Here comes the sun

Sometimes you forget how much you need the sun until you're reunited. Then you realize the sun is everything.  

Breakfast for dinner

Since its been brutally cold out & probably also because I'm 5 months pregnant I've been craving carbohydrate comfort food like crazy. Last night I decided to make pancakes for dinner. It was one of the best ideas I've had in a long time.

This is one of my favorite recipes (A mix of several that I use):

• 1 cup spelt flour, (spooned and leveled)
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup Almond milk
• 2 tablespoons coconut oil
• 1 large egg
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon vanilla or almond extract
• 1 tsp. cinnamon
• Assorted toppings, such as toasted almonds, walnuts or pecans, sliced bananas, warm fruit compote (frozen berries with maple syrup). 

• STEP 1
• In a small bowl, whisk together flour, cinnamon, baking powder, and salt; set aside.
• Step 2
  In a medium bowl, whisk together milk, oil, maple syrup, vanilla and egg. Add dry ingredients to milk mixture; whisk until just moistened (do not over mix; a few small lumps are fine).
• STEP 3
  Heat a large skillet (nonstick or cast-iron) or griddle over medium. Fold a sheet of paper towel in half, and moisten with oil; carefully rub skillet with oiled paper towel.
• STEP 4
  For each pancake, spoon 2 to 3 tablespoons of batter onto skillet, using the back of the spoon to spread batter into a round (you should be able to fit 2 to 3 in a large skillet).
• STEP 5
  Cook until surface of pancakes have some bubbles and a few have burst, 1 to 2 minutes. Flip carefully with a thin spatula, and cook until browned on the underside, 1 to 2 minutes more. 

Surrealism LIVES!!

Marco Zanini has pumped fresh brilliance, whimsy and beauty into the Schiaparelli label. Take a look and swoon for yourself.

To Do List

Today's to do list:

1. Find the things you love most about yourself & celebrate them. Those quirks, idiosyncrasies and  flaws...love on them, accept them. Those things are as much your strength as the other stuff that "works". 

2. Catch a moment when you want to react with anger and spend a second thinking about what you would gain if you reacted with love instead. 

3. Take a long shower and laugh. Hear the echo of your laughter fill the bathroom. 

4. Sit and do nothing and don't feel guilty about it. 

Frigid.

This is how today feels. The entire country has been hit by a polar vortex. Which is just another way of saying, stay in bed and don't leave your house. For anything. If you do however, here's some inspiration on what to wear. Stay warm bears!

Smells like spring spirit.

Oh Vivienne, How I love thee!

In the midst of this nasty winter we're having I'm dreaming of a punk spring with a twist of 1940. Only one woman can really nail it & it's Ms. Westwood:

The Look

Valentino, you make me want to dress like a woman again.

Emotional Correctness

This woman is amazing and what she's talking aobut is so on point. I feel like I want to watch it every day just to remind myself...I love the idea of emotional correctness vs political correctness. 

Please trust me & spend 6 minutes and Watch this video.

NYI

New Years intentions...I think resolutions feel too much like rules and I'm not really one for abiding by rules but I love the beginning of a new year to set intentions. So I'm putting them down here so I'll be held accountable...and can remind myself (sometimes I forget. sometimes daily.)

Here goes 2014, intentions here I come:

1. To be more patient, especially when walking behind a group of slow walkers.

2. Compassion. Yes I can have compassion for a child, a dog or an elderly woman crossing the street. Crazy people screaming on the subway, the loud talker at the table next to me at dinner or the person on a job who just demands attention all day long...not so much.

3. Less social media, more quality medium. Lunch dates vs text conversations. Less insta, more gradual, delayed gratification. More focus.

4. I would like to read a book. From start to finish. I have friends who read a book in a day. I'm not one of those people. I get distracted, there's tv, there's Facebook (see #3), there's magazines and oh wait, there's a pile of dust I should vacuum...

5. Using language that supports my intentions. Language is so powerful and the words we choose shape our lives & our relationships.  I want to operate on a higher lever of consciousness when I talk...which I suppose means I should use 4-letter words a little less too...

6. Realizing that laziness is just fear. I can be super motivated and move at mach-speed for a long time and then I can lose steam & become lazy. I mean full on I don't want to get off the couch L-A-Z-Y real easily. I'll sit and make a to do list that I won't get to because another episode of Law & Order just came on... and on and on...so I'm ready to face the facts: the things I avoid doing are especially the things I should be doing. Sigh.

New Year Gratitude.

With a new year comes a lot of reflection on the past, ideas & intentions for the future and realizations about what works in my life and what needs to change.  One thing that I plan to continue with frequency is my gratitude list. Nothing creates present moment happiness like being aware of all the beauty and goodness in my life. Right now. I was talking to one of my closest friends yesterday who told me she is doing this with her 2 year old daughter & I just thought that was brilliant- imagine if we were all raised to acknowledge our gratitude to the world around us? Heres a little start...

Today I'm grateful for:

1. Snowstorms! I love a snowstorm so much, the way it quiets the city and coats it in clean, fresh snow...I love the communal energy it brings pulling all of us together through it.

2. Calm mornings to focus & work. 

3. Cookbooks. I have become obsessed with cooking & baking and spend hours trolling through food blogs & cookbooks getting inspired for daily dinners and breakfasts.

4. A new year. I love a fresh symbolic restart. Whether a birthday or a new year I love the marker of time that makes me think about my life, the energy I put out & the energy I take in. Its a great way to mark change & progress and to start new. 

5. Organizing. I spent 9 hours cleaning and organizing my storage unit (my second home) yesterday and it was as emotionally cathartic as it was physically fulfulling. I once had a boss who said what you do is being done to you and I think with cleaning & orgazining it is especially true.

6. Butter & honey. Yep its true. I love these two ingredients, especially on a warm biscuit espcecially in the winter...add some hot tea & I'm like a 90 year granny in blisss.

7. Sweatpants. I know, my younger, hotter self would cringe but when I walk in the door to my apt I love nothing more than putting on sweatpants. Its winter- I choose comfort!

snow gathering in my skylight

Note to self...

Advice to Myself

by Louise Erdrich

Leave the dishes. Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
Throw the cracked bowl out and don't patch the cup.
Don't patch anything. Don't mend. Buy safety pins.
Don't even sew on a button.
Let the wind have its way, then the earth
that invades as dust and then the dead
foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
Don't keep all the pieces of the puzzles
or the doll's tiny shoes in pairs, don't worry
who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
matches, at all.
Except one word to another. Or a thought.
Pursue the authentic—decide first
what is authentic,
then go after it with all your heart.
Your heart, that place
you don't even think of cleaning out.
That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
Don't sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
or worry if we're all eating cereal for dinner
again. Don't answer the telephone, ever,
or weep over anything at all that breaks.
Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
and talk to the dead
who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
Recycle the mail, don't read it, don't read anything
except what destroys
the insulation between yourself and your experience
or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
this ruse you call necessity.

"Advice to Myself" by Louise Erdrich fromOriginal Fire. © Harper Collins Publishers, 2003

**one of my best friends sent me this today, it was too good not to share**