, 100%, no matter what.

– Rearranging our apartment! I love how doing that breathes new energy into a space.

– Bit by bit, slowly getting things more in order around our house.

– Getting some significant things accomplished this week & crossed off the to-do list.

– The way our living room feels like a tropical conservatory today with the warmth and all the green plants and the little table fountain bubbling away, while there was a mountain of snow just outside the window!

*****

What gratitudes have graced your week?

*****

So Much Snow!

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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