weekend away

While Mirelle was gettin' some pool time with cousins and hanging with my parents,



We were out in the backcountry doing this.



It was so nice to get away and unplug for a few days! We spent two nights in the Maroon Bells Wilderness near Snowmass Lake. I'm still trying to catch up on work, so will post more later this week.

how to...

get a lot of good things in your toddler at once:

Make these veggie burgers, then add a bit of melted cheese to the top. Worked for us!

1/2 c nuts or seeds
1/2 c cooked beans
1/2 c cooked rice
1/4 c shredded zucchini
1/4 c shredded carrot
1/4 c diced onion
1-2 cloves garlic (optional for the wee ones)
2 tsp spices of your choice
1/2 t sea salt
juice of half a lime

1. place nuts in food processor and process to a powder.
2. add remaining ingredients and pulse several times until mixture is well mixed and just starting to stick together.
3. Shape into patties about 3/4" thick. Grill or cook on skillet with olive oil.

We did black beans, pumpkin seeds, and if I had had it, a little cumin would have been good. I'll add a little chipotle pepper in adobo sauce (chopped up) to our burgers next time (not to Mirelle's though - too spicy.)

An Indian variation could use brown lentils and cashews, plus curry powder. Garnish with yogurt, cilantro, mint.

Thai option could have 1-2 t red or green curry paste and 1/4 c unsweetened shredded coconut.

Lots of options! (From this month's Vitamin Cottage newsletter.)

Now, off to 'gymnastics' with Mirelle. More like tumbling for tots. She's good for about the first 30 minutes - then starts to burn out. Gorgeous cool, overcast, post-rainy morning here today. Did something spontaneous yesterday ... hit the Boulder Farmer's Market for dinner instead of going to the grocery store. One point for me! Hehe. Happy Thursday!

Way, way past bedtime

We had a really full weekend - saw lots of friends and family, ate lots of yummy food, sampled some delicious wines, and generally just said 'yes' to summer. Mirelle stayed up way past her bedtime Friday, Saturday and Sunday just to make it all happen. And we forgoed Sunday's nap too. We celebrated Sophia's second birthday Friday night, and welcomed Jay and Mimi to Boulder. We clinked wine glasses and bidded for silent auction items Saturday night in Denver at my cousin Eric's gala for his non-profit organization, while Mirelle ran around in the grass with Olivia, the 4-year-old of the hosts. Sunday we visited new second cousin Brayden (9 days old) and Great Grandma (almost 89 years old) in Colorado Springs, then had dinner with friends visiting from Albuquerque. Mirelle romped, frolicked, got dirty, sifted rocks, slipped in the grass, got grass stains on her PJs, ate drive-by dinners (ie put a forkful of food in her mouth as she motors by), and mimicked the wanderings of McKenna, our friends' little girl exactly 1 year older than Mirelle to the day.

Ross sent me this link to this great little article about discipline/permission and letting kids be kids. I particularly like this part:

So breathe deeply and pray for gentleness, patience and the ability to forgo perfect control or perfect behavior at every turn. Guide, and then let them run and tumble, and go by themselves, and sometimes fail. Let the little ones get wet and get dirty, let the teens borrow the car and go without you. They grow anyway, hindered or unhindered by us.

What are some other ways to let our little ones be a little more unhindered? What about ourselves? (This is definitely a challenge for me - I usually like to keep things pretty orderly and on schedule, both for Mirelle and for me.) Time to say yes to spontaneity and things not always looking tidy!

Wheeeee ! !

It's summer! We're charting out our plans for the summer - hoping to relish each gorgeous day and drink it all in! Ross rigged up the kiddie swing for Mirelle - not only with the existing rope provided by the manufacturer - but with the addition of about 5 additional feet of climbing rope. That thing catches some air.

A few ways we're celebrating summer:
:: we've now officially made our back patio our dining room for the next four months.
:: regular saturday visits to the farmer's market.
:: meadow music at chautauqua mtn park (kiddie music, dining al fresco)
:: 4-pass loop backpacking trip in the plans for early July
:: a week off in August (to Jackson WY area, perhaps?)

Yipee! Je t'aime l'été!

Tender Shoots

The garden is starting to look more like a garden. Little teeny plants are sprouting up, and, well, I didn't mark the rows, so I have no idea what's growing where. I'm a bit of a disheveled gardener. I planted some flowers, too - sunflowers, zinnias and cosmos, and some sweet peas thrown in for good measure - and they're all scattered together so we'll see what springs up.


