aloha every day

aloha every day

Sunday, December 21, 2014

Home for the Holidays


We are home.
Finally...
home...
for the holidays.
This year feels like home.
Our house feels like a home.
Cue roots, sinking down.
(For two gypsy souls, this is a BIG DEAL!)
 

 We've taken a full year-and-a-half to make our house a home...

 ...complete with a
"yoga room"

  
...golden sunrises that permeate the walls...
  
...a wood-burning fireplace to warm the toes and slow the mind...
  
...cozy nooks for book-reading and daydreaming...

...handmade touches and souvenirs from the place we first met...

...reminders of adventures past...

...proof of the abilities of our four hands (yes, we re-floored our entire house ourselves)...

...places for healing and nourishing...


...beautiful reminders of those who came before...


...a symbiosis of color and light...

...and sunsets that watercolor our walls .

With that, we wish you all peace and health this holiday season and into the new year.

Aloha,
Lindsay and Nick 
 



Sunday, October 26, 2014

Perfectionism


I've been listening to Brene Brown lectures in my car while driving to work.  
If you haven't heard her speak, I highly recommend it.
You can find her on Youtube, TED talks, etc. 
I checked out "The Power of Vulnerability" cd
from the local library.

Boy, is she EVER speaking to my soul right now.
I'm trying to "let go" 
of some things that are holding me back from pure joy.

One of them is 
perfectionism.
As Brene Brown says:
 "I call perfectionism 'the 20-ton shield.' We carry it around thinking it's going to protect us from being hurt. But it protects us from being seen." 
 
I have no shame in recognizing this struggle,
as well as the pervasive presence it has had in my child and adult life.

I was that
Straight A,
Rule Following,
Kid You Want in Your "Group Project" Group Because I Would Do All of the Work.
I was the kid who wouldn't go to sleep until my socks in my sock drawer were all facing the same direction and folded exactly the same way.

I know exactly what you're thinking:
Man, am I in trouble if I every have a child of my own.
Pay. Back.

Well, that thought is exactly the birth of this post.
You see, the other night I worked a 14 hour day.  
I'm talking before the sun rose to well-after the sun went down.
(These long working days have been more frequent this year, and I'm finding myself only able to check items off of the list.
I can't even get to the point where I'm allowing perfectionism to take over in these tasks.
I'm just getting.them.done.)

And then I did something I kinda regret. 

I posted about it on Facebook. 
It=How will this schedule ever work if I have kids in the future?

"Why'd ya do that," you ask?
I was beyond the point of no return.
I was so tired of "it" and I wanted to shout "it" out.
Truth being, 
I should have just yelled it out loud in the parking lot of the school.
The response would have been more of what I needed (silence) 
and less of what I was looking for (response).

Some (not all) Facebook responses were similar to:
"Let go of your perfectionism..."
"Once you have a kid, you'll have to reprioritize..."
"Having kids in your classroom is nothing like having your own kids..."
"Once you have kids, your workload won't be like this..."

Here's the thing:
I'm only doing what is necessary to do my job with INTEGRITY.

So herein lies the question:
Where is the line drawn between doing my job with INTEGRITY
and doing my job PERFECTLY?

In my opinion 
(and from what I've been learning from Brene Brown), 
INTEGRITY leaves room for vulnerability and mistakes,
while PERFECTIONISM shames mistakes.

  To wrap it all up, 
the PERFECTIONIST in me won't accept doing my job without full INTEGRITY.
GEEEEEEEZ.

This is tangled.
I don't have a full resolution to my problem yet,
but what I do know is:
Don't post on Facebook after a long work day.

aloha.

Friday, August 8, 2014

Oot and aboot

Got myself out and about for a few hours...

Cafe Ipe, 50 Shades of Roasted Beans

Back at home, the sunset was magical...couldn't quite figure out how to capture the magic in a photo, but it was beautiful to see the sunset through our back window.

Grew these lovely beauties, roasted them, and then 
bleh...they were all dried out!

 Tomatoes have been growing well this summer! Is there anything better than a juicy summer tomato?

I don't get oot and aboot very often, but I always feel inspired when I do!

aloha.

Sunday, August 3, 2014

Orange County

 A little adventure can go a long way.
We drove up the coast to Orange County for a day, 
and were met with the surprising realization that 
the water in OC is 
BLUER
and
CLEARER
than the water in SD.

 This pic, in particular, looks as if it came from our time in Hawaii.
It didn't!
It's Laguna Beach!
Why aren't beaches in SD this clear?
I'm stumped.



 How very California: Sea bird, surf board, and pier!

Dolphins at sunset!
 ...and so marked the end of a lovely day in OC!
A little adventure does WONDERS for the gypsy soul.

aloha. 

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Livin' Life Whole

What comes to mind when I tell you the words:
Whole Foods
??

