April 19

Happy spring! It’s still very chilly here in Seattle and I’ve delayed starting my garden, but the birds are singing, the light is returning and I just finished a big spring clean-out at home…

While I wait for my Piet Oudolf inspired perennial backyard to make its return I’ve been paging through Piet’s new book which is full of inspiration…

Speaking of inspiration, my friend Jessie introduced me to Amy Smilovic’s amazing book The Creative Pragmatist. It’s the most favorite thing I’ve purchased for myself in a long time...

Continuing on the topic of fashion, I just bought these superwide-leg jeans from Madewell that I love and feel great in…

And I wore these new Adidas Always Original pants to the studio this week and four clients asked me for a link so they too could get them. You can’t tell in the photo but the stripes are sheer. They do have a très bizarre “whale tale” insert (why?!) that you can see in the photos, but I just took a pair of scissors and cut it out and now they are a normal but très cool pair of pants…

My husband needed a new speaker for his studio and selected this compact but mighty (and beautiful!) Marshall bluetooth speaker…

For a long time I used to make my own almond milk which isn’t difficult but it is time consuming. I just discovered this almond milk concentrate from JOI (it’s made with just almonds so it’s essentially a blanched almond butter) and it is so good and so easy I will never go back. Available directly from JOI or Amazon…

Over the last several months I have been learning French. We have an upcoming trip to Paris later this year which gave me the nudge to start, but I am continuing with such devotion motivated purely by my own enjoyment of practicing and seeing it slowly come together. It makes me so happy to practice and it has been such a treat to learn something completely new at 40+ that is not related to my work. There are so many great resources out there if you want to learn a language. Here are a few of my favorites:

• Fluent Forever is great for ear training and pronunciation.

• Super Duolingo (the paid version) is incredibly fun.

• Duolingo French podcast has really improved my listening and they also provide full transcripts.

• Short Stories in French - there is an audiobook component available as well.

• Alliance Française to practice with real people!

**Bonus tip for my devoted readers: how to reliably get rid of hiccups!

“Momentum goes both ways.

Don’t move, feel sluggish. Start moving, feel like moving a little more.

Don’t talk, feel timid. Start chatting, conversation gets a little easier.

Don’t ship, feel stuck. Start creating, ideas begin to flow.”

— James Clear

September 6

My son heads back to school tomorrow. It has been a wonderfully laid back last two months but we are all ready to step back into the daily routines of school-life. I have been neglecting my yard as a whole this summer in order to focus on other parts of my life. But earlier in the season I did plant a jasmine which is now happily making its way up a defunct utility pole outside my kitchen window…

And I did get my vegetable garden planted…

It was my first time growing lemon cucumbers…

I also gave our front entry a little facelift. I painted the front door a new shade and changed our house numbers to these Asbury house tiles from Schoolhouse Electric that are ever so charming on my little 1940s house…

Another summer highlight was making this gorgeous merengue (my first ever!)…

Which was used to make this gorgeous pavlova which we shared with our neighbors. Nigella Lawson is an excellent guide if you’d like to try it…

My husband finished his Remember You Must still life series which I think is just incredible…

I can’t wait to have one of our own at home…

This basic Baggu horizontal duck bag became my go-to bag all summer long…

And my husband gave me these Nike Blazer Low ‘77 Jumbo sneakers for my birthday which are très chic!

I found and love this whole list from 37 signals…

Here’s to getting back in the groove.

Mid-Winter

“If you’re going to live a deep life, the ultimate original commitment is, ‘I’m going to commit to discipline in the sense of things I am going to do on a regular basis, because they matter, even if I don’t feel like it.’ And that is the biggest binary zero-to-one flip that happens in crafting a life.”

— Cal Newport

…from Cal’s excellent conversation with Tim Ferriss.

This week is my son’s mid-winter school break so I am enjoying being home from work and hanging with him. It is actually snowing at the moment but the last few weeks we’ve had some consecutive dry and even sunny days which allowed for some time in the garden, doing a little cleanup and cutting back grasses. Those little green shoots and signs of new life never cease to bring me joy…

My raised garden beds have reached the end of their life and we will build new ones next month. Inspired by my friend M’s thriving small compost/worm bin, I’ve added my own in the form of a Subpod Mini. (I ordered my worms here.)