I'm also growing a climbing plant from seed that I can't think of the name of - oh, wisteria. The garden center has an 8-year-old wisteria plant growing over the trellis that covers the outdoor plants - it's an amazing thing. Purple flowers, windy branches and root ... we'll see what this little guy does. I planted three seeds in this pot, and they're all coming up. Not sure at what point I should plant it in the garden, or where ... We'll need to build a trellis!


The other thing growing around here is Mirelle's hair. And she's looking more like a little girl than ever.

So I'm outside watering the garden tonight at 9pm, thinking about how much work and water it takes to nourish these little seedlings into beautiful plants by the end of the summer. The summer provides that kind of opportunity: to nurture tender shoots into something great. Seeds become vegetables that I'll cook up into some yummy meal, and colorful flowers that will make their way to vases on the breakfast table and my desk. But that warm summer evening air brings with it optimism of the adventures to be had: plans to keep adding mileage to work up to a half marathon or marathon this fall, mornings to get out on the bike to work up to a hilly ride, and days to explore new places and fun things happening in the evenings. Oh, and some camping, too. Time to trade our little backpacking tent in for something a bit more spacious!


Oh, and one more thing. I've been googling for 'specialty/gourmet dried beans' for ever and ever, and never came up with anything. Angry Chicken's blog posted this morning about a source for these types of beans ... yahoo! I'm looking forward to trying some of these crazy varieties over at Rancho Gordo. And I would agree with her - the packaging is way cool. photo from angry chicken.

Maddy's shoes

We watched our friends Jess and Justin's little girl Maddy tonight while they went to the Death Cab for Cutie concert at Red Rocks. Maddy had on the most amazing little girl shoes so I had to look them up.

See Kai Run - check them out. So cute. Here are some of my favorites:





Aaah, I want a pair, too!



Oh, and while you're there, get good ideas for your next baby's name! They can be named after a beautiful pair of shoes, right?

Parents Magazine's baby announcement contest

Yippee! I just found out that the birth announcement I made for Peapod (aka Mirelle) is in the runnings for Parents magazine's announcement contest. Woohoo! Just got an email from Amanda Kingloff, Parenting's Lifestyle Editor, asking me to send an actual invitation to them for the judging. (They've only seen the JPGs, above).

Here are the details I told Amanda about the announcement:

Here are a couple of photos of my daughter Mirelle’s birth announcement (showing front and back). Since we called Mirelle ‘peapod’ while she was in utero, it seemed fitting to use this peapod patterned paper from iota. The announcements included a colored corrugated backing; the back featured an entire sheet of the peapod paper; the front of the card just a torn piece of the paper overlapping the announcement. Everything was tied together with a piece of green velvet ribbon. (I had all of the pieces cut out and ready before she was born; the piece of paper with her photo and birth news was the only thing I had to create after she was born.) Cross your fingers!!

Friday, already?

Wow, I've been a very negligent blogger this week. My apologies! It was one of my goals when I started this blog (well, when I finally decided to actually go for it), was to maintain it - that means a post every week day (or every other, at least). Oops. For some reason I was feeling some blog rebellion this week. Not sure what it was. But I'm back, today. What has been happening this week? Not only have I not been posting, I also haven't found a lot of time to exercise. Not even a little window of time. Work is busy (like usual), but what else? I'm looking back over my calendar from the last five days, and I think the reason exercise and blogging wasn't present is because I had other appointments and activities scheduled - and those took up my little window of time away from my work stuff. (Not really a great excuse, but c'mon, I'm reaching here.) Monday Mirelle and I had a chiropractic appointment. I know chiropractic care is controversial, but it's worked for me, and Mirelle gets checked out every couple of months for preventative care. It's really shown to be effective in preventing ear infections in little ones. (Mirelle didn't have any last winter, but she's also not in a daycare setting.) Tuesday I took Mirelle to the local science/kids museum with our friends Jess and Maddy in the morning. She loved the music room, the giant dinosaur, the balls, the lights, the mirrors ... super fun. Good reminder about all of the cool things to check out with kids in the big city. Well, anyway, somehow the week got away from me. And now it's the weekend, and we have big plans for our garden. More on that to come.

Here's one thing I've been working on this week. Creating a fancy invitation for the Aspen Writers' Foundation's annual gala. At $25K a table, the invitation has to be fabulous. This is the email blast image that's going out. The actual invitation will combine iridescent paper, metallic ink, a diecut ... It'll be a beautiful thing.



P.S. It's bike to work day! I walked down about 5 steps to get to work, so guess I did my part! Here's a cool little bike commuting calculator you can use to figure out cost savings, calories burned, etc (thanks for the tip, Lindsey!)

Mom time

Whew! Happy Monday! A very busy weekend, but a lot of fun, and all revolving around moms. Thursday night my mom, sister and I headed to the tony Cherry Creek district of Denver and listened to Lynne Rossetto Kasper chat about food, entertaining, and the correct lighting for your dinner table (that's eye level). We nibbled on appetizers from recipes from her book: fried risotto, plumped ginger shrimp, and local mou co cheese from Fort Collins. It was a wonderful event, not crowded, and Lynne and her producer, Sally, were so friendly and receptive.



Sunday morning, for mother's day, Mirelle and I jogged in the Title 9K run around Boulder Reservoir. Lots of moms, dirt roads, beautiful cool weather ... a lot of fun. (Mirelle enjoyed the run from the comfort of the jogger, while eating a pancake.) Met up with mamas and dads afterwards for a little picnic.



Hope your mother's day was great!

Oh, and check out the new lobotoME pads I designed for Jenny over at her blog. I think my favorite right now is the FitME pad!

Aliveness

I made the stunning realization yesterday that the reason I enjoy going for runs (especially on dirt trails, next to streams, and past blossoming trees) is because it makes me feel really alive. It reminds me (subconsciously) about what I really am and about what I'm here to do. My body gets to work hard, I get to be connected and in touch with the natural world and the rhythyms of the changing season. I made this realization yesterday after being at my desk all day. At 4, Mirelle woke up from her nap and we went outside. Aah! It was such a glorious afternoon. Glorious is the most fitting description. Little blossoms were emerging on a red-leaved bush, the delicate first shoots of growth on the tree in the front yard were starting to shift toward leaves, purple flowers had already appeared on a creeping vine. I plucked one, two, three, four and five ! purple flowers and placed one in each of Mirelle's button holes on her sweater. We watched a fat robin dart from tree to tree. Since Mirelle notices everything, I start to, too -- we are a good team. I show her new things, tell her what things mean; she reminds me of the beauty and wonder in the mundane.

But spring is anything but mundane, and it was just then, laying in the grass with Mirelle, already a world away from the glow of my computer screen, that I remembered/woke up/realized what I already knew: that doing things that make you feel truly ALIVE are really what it's all about. And I remembered how I had felt the day before on my run: it was that feeling. I do love my job, but it's still a job: Working at my computer, sitting, moving from task to task. My work is so much easier at my desk if I instill some aliveness into my day, away from the computer.

Other things that have recently brought on a sense of aliveness: hot yoga class, being creative with paper/collage (need to do this one, but I know it works...)

More aliveness. More often. What does it for you?

Catching up with old friends

I've been gone from my blog for a few days: my friend Elise was in town (visiting from Durango); then we drove to Glenwood to my parent's house and visited with our friends Paul and Stacie (in Basalt, visiting their family), spent Sunday morning with them and saw a lot of old friends (including all of the words pictures colours graphic design crew: Kelly, Margaret, and Kimi) at a little neighborhood Easter egg hunt. (There was 3 feet of snow on the ground at Easter, so they had to postpone the hunt...) A fun unexpected reunion with old friends and co-workers. Ross and I had a really nice long run along the new trail that's now connecting Glenwood Springs to Aspen (created on the old railbed); we'll head home this evening. We also viewed the nearly 1000 pictures from my parents' trip to Australia, Japan and China (they just got back about 10 days ago.) Lots of catching up to do.





Happy earth day, happy spring! It's just starting to green up over here on the Western Slope of Colorado ... but I know back in the Denver area the blossoms and buds on the trees are starting to appear. I love this time of year! We look a walk with my dad yesterday (Ross, Mirelle and I), and it was so nice to smell wet grass, see the daffodils blooming near neighbor's mailboxes, and just breathe in the scent of the world awakening from its winter snooze. This pic of Mirelle is one of my favorites from this time last year, taken in Durango.

