Silver, Shimmery, Razzle Dazzle Doo!

I've been so busy lately! We've been getting ready for x-mas and I've got my craft cap on. This is the first year we are having x-mas in our home and we are excited! As a result I have dove into various crafting projects. I've been re-upholstering my dining room chairs, which is coming along but I think it's going to take me quite a lot of time to get through all six. The first one is almost done though, I'm just waiting for the piping to go around the rim! I know I'll get faster as I go.

My latest endeavor was to make a mantle-piece. Out in the garden, waiting for the dogs to pee one afternoon I noticed our cork-skrew plant had bought the dust. Looking at it's beautiful (dead) branches, I decided to immortalize it. So I clipped them off, spray painted, put a layer of spray glue on and then razzle dazzled it with glitter and fairy dust.

Next I had fun spray painting some smooth pebbles during the full moon and watching the light reflect off their shiny surfaces. I'm not a big fan of spray paint (it stinks and can't be good for the environment), but it did the job this time around. I'm open to alternatives if any of you have ideas.

My next tasks were to get some floral foam and stick it in a large terrcotta pot (that I had also spray painted silver), place the branches, add the stones, decorate with strobe balls, . . . . . . . . . . . . . . and . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Tada!

I love my bread machine!

Just throw the ingredients inside!

Wait a few hours! . . . .

and, . . . .

VOILA!

Home baked, whole wheat flax bread!

Yum!

Quick update, . . . projects are on the way!

I've been feeling very crafty these days. I have been taking on a lot of projects all of which are long and I am in the process of completing. A few things you can look forward to reading about in the upcoming months are, . . .

-Making pure organic lavender oil, I'm finally getting around to straining my lavender oil which has been sitting on my shelves for over a year.

-Re-upholstering: A new and exciting love in my life! My aunt is teaching me how to do my dining room chairs properly. I attempted to do one of them on my own last summer and it didn't last long (particularly in our house with a baby, two dogs and three cats). I am in the process of ripping out the old fabric, old staples and nails and picking new fabric, something I love doing! Here are some possible fabric choices, . . .

-Felt letter idea for the munchkin! I'm making a "blackboard" out of felt and velcro, it may take me a while, I'm only on an uppercase "M" and of course we need to do lowercase as well. Then comes the "blackboard" making.

So, . . . I've got my hands full. With the holidays coming up, things are even more busy. I'm also taking a yoga intensive course in the beginning of December, another deepening into my practice which I still claim has saved my life and my body. Yoga = amazing stuff. On top of it all, I'm missing my mom more than ever, they say all the "firsts" (first christmas, first birthday, . . .) are the hardest. So far it's definitely true, there is nothing easy about the process of grief. That said, I'm incredibly grateful for all I have, have had, and can do in my life. What a lucky chick I am! Hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Love and Light

I've had some stuff brewing in my head lately. I thought it would be nice just to get it all out, plus you might get to know me a little better, . . .

In the last couple of years I've learned more about myself than I have in a decade of living. It's funny how things happen in your life that "wake you up". From becoming a mom and experiencing the love and bonds a parent has for a child, to losing my own mom and dealing with feelings of loss and even abandonment; there is no doubt I am processing a lot and taking on life in it's rawest form. Never mind all of he logistics I've had to learn, and fast, as a repercussion of these two events.

A few days ago I got all cozy on the couch and decided to watch Avatar for the first time. If you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it. Not only is it beautifully done but the message it sends is something that really resonates with my own heart. As I grow older and I come to experience life in it's different stages (i.e. happiness, sadness, pain, . . . ) I have begun to realize how connected I am to this earth, that in fact I am a part of the earth, that I, along with all the trees, the animals, the bugs, am one of mother earths creatures. As I live my life, practice my yoga, cook food, chase after Serafin, walk amongst the trees, give birth to creativity, I have finally begun to really feel mother earth and how alive she is beneath my feet.

In Avatar there is one scene in particular that stands out to me (if you haven't seen it you may not want to read on). In the final scene, Jake Sulley (the main character) lies under the Tree of Souls, surrounded by the indigenous people of Pandora who are chanting and praying for him to leave his human body and enter his avatar (see the picture above). You begin to see the earth latching on to him. In order for his soul to change bodies, it must leave his human body, travel through the earth to Eywa (the mother goddess) and then travel back to his new body if it is meant to be. I know it's only a movie, but it really drew home the fact that we are all just energy. That we are born, we live, we move, we feed our bodies, we rest, and then one day our energy leaves our body and goes somewhere else. Energy moves, energy can't die, it can only be released. To me, that is such a beautiful concept, true re-incarnation. The energy within us is not even "our" energy! It is only borrowed for a short period of time, a lifetime, and then given back to the greater cosmos where it then moves somewhere else.

When I lost my mother this last April, despite the fact that she is not here with me in her human form, I feel her in a different way. She lives on inside me. She lives on in my heart, in my memories. I see her in the flowers when I walk or in the sky during a beautiful sunset. Her energy is everywhere to me.

In a lot of ways dealing with the experience of loss and really feeling what I need to feel in my life has shown me how beautiful life really is. As the saying goes, "what doesn't kill you, only makes you stronger." I miss my mom, and at the same time, I am incredibly grateful for the experience she is giving me now. Since she passed, I have become more rooted in myself. I have less fear of dying. I feel stronger. I feel! I have begun to really look at my life and make decisions about what is important and what is not. What is serving me and what is holding me back. Really, it has been an amazing experience. At times I feel pain and it can be difficult, but then there are other times when I feel very full of love and open to this world.

I am blessed to be alive. I am blessed to have every second of this life in this beautiful body that is serving me well. Thank you body. I am blessed to have all of you in my life. You are my teachers. I learn something new all the time. I am simply blessed.

My Favorite Soup!

Fall has kicked into gear and since it was drizzling outside today I thought I would make some chicken soup. As I was cooking I was reminded that on more than several occasions I have been asked for this recipe. So, par my sister in-law's idea (thank you Laura), I decided to finally blog it, that way you can all enjoy this hearty soup.

Let me start by saying, I LOVE this soup. This is actually one of my favorites. It's healthy, it's super yummy, it very filling and it's easy to make. Despite the fact that it seems like there are a lot of components to this dish, it's really more of a mesh of whatever you happen to have in the fridge. That's why it's so great, you get to use the veggies that need to get used.

This recipe cooks a huge pot of soup, probably about 8 servings.

The ingredients (subject to change depending on what you have in your fridge!):

-3 bone in skin on chicken breasts

-Olive Oil

-1 package of Turkey bacon (or regular bacon if you prefer)

-4 Chicken apple sausages (or whatever sausages you enjoy)

-1 onion

-2 boxes of chicken broth

-Large can of tomatoes

-1 cup of any grain (I like to use pearled barley), sometimes I use rice or oats

-A leafy green veggie: I love using dinosaur kale, I love how it cuts down and I feel like I'm filling myself up with vitamins and minerals. One thing I learned from one of the various cooking show I watch is that if you use a knife to cut kale the leaves a metallic taste on the kale itself, it's best to pull it off the stalk and the rip it into bits. Isn't it beautiful?

-Other veggies! Seriously, whatever you have in your fridge will work. If you experiment you'll figure out which combos you like the best. One of my favorites is to use different squash and carrots, sometime I add potatoes, even cauliflower. It's literally kind of a, "hmm, let's see what needs to get used and what might be tasty in a soup" kind of thing.

Getting started:

First you've got to cook the chicken, I like to cook the chicken separately, it's so tasty this way and it means the chicken won't overcook.

-Put chicken on a baking pan, drizzle with olive oil, rub with salt.

-Stick it in the oven at 375 degrees for 30-35 minutes.

-Take it out and let it sit to cool down.

Meanwhile:

-Get everything that's going to go into the soup ready, . . . Chop up sausage, bacon, onion and any other veggies, rip up kale, rinse grains, open can of tomatoes.

In a large pot:

-Heat a couple of Tbs. of olive oil

-Add sausage and bacon, cook till browned

-Add onions and carrots (or other hard veggies), cook till softened

-Add soft veggies (not including leafy green)

-Add chicken stalk, about 8 cups, plus a cup or two of water

-Add grain

-Bring to a boil and the let simmer for 30 minutes

-Meanwhile, take skins off chicken (give to dog or cat) and pull chicken breast apart into small bite size pieces

-Check soup to see if grains are fully cooked, if they are, . . .

-Add leafy green, tomatoes and chicken

-Cover and let simmer another 8 minutes (till greens cook down a little)

-And Voila! Bon Appetite!

The munchkin loves this soup too! I blend it for her and she gobbles it up.

A Canning Extravaganza!

So every year I usually get tons of produce from my parents garden up in the wine country. We get everything from peaches, nectarines, strawberries, tomatoes, squash, cucumber and sooooo much more. I usually end up with boxes of stuff and if I don't get rid of it quickly, it will end up going bad in a matter of days. In order to make the most out of this yummy fresh produce, about five years ago my mom taught me how to can. It's so satisfying to open a jar of tomatoes in the middle of winter knowing that it was picked and processed by my own two little hands.

Since little Serafin has been born, it has been difficult for me to

find the time to can, but when one of my best friends took a canning class, it in

spired me to pull out my canner and get back to work! Plus it was a perfect blogging topic! Since I was a bit rusty, she and I decided to do it together, and thank goodness, because I learned that some of my ways were not so, um, well, shall we say, . . .

fit to protocol. Although to this date I still haven't contracted Salmonella poisoning (knock on wood), I do recommend getting a good book and being sure you know what you are doing (even if grandma insists that it's kosher). There are some essential steps needed in order to ensure yummy healthy food.

I'm not gonna give you a blow-by-blow of our evening, that would take forever, canning is a long process, but here's the outline of our evening!

The goods, . . . since the tomatoes were still green in the garden, I decided to get some from the farmer's market, they looked so nice and juicy, I couldn't resist.

Here's a picture of all our gear. Between the two of us we had three canners and about 30 jars.

Since I only have one of those halogen stove tops, we decided to do it at her place, she has a five burner gas stove, I highly recommend it, canners are big!

While jars sterilized, we blanched tomatoes, removed their skins, and cut them to get them ready for the jars. Four boxes of tomatoes is a lot. More than a lot. In fact, I WAY overestimated on the amount of tomatoes we would need. I kept looking over to see how much we had finished and the tomatoes just kept coming. We didn't even get to the last box. We did, however, have the perfect amount of jars for three boxes of tomatoes. We packed them in with lemon juice, the acid keeps bacteria from growing and preserves them for longer.

Wipe the rims, add the tops and you are ready to put them in the canner!

Canning away!

And the results, . . .

Dinner the following evening, . . . stuffed tomatoes and peppers, who would have thought?

My Blog Is Carbon Neutral, . . . Yours Can Be Too!

How cool is this? Click on the "my blog is carbon neutral button" in the column to the right and follow the steps to offset your blogs carbon footprint! I got this from a fellow blogger's website and I thought it was a wonderful way to spread the green. I've done it, . . . now it's your turn!

What a fabulous way of getting rid of some of those carbon eating points. Plant a tree! Just think, if we all planted a tree the world would be so much more lush, have better air quality, there would be more habitats for the animals, more trees to hug! In fact, don't just plant one! Plant two! Or three!