I have a new pair of glasses from RŌKA that I love…

This Jones Road Miracle Balm in bronze is adding a little life to my mid-winter complexion. Plus, it feels wonderful pressed into the skin…

And if your feet need a little TLC, this foot file and balm from Bare Hands is incredibly simple, elegant, and effective….

Most of my meals these days are hearty soups. Even for breakfast, it’s what I crave. This week it is Pamela Salzman’s kale and white bean minestrone. I also love this lentil, sausage, and chard one from Smitten Kitchen.

I just checked out Bittman Bread from the library and am enjoying playing with his technique this week…

Lastly, my sister-in-law turned me on to these super cool posters from Sandgrain Studio. My son has a Dune one in his room but I think a whole grid of them would look rad in the basement…

Pay Attention

Happy New Year!

We closed out 2021 with two peaceful weeks at home. A proper winter storm blanketed Seattle with snow that stuck around for several days. We got to spend time with my brother and sister-in-law who live out of town and met my three-month-old niece E for the very first time.

My husband and I traded off walking with her in the Baby Bjorn. There’s nothing like that feeling of a tiny being asleep on your chest and it is one of the things I especially miss from when my son was a baby. It was the most enjoyable stretch of days I’ve had in a long time, just being together with nothing to do, nowhere to go, relishing in each other’s company.

One of my favorite January rituals is the purchase of a fresh, new paper planner. For years I’ve used the classic Moleskine daily planner but I changed it up this year and got the Appointed 2022 Year Task Planner…

We have a new duvet cover from Rough Linen that I’d been wanting for two years. It was well worth the wait and it fits perfectly with our Wool Room comforter…

Every January we send out a New Year’s card. I really enjoy the hand-addressing part so I often don’t have the envelopes pre-printed. However writing our return address over and over feels tedious. This year I ordered this custom return address embosser. Problem solved.

My husband and I aren’t drinking but he just celebrated a birthday and I wanted something to pop open to mark the occasion. I found this incredible non-alcoholic Copenhagen Sparkling Tea at my favorite neighborhood coffee shop, Sound & Fog. (They also have a fantastic selection of natural wines.) Grab a bottle if you ever see it, it really is remarkable…

The Metropolitan Opera has a wonderful podcast Aria Code and this week I revisited my favorite episode - Puccini's final opera, Turandot (season 3, episode 1). In each episode the guests explain what the aria is about (so it’s great if you’re like me and know nothing about opera) and then finishes with a live performance of the aria. This one features legendary Italian tenor Franco Corelli singing “Nessun Dorma” in a Metropolitan Opera performance from 1966. Crank it up…

And because it feels so good to watch someone who’s at the top of their game work at their craft, watch Jonas Kaufmann sing the same here…

Just before Thanksgiving, I checked out Jenny Odell’s excellent book How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy from the library. In fact, I still have it at home because I’ve renewed it three times.

The book is slim but vast in scope. There are so many important things she writes about, making connections to a number of ideas that might not seem related upon first glance.

“…the need to periodically step away is more obvious than ever…we absolutely require distance and time to be able to see the mechanisms we thoughtlessly submit to. More than that, as I’ve argued this far, we need distance and time to be functional enough to do or think anything meaningful at all…By spending too much time on social media and chained to the news cycle…you are marinating yourself in the conventional wisdom. In other people’s reality: for others, not for yourself. You are creating a cacophony in which it is impossible to hear your own voice, whether it’s yourself you’re thinking about or anything else.”

So often the conversation about how to avoid digital distraction or how to better manage our relationship with our devices and content/media consumption focuses on some tool or “hack” that helps us create boundaries - like instilling tech sabbaticals, keeping our devices on do not disturb, not sleeping with our phones on the bedside table. But Odell explores “the relationship between discipline, will, and attention” and how “if we’re to truly encounter anything outside of ourselves, we have to want it.” And we have to do the work of it.

“Civil disobedience in the attention economy means withdrawing attention…A real withdrawal of attention happens first and foremost in the mind. What is needed, then, is not a “once-and-for-all“ type of quitting but ongoing training: the ability not just to withdraw attention, but to invest it somewhere else, to enlarge and proliferate it, to improve its acuity. ..I am less interested in a mass exodus from Facebook and Twitter than I am in a mass movement of attention: what happens when people regain control over their attention and begin to direct it again, together.”

“If I had no choice about the age in which I was to live, I nevertheless have a choice about the attitude I take and about the way and the extent of my participation in its living ongoing events. To choose the world is…an acceptance of a task and a vocation in the world, in history and in time. In my time, which is the present.”

— Thomas Merton

November 7

It has been a proper fall weekend, dark clouds and lots of rain. We all slept in this morning with the turning back of the clocks and I spent all day sorting, tidying, lighting candles, and doing a little baking. My soundtrack through it all was the Max Richter radio station on Spotify. It was a good day.

A few favorite things to share. I love my new Everlane camo jacket. I want to wear it every day…

Also from Everlane, these buttery soft chelsea boots are so good. They are incredibly comfortable and look super sharp…

I’ve also been wearing this COS hooded shearling vest under my camel coat similar to below…

I recently stocked up on these Banana Republic ribbed tanks which are perfect in cut, weight, and price. And now they’re an extra 40% off…

I made these flourless chocolate cookies for friends a few weeks ago. I received a text that night from the husband that it was “the most favorite cookie” he’s ever had. (They also happen to be the easiest cookie to make.) Just make sure you don’t overbake. I baked a single one as a test first and mine were perfect in 10 minutes.

I’m getting excited for Thanksgiving which we will celebrate again with our wonderful neighbors. I ordered a new linen tablecloth from H&M for the occasion. I bought gray but this pink beige one looks lovely…

I’ve been using these Food52 compostable sponge cloths everywhere I’d normally use paper towels. I have yet to wear through one and I toss them in the washing machine with my other dishtowels…

We were eagerly awaiting the new Dune film and it did not disappoint. The cinematography is stunning. If you’ve seen it and didn’t read the novel, this long rundown of the backstory is really helpful…

“The mystery of life isn’t a problem to solve, but a reality to experience.”

— Frank Herbert, Dune

September 26

September is the month of Italian plums, my favorite. A friend gifted me over 10 lbs of them and I straight up devoured 5 lbs within two days. The rest I cut and froze for the coming months of fall and winter baking. There will likely be several Marian Burros plum tortes made but also a new favorite tart using the press in crust from my gluten-free baking bible Alternative Baker and the frangipane from Aran Goyoaga’s (my other gluten-free baking guru) book Cannelle et Vanille…

Speaking of Aran, I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of her latest book next month, Cannelle et Vanille Bakes Simple: A New Way to Bake Gluten-Free…

Last year I had zero desire to shop (which maybe was a common thread for a lot of us during that first year of pandemic life) but this fall I’ve been craving a few new additions to my wardrobe. I just bought these Dr. Marten 1460 mono boots…

And I keep looking at this beautiful Eddy coat from Sezane…

I love Derek Sivers and have been revisiting his important query: What if you didn’t need money or attention?

“We do so many things for the attention, to feel important or praised. But what if you had so much attention and so much praise that you couldn’t possibly want any more? What would you do then? What would you stop doing?

We do so many things for the money, whether we need it or not. But what if you had so much money that you couldn’t possibly want any more? What would you do then? What would you stop doing?”

Read the whole thing here.

Ever the valuable resource, my friend Omar has a helpful post on living with covid-19 these days with links to masks and at-home testing options. We also like the Evolve Together masks for our whole family.

I will leave you with something incredibly fun to start your week, Dua Lipa and her band performing “Levitating” as part of npr’s Tiny Desk (Home) Concert series.

Begin Again

Hello at long last.

My son started school last week. For the first time in 17 months he will be in school full-time, in the building and out of the house. Closures, quarantines, and remote school are still a possibility as we move along, but I am so grateful to have rediscovered some time and space for myself nonetheless. My brother has started taking long solo walks while his kids are in school. It feels like such a gift to care for ourselves as individuals once again.

We enjoyed a very low-key summer here at home. We bought a hammock.