More often than not, when I tell people that hubs and I are trying to eat a primarily
Whole Foods Diet,
I hear,
"Isn't it expensive to shop there?"

My answer?
"Yes, it is,
But I don't normally shop there."  

Oh, the confusion.
What I am speaking of is not a store.
It's eating WHOLE FOODS.
Foods that are less processed (our aim is NOT processed),
and more 
WHOLE
REAL
AS THEY WERE GROWN.

In our life together, 
we have always aimed to leave a 
small footprint
on the earth.
Our wedding followed this goal:
We give back to mother ocean:
...and I could go on for days.
It's just how we are.
Everyone has different priorities in the way they live.
This is just ours.

So, we were recently thinking about the seeming rise in disease and other health related issues,
and we realized:
What kind of footprint are we leaving on ourselves? 

Now, I've yet to dig into actual research on any of this,
however,  
  it seems that the rise of processed foods
and added non-whole food ingredients
   directly parallels 
the rise in health issues in the general population.

Hmmmmm...
I could research,
or I could just do what I know to be true.
Eat whole foods.
The way they were meant to be.
Eliminate as many processed/refined/enriched
food-like products
as possible.

Okay, now on to the good stuff.
My challenge therein 
is to find recipes to make many of my favorite foods at home.
I've trialed quite a few, and now I have three that are now a consistent part of my weekend routine.

1. Almond Milk

 MMMMmmmmm.....almond milk. 
Happens to be my favorite milk.
If you look at the ingredients on a carton of almond milk, though,
it is similar to this:
INGREDIENTS: Almondmilk (Filtered Water, Almonds), Sea Salt, Natural Flavor, Locust Bean Gum, Sunflower Lecithin, Gellan Gum.  
  
I just want almondmilk.
Not locust bean gum and sunflower lecithin.
Look,
maybe those are harmless ingredients,
but I don't know what they are 
and I simply don't want them.
PLUS (and this is a BIG PLUS for me)
I don't want to spend my money on buying a carton
that is ONLY going to end up as waste* after I drink my locust bean gum.
 The recipe above is the BEST one I've found.  
 I strain it through a clean kitchen towel 
and the consistency is so smooth!!
 I have these kitchen towels:        
  After straining the milk, 
I funnel it into the container in the picture above the recipe link. 
p.s. This milk makes an EXCELLENT coffee creamer
p.p.s. Did I mention that the hubs is now roasting our own coffee beans?  What a man!

2. Granola
Found the original recipe here: http://www.elizabethrider.com/easy-healthy-homemade-granola-recipe/ (really nice website with many whole foods recipes!)

Have you ever noticed how much SUGAR is in boxed granola!?! 
It is sugar dressed up as health food for Halloween.
Not to mention the extremely high price per box at the grocery, as well as the ever-compounding issue of buying more waste (*see note above).

The recipe above is extremely easy-to-make.  All ingredients into one bowl, mix, and bake!
What I LOVE about this recipe is that the granola doesn't burn to a crunchy state of break-your-teeth existence.
If you've ever experimented with granola recipes, I'm sure this is familiar to you.
I play with this recipe quite a bit.
I've tried it without the honey/pure maple syrup, which I love (because I'm trying to cut back on all sweeteners).
I've also tried it with added flax seeds (I add a few TBS), as well as omitting the dried fruit (I simply don't like food stuck to my teeth...it's a texture issue for me :)

Whatever you do, 
give it a try! 
I'd be surprised if you went back to the 
store-bought granola    
which is in a bag*
which is in a box*. 

3. Bread

Are you "up" on all of the recent bread controversies?
The "yoga mat" ingredient...read about it
  high-fructose corn syrup...read about it
 the list goes on. 
There are MANY ingredients in a typical store-bought loaf of bread that I cannot pronounce, and therefore care not to ingest. 
Alright.
I've been experimenting with bread recipes for years now.
  I'm the first one to vouch for Julia Child's french bread recipe.
HOWEVER,
most weekends I don't have 24 hour waiting periods for my bread to rise (there are 3 different rises in her recipe).

 I found the recipe above and have been playing with it to make it exactly what I want.
My favorite version is to include three cups of different kinds of flour (1 cup unbleached flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, 1 cup brown rice flour).
I love it, 
my hubs loves it, 
I haven't bought bread in a bag* for months.  

Alright that's just the start. 
Those are my top three.
Critics may say that some of my ingredients are still processed:
Ex.: coconut oil (in granola), flour (in bread) has to be processed.
Critique away! 
I hold firm that my recipes are a huge jump in the right direction toward eating whole foods to the GREATEST EXTENT POSSIBLE.

It also helps to have a hubs with a green thumb.  He just turned over our garden for summer:
 

Now, go pour yourself a (proper serving) bowl of homemade granola with homemade almond milk.
I promise you won't regret it.

aloha.