grateful saturdays

We headed over to Scott and Elena's place today for the grand opening of the "Man-tuary" and inside Girl's afternoon/evening fun. Their garage was open and ready for poker and dart-playing fun, complete with radio, comfortable couch and plenty of fried and tasty snacks. We girls headed inside and chatted about babies and pregnancy (since a lot of ladies are pregnant!) and the boys. Really everyone was up and around everywhere, it was nice to watch the boys play and egg each other on and then go back inside to watch the little kids (whose numbers are, wonderfully, growing) learning how to play with each other. (Which was adorable. They even ended up giving each other hugs when they said good-bye. D's been on a huge hugging streak lately, too. He's already so incredibly sweet.)

It's exciting to see Diego play with our growing group of friends, and it's exciting for me to feel our circle of friends and families grow, too. I feel very blessed to see both.

the patio project, an update

This is the year I've decided to make Southern California my home. Not just a place I live (and complain about). (A lot.) (Seriously, a girl can only be asked so many times if she speaks English or if her son is her's before getting snippy.) (But I digress.)

This is the year I am putting down our roots here as a family. One of the ways I wanted to start was by making our patio more usable. Before, the patio was bare, cold, cement gray, damp, and just a place for storage. I had the remnants of a dead tree that I tried to keep last year, a few old boxes, a pinata from Diego's 1st birthday...you get the idea. We wouldn't just sit and enjoy the pleasant weather or listen to the hummingbirds chirping angrily or watch the streaks of sun on the apartments next door. I wanted to have a space we would enjoy, and visiting my family in Florida earlier this year made me yearn for a patio Diego would love, too. He LOVED my Tia's patio. I mean, REALLY. Would have never gone inside if he didn't have to.

(D enjoying the cool bricks and damp greens)

My plan to change this patio into a part of our home was threefold:

1. Go green!
2. Muddy tables
3. Time.

First on my list was to get more plants. Plants that would enjoy the shade, relish in the deep gray hues. At the local garden store we bought a fluffy fern, a tall clivia, a gold dust plant, and some caladium bulbs Diego and I could plant together. I also got a big watering pail and a tiny one just for Diego.

(l-r: clivia, gold dust, fern)

Second! Muddy tables!! I mean a pouring table, or a sand and water table, for Diego. I found a great deal on a barely used table on craigslist and it, too, came to live on our patio.

(splish splash)

Time. It took an actual effort at first to just force myself out onto the patio with Diego, to look at the birds or blow bubbles. Now that we have plants of our own to water and a pouring table to dig and pour into? It's really changed the space.

Now we're on the patio daily. Diego totally loves it. He helps me water the plants every chance he can, and would water them every day if I let him. He is so sweet with the plants, too. Yesterday he even gave the fern a kiss when we were out there saying hello. Oi vey. Now we can sit and enjoy the sunny days, of which there are many, and even the few cloudy days we've been graced with. The space is full of life and love and I feel more at home on there now than ever before. Here's a little tour.

(let's go outside)

(a place to sit and a place to splash)


(our little green friends)

Question of the day:
So how have you made your space more personal this year?

life as baking

I was in a huge baking mood last week, wanting to get some goodies ready for Valentine's Day, and decided to make marshmallows and a pie of Jim's choice. (He chose Pecan Pie, he IS a Texan boy at heart after all.) The marshmallows were just a whim. So last Friday Diego and I set up a chair along the counter, some bowls, the standing mixer and all of the ingredients and we poured and mixed and whisked and got powdered sugar over EVERYTHING. I think he had fun. And now, when he sees the egg carton in the fridge he points, OOO!, and throws his hand down like he's cracking an egg. Which he now helps me do in the mornings when I make his eggs. That was enough of a mess so I thought I would wait for time alone, while D napped, to make the pie.

While making the crust and the filling I couldn't help but feel like the worry of the day was melting away as I stirred in the pecans and eggs and sugar. The vanilla is almost always the last step, and it's always one of my favorites. I love that sweet heady scent. I want to take all of those feelings and use them in the rest of my life. I often feel like I'm too hard on myself, tense and stumbling along life, cursing myself for not knowing exactly what I am doing and going to do. But when I bake, mistakes come and go, I learn from them and go on, mixing and turning over fillings, pie crusts or cookies. There are good scents, good work, and good treats at the end.

And they were delicious. Best pie to date. Not sure what I'm going to do with the remaining marshmallows. You're all welcome to come over for some hot chocolate. :)

meal planning change

I've been wanting some change lately. Something about the new year and the need for resolutions always puts me in the mood for change. Healthy change! What I always fail at doing, though, is going beyond reading about what I COULD do and actually do it. Then I found this great post over at Aprovechar and felt like I could really do this. Step Two in the Year of Self-Care is weekly meal planning, and last weekend that's exactly what I did.

My meals this week:
breakfast
lunch
dinner

Mon.-
spinach omlettes
whole wheat quesadillas with baked chicken
halibut with assorted veg

Tues.-
blueberry waffles, fresh blueberries
homemade butternut squash soup
pot roast with mashed potatoes

Wed.-
oatmeal, fruit
veggie pancakes
spinach and mozarella ravioli

Thurs.-
veggie omlette
roasted chicken with veg
homemade veggie pizza

Fri.-
scrambled eggs
chicken and veg quesadilla
leftover ravioli

This isn't everything on our plates, to be sure, there are bits of fruit I just pick and choose from the fridge for almost every lunch and snacks in between. It's just nice to know that I can open the fridge at any given moment and know exactly what I'm going to make, but also know that there are delicious leftovers if I don't feel like making something new. And Diego is totally loving the new food and the new change. This is just the first week, I know that, but it feels really good to be doing something better for us, all three of us. Hopefully we'll see some significant improvements in our budget, diet, lifestyles.

My goal for the next few weeks?
Pick a meal a week from a different culture around the world.
Eat at two to three vegetarian meals a week.
Make more homemade soup. Yum.
Start thinking more about local food. It's something I've been hearing about/reading about and I would love to learn more.

What about you guys? Planning on changing your diets this year?