I turned 40 and hosted a small dinner party. It felt so wonderful to cook for friends after such a long hiatus…

As a birthday gift to myself I bought two of these beautiful Convivial minimal pasta bowls that fit right in with all of my Heath coupe dinnerware…

After a very dry summer (and a record heatwave) the temps have started to cool here in Seattle and it feels like fall, still my favorite season - a good time to regroup and begin again.

I’ve been reading a lot and am fully engrossed in Sally Rooney’s latest, Beautiful World, Where Are You. She is a master and I can’t put it down…

I recently listened to Tim Ferriss’s conversation with neurobiologist Dr. Andrew Huberman. They talk at length about optimizing sleep, using our body to control the mind and reduce anxiety among other things. I learned so much and highly recommend it…

Via Tim Ferriss

I also just revisited the endearing film The Lunch Box. It is a special one and you can rent it here.

Just as I sometimes still feel a bit awkward socializing and carrying on a conversation these days, I feel a bit out of practice writing here after so many months away. But it feels good to return to this space.

A parting quote I’ve been thinking about:

“The habitual tendency when things get tough is that we protect ourselves, we get hard, we get rigid. But…that’s the time to soften and see how we might play or dance with the situation.
”

— Jeff Bridges

One Year On

These beautiful and poignant photos of normally bustling cities empty of humans are my favorite images captured of the lockdown last year.

Andrea Montovani for The New York Times

Today is the one year anniversary of our family’s pandemic experience. March 12, 2020 is the day I first closed my Pilates studio and the day my son’s school closed for a “two-week” quarantine.

In March of last year I think it’s safe to say that most of us couldn’t imagine that we’d still be living with such restrictions one year in the future. And yet here we are. Continuing to stretch ourselves and practicing the very important skill of being uncomfortable.

A few months before the pandemic I listened to Brené Brown’s excellent audiobook The Gifts of Imperfect Parenting. She talks about the importance of having a family gratitude practice with respect to the question: How do you raise kids who have everything they need to not be entitled? (And equally important, as an adult who has everything I need how do I keep myself from being entitled?) So two weeks before lockdown we all started writing in our own Five Minute Journal recommended by Tim Ferriss in his great conversation with (again) Brené Brown. My son has the kid version. In the beginning it was a great way for all of us to remind ourselves of how fortunate we were, right when it seemed as if all the “good stuff” was being taken from us. Now a year into the pandemic with all of its uncertainties, a few minutes spent writing in my gratitude journal has become an essential part of my morning routine.

When I think of gratitude I immediately think of David Steindl-Rast’s conversation with Krista Tippett. It resonated deeply with me when I first heard it years ago and I have been revisiting his words this week. As Krista writes “He calls joy ‘the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens.’ And his gratefulness is not an easy gratitude or thanksgiving – but a full-blooded, reality-based practice and choice.”

From their conversation:

“Br. Steindl-Rast: Well, for me, this idea of listening and really looking and beholding — that comes in when people ask, “Well, how shall we practice this gratefulness?” And there is a very simple kind of methodology to it: Stop, look, go. Most of us — caught up in schedules and deadlines and rushing around, and so the first thing is that we have to stop, because otherwise we are not really coming into this present moment at all, and we can’t even appreciate the opportunity that is given to us, because we rush by, and it rushes by. So stopping is the first thing.

But that doesn’t have to be long. When you are in practice, a split second is enough — “stop.” And then you look: What is, now, the opportunity of this given moment, only this moment, and the unique opportunity this moment gives? And that is where this beholding comes in. And if we really see what the opportunity is, we must, of course, not stop there, but we must do something with it: Go. Avail yourself of that opportunity. And if you do that, if you try practicing that at this moment, tonight, we will already be happier people, because it has an immediate feedback of joy.

I always say, not — I don’t speak of the gift, because not for everything that’s given to you can you really be grateful. You can’t be grateful for war in a given situation, or violence or domestic violence or sickness, things like that. There are many things for which you cannot be grateful. But in every moment, you can be grateful.

For instance, the opportunity to learn something from a very difficult experience — what to grow by it, or even to protest, to stand up and take a stand — that is a wonderful gift in a situation in which things are not the way they ought to be. So opportunity is really the key when people ask, “Can you be grateful for everything?” — no, not for everything, but in every moment.”

My favorite film of late is the documentary The Biggest Little Farm. The cinematography is stunning, it is joyful, and it is a beautiful depiction of the complexity and wisdom found within the systems of nature. As Molly the farmer states, “The hardships we face make the dream feel so much more alive.” Rent it or watch it currently on Hulu. At a minimum watch the trailer…

Wise words from Alice Walker…

Alice Walker via Nitch

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change... Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant... Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening... Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of personality is about to be revealed.”

— Alice Walker

Wintering

Good Sunday morning. We got 8 inches of snow at our house yesterday. It’s rare that we get snow in Seattle so it’s such a treat when it does happen. The last time we had a big snowfall was almost exactly two years ago. It just started snowing again this morning, candles are flickering throughout the house, my son is still sleeping, and everything feels quiet. The rain will return later this evening so we will savor it while we can…

A few weeks ago I listened to Katherine May’s wonderful On Being conversation on ‘Wintering.’ I loved it so much I listened to the unedited version as soon as I finished the first. From Krista:

“In so many stories and fables that shape us, cold and snow, the closing in of the light — these have deep psychological as much as physical reality. They draw us, even force us, to do what Katherine May calls deeply unfashionable things: slowing down, resting, retreating. This is “wintering,” as she illuminates it in her book of that title — wintering as at once a season of the natural world, a respite our bodies require, and a state of mind. A cyclical, recurrent weather pattern, if you will, in any life. It’s one way to describe our pandemic year: as one big extended communal experience of wintering. Some of us are laboring harder than ever on its front lines and also on its home front of parenting. I don’t know a single person right now who isn’t exhausted, almost as a state of being. It feels like Katherine May opens up exactly what I and so many need to hear, but haven’t known how to name.”

Katherine’s book Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times is just as delightful as her talk with Krista.

“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through. Wintering is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximizing scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.

“It’s a time for reflection and recuperation, for slow replenishment, for putting your house in order. Doing these deeply unfashionable things — slowing down, letting your spare time expand, getting enough sleep, resting — is a radical act now, but it’s essential. ”

February 11

Listening to birdsong is one of the most delightful and calming things I can think of. Until their joyful chatter returns to my yard in abundance, I am happy to have discovered tree fm which is kind of magic. It is especially lovely to listen to while soaking in the tub…

Speaking of birds ornithologist Drew Lanham’s words in his recent On Being conversation really resonated with me:

“In that moment of that little brown bird that’s always so inquisitive, that sings reliably — in that moment that I’m thinking about that wren, I’m not thinking about anything else. That’s joy. And so sometimes I think we have to recognize the joy that the world didn’t give us and that the world can’t take away, in the midst of the world taking away what it can.”

I added his book The Home Place to my reading list. Listen to him read a short excerpt here:

I read Sally Rooney’s wonderful book Normal People cover to cover one Saturday a few weeks ago and am still thinking about it. There is also a 12 part series on Hulu which was exquisitely done…

I am a consummate list-maker of all things and these free downloads from Appointed make me happy…

I have been back in the studio teaching which also means I’ve been getting to play and work on my own Pilates practice which is one of the most joyful things I get to do…

This gorgeous painting below is not a two-dimensional scene but a real person painted by the artist Alexa Meade. It’s worth listening to her short TED talk if you need motivation to step off your current path but feel too invested to make a change. She graduated with a political science degree and a dream to work in government only to be moved by a curiosity that compelled her to return home to her parents’ basement where she taught herself how to paint by painting the shadows on the ground, on her face, on her food…

Along similar lines, Seth Godin’s recent blog post struck a chord especially after living and working through this year of the “pivot.”

“Is ‘nimble’ a good thing? Should we seek to be flexible, resilient and quick to be able to shift and adapt?

Because often, it seems as though we work to create an environment where it’s difficult indeed to be nimble. We buy expensive assets, lock into long-term systems and fail to ignore sunk costs. We set foundations in concrete instead of using a lightweight tent…”

It’s hard to choose a favorite time of year in my garden, but when new green shoots start to emerge from the dirt it always feels like a miracle and I’m surprised every time it happens. These chives are making a go of it…

And the quote I’m taking to heart these days…

“You don’t always have to be doing something. You can just be, and that’s enough.”

— Alice Walker