Early Morning Habit

One of my resolutions this year (I didn't share all of them publicly, a girl has to reserve something) was to get up every morning, at 5:30 (i.e. before everyone else in our house), do a yoga routine and have a morning window of peace to arrange my mind before the house was a wild, humming hive of short males. I have decided that when I am sick sleep is good so, my recent sinus headache was a legitimate reason for "sleeping in" but otherwise, I am now up and at 'em. So, I get up, turn up the heat, make a mug of tea, unroll my yoga mat and light a candle or two.

And I have to tell you....I love it.

The head-start is pretty priceless, the time of stretching and mental dusting and conscious movement is good for my body and soul and folks you have to admit, the stunning sunrises I've been taking in, are a totally swank bonus.

Witness.

Here are a few other little bits and nibbles that might help you make the leap to an early morning start yourself.

I have been doing some of the yoga routines from yogayak on YouTube...all free. I especially like their heart-opener morning routine...yoga in the Costa Rican jungle is very refreshing this time of year.

This little gizmo of a website will help you be sure you can catch the sunrise where you live...and honestly, it's become one of my favorite things about the start of my day.

And then there's this clever little sleep-cycle calculator which will help you be sure that waking is less painful. I am planning to give this a try for the first time this weekend. I will aim to go to sleep 10-ish since that's when the all-wise Cyclometer says I will slip into an effortless rhythm allowing my painless release at 5:30. Wish me luck.

I promise, if you live in a busy household, it is one of the only things I've found that give you a little island of peace in the middle of the madness. Even if it sounds painful, even if it IS painful...try it. I almost promise you won't regret it. :)

In Which She Is Resolute

Happy New Year to everyone! I'm leisurely about my well-wishing, taking my sweet time getting around to acknowledging the calendar flip ...why panic...we have 365 days to toot our noise-makers. The holiday madness largely behind us, we find ourselves here, blinking at the crisp, white, slate of a newborn January. I kind of love January. I love fresh starts, I love stillness after madness (no holidays all month anyone??? WOOHOO!) and even the sharp winter chill feels a little invigorating. After all, we've hardly had time to enjoy the gentle sifting of a slow snow shower, try out our snuggly Christmas mittens and scarves or go stumping around frostily blowing dragon breath with our giggling two-year-olds. The year is young! Hooray!

If you know me, you know that one of my favorite things about the new year is a fresh and teetering stack full of resolutions. People always tell me that they *cough cough* "Don't really do that resolution thing themselves. It's so depressing and who really keeps their resolutions anyhow!" I don't buy it people. Really? Your plan for making sure you can't fail is that you have decided never to have goals? A pulled out his list of last year's resolutions recently and sighed exclaiming that he hadn't "done very well." It turned out on closer examination that he had made stabs at and some progress on most all of them and had roundly succeeded  on a few to boot! I told him to stop being his own worst critic and appreciate all the success he'd had instead.

An attitude adjustment that allows you be pleased with any amount of progress instead of only perfect completion is helpful, so is a goal making tutorial...practical, yea modest goals are best. Instead of resolving to "eat healthy food" try changing it to "eating something raw every day + joining a CSA." Concrete is good.

Anyhow...all that to say: Here are My 2011 Resolutions!

• Shop for Christmas presents in July
• Get back to my pre-Nib weight
• Get up early 5 days a week (so as to have a quiet space before the hordes are up and buzzing)
• Keep a dream journal next to my bed
• Record all my books on GoodReads again
• Start a Housekeeper's Binder
• Buy a jasmine plant and get it to bloom
• Switch our kids to a local pediatrician (I am sick of driving any more than I have to)
• Call both sets of grandparents on set days, every week
• Host my first real kid birthday party  (Ru, my socialite turns five in April which will be the perfect time)
• Do yoga 5 days a week in the early mornings (maybe 7...we'll see...and also consider taking up running in warm weather)
• Follow a sport (am considering soccer at the moment, although American football has an allure too)
•  Buy my bees

What's on your list?

Garden Packing

So, today I started "packing" the garden a little...or at least preparing it for packing. I made a list of all the plants that I know want to dig up and take with me, clipped back some of the plants that had gotten so wild that they'd be hard to dig, pulled my raised bed apart, gathered up the garden decorations and pulled potted plants out of their tucked away locations throughout the garden. There is quite the assortment of flotsam and jetsom on the patio now.

Since we pulled the vegetable bed apart we pulