Big Kid Playground

What else would you want to do on a late-December day but climb around on a playground?  Hot cocoa and a movie, sure- but that only lasts to the end of the cup or the credits.  My eyes glaze like indoor donuts when I've been inside too long.  


I frolicked recently at a particularly good playground with two of my dearest friends.  It was right on the ocean and the wind was a-blowin - that stuff makes you feel alive!  We wore our long-johns and scratchy wool hats.  

There was an inviting boardwalk we ran along, our footsteps thundering along the wood, for front row seats to the wave show.  

I collected driftwood (I have the crafty-meets-physics ambition of creating a driftwood-and-mussel-shell mobile.  More on that in a later post...) and my friend played on a driftwood log.

It may seem like a good idea to stay inside (and some days it is!) but I've never been sad to have lungs full of crisp air and play in an interactive world I can't get on my couch.  

Winter Bed

Making my winter bed might be my favorite of many fun nesting tasks necessary in preparation of colder weather.  As is the case with many couples, my husband and I sleep at polar-opposite temperatures, need different weighted blankets on us.  We generally shouldn't have fallen in love if we ever planned on co-sleeping.

However, we have marched forward.  I love the weight of another me on me when I sleep (the same thing would make Brian a claustrophobic wreck.)  So wintertime means LOTS of thin-ish blankets on our bed.  Many so he can flip a few layers off of himself, and they pile onto my side - usually welcome to the cold sleeper, here.

I think I was putting on my shoes when I noticed all the colors, textures, and patterns of my blankets stacks! : very princess and the pea.  I believe that the lack of time spent outside in the winter - all the textures and colors you get automatically from just being outside- needs to be mimicked indoors to make up for lack of visual input.   

Hibernating must be taken into account as a domestic art form, and the bed is the best place to start.  My husband got me these delicious red and white LL Bean checked flannel sheets as a birthday present, and they make me very very happy.  

Soft + pretty = win + win.

Be good to yourself; go make your bed!

Summer Solstice Sunrise

Around 4:25 am.  The streets of Portland were all mine: fabulous!

Believe me when I say I am usually the person to oversleep amazing things.  I am not a morning person in the traditional sense of the word only because 1) I love to stay up late and 2) I love my bed in the morning.  As my beloved favorite Aunt has always said, "When I'm awake, I love to be awake.  And when I'm asleep, I love to be asleep!".  


You can see where this is going.  I had decided, like many folks with non-specific spiritual leanings, that a little ceremony minus the dogma is a lovely thing to cultivate in life.  Thus: Summer Solstice Sunrise.


I tried to entice friends and kin with promises of local mead ("Come watch the summer sunrise with Pagan booze!") to get up at 4:00 am in order to be to the Eastern Promenade by around 4:30.  

The clouds were arranged in the sky for what as sure to be a great sun show.  I found myself a nice spot on the grass.  No one there but me for a while.

The boats in the harbor were a nice touch.

Must be 4:59!  The Mead was chilled, and tasted especially good at this early hour.  At this time, I had yet to have any friends join.  




The only other souls on the hill were a young couple making out and snuggling in what must have been the most romantic moment in their 17-year-old lives.  (Ha!  I did not take a picture of them.) 

I was looking at the above scene when a brave, sleep-looking friend of mine joined with her sprinting dog.  Her dog did laps on the green and we sipped our lovely mead.  I remember thinking at the time that this was more than a fair trade-in for some lost sleep.  

As if solstice sunrise wasn't award enough, I decided to keep the fun going with THE BEST BREAKFAST: smoothie, french-press, and early tomato-basil cheese toasts.  

Happy Summer Solstice!

Snow Forts and French Onion Soup

If you live in Portland (or any city where plows quickly turn snow piles into mounds of brown salty crust) a good snowfall has a short shelf-life for playtime.  Sieze the day, city-dwellers!  

This outing was inspired by a friend of mine who is accustomed to outdoor ed and telling/inspiring teenagers to have a good time outside, whatever the weather.  These are the sorts of folks to keep within arm's reach when you keep watching Battlestar Galactica, or are Hulu surfing instead of facing the day (and piles of snow!) that aren't going to wait around until you finish the season finale.

We built snow forts out on the Western Promenade and had a pretty "killer" sled run (WARNING: The Western Prom can be dangerous for sledding at times, so watch it out there.).  

I cannot satisfyingly explain the mental throw-back tunneling in the snow gave me.  Burrowing, hearing my boyish fiance through the two feet of snow we had left to link our respective tunnels - the snow just smelled great.   

And what would we want after that kind of an afternoon but French Onion Soup?  I tell ya, it hit the spot.  I even had Gruyere cheese and some super-stale Rosemont bread to get all toasty and bubbly on the top.  My fiance had made some soup earlier, so we just heated it up, assembled the toast and cheese on top, and bammed it under the broiler.  

Oh, yeah.

An suiting punctuation for the end of an inspiring outing.  Coming home from recess to hot, golden-toasted onion soup.