Brekkie at our house

Still life with brekkie

Our breakfast this morning made such a nice little still-life that I thought I'd take a quick snap and let you in on a typical brekkie at our house. I think 'what do you eat for breakfast' is sort of an intimate question ... breakfasts are so personal and I think most people have a pretty standard fare that they stick to. My friend Alice, for instance, is a yogurt and homemade granola kinda gal. Her husband is a raisin bran and diet dr pepper kinda guy. My mom has a buttered toast and tea ritual. My dad prefers oatmeal, or toast with lots and lots of jam.

My typical weekday breakfast? (Mind you, weekend breakfasts can be quite different.) Pretty much just a variation of what you see here. Lemon yerba mate tea with honey and milk, maybe some yogurt (today it was lemon brown cow), perhaps with grape nuts or granola, and/or some raisin pecan bread with butter and creamed honey from Colorado's western slope. And some grapefruit. That's Mirelle's menu too (sans tea) and plus an egg.



Breakfast is a favorite meal around here.

Coral Camellia

Saw this post on Coral Camellia (fabulous childrens wear) on design mom today, and the designer is from lil ol' Palisade on the Western Slope of Colorado (not far from where I grew up, in Glenwood Springs). I'm dreaming of Mirelle in this coat, but my bank account isn't.



This little outfit is so darn cute, too. Everything on her site is. Gosh she has some cute stuff.

If anything, some inspiration for those aspiring sewers out there ... in all your free time, right?

Manic Monday

Well, not really, but it does just feel like a Monday. And waking up to snow kinda makes it harder to motivate at the start of the week! We had a really nice weekend. Ross's parents are in town so Mirelle got some good QT with grammy and grandad. I took her to the first class in her Music Together session on Friday, and she loves it.



I've also been meaning to get her dialed in with some nutritional supplements, especially after a talk I went to with Dr. Roy Steinbock of Mindful Pediatrics in Boulder. He's an MD, but incorporates a lot of holistic medicine into his practice. Mirelle and I took a trip to Pharmaca (really helpful natural pharmacy in Boulder) and I bought her some Nordic Naturals fish oil (DHA) that tastes like strawberries. She's also taking a multi-vitamin that tastes like mango. And a probiotic (FOS/Acodophilus powder). Probiotics are really good for everyone, and 'absolutely essential for good health' says Dr. Roy.

I also spent some time preparing for a mothers' yoga workshop I'm teaching in May. More on that soon.

Falafel and pita and baba ghanoush oh my

We had a fabulous feast last night - and discovered aside from all of the raw garlic in the yogurt and tahini dressings (well, and in the baba ghanoush), falafel and pita is a really good, fun kid food. We made standard garbanzo bean falafel and a parsnip falafel (coated in sesame seeds). Different ... good, but we like the original falafel the best. Mirelle was happy with either.

(The flowers are courtesy Mary and John from my b-day last week ... thanks guys!)

Everybody needs a fancy coat...

with a fake fur fringed collar and sleeves ... especially on a snowy spring day like today!

A good morning for an early (7:30 is early for a Sunday) yoga class, full of backbends (invited opening up to vulnerability, left me feeling really invigorated) and a warm chai afterwards. Ahhhh...

The teacher, De, read a really beautiful quote from Rodney Yee's latest book. Here's a quick backbend video from Rodney you can do at your desk this week. (Super simple. The commercial before the video is kinda annoying, but do something else while that's playing, like closing your eyes and taking some long inhales and exhales through your nose.)

Happy Sunday!

Buena Vista

Spent the weekend in Buena Vista checking out a New Urbanism neighborhood going in there.

Buena Vista is pretty low-key right now, but definitely up and coming. And beautiful, for sure. We stayed at nice little b+b,



had a really good meal at mothers bistro, and played some mean YAHTZEE.

Mirelle in iota

Spring has sprung! Mirelle loves sporting about in her handmade iota pants, courtesy of Kelly, designer extraordinaire and the force behind iota.

My second job as a designer out of college was with Kelly, at words pictures colours, and that is where I cut my teeth, so to speak. Kelly played a huge role in me creating design as my livelihood - to her I am very much indebted.

iota is her stationery baby, and it's doing quite well - from paper goods to fabric, and now to leather goods ... can't wait to see what iota debuts this spring at the NY Stationery Show. These are the patterns in Mir's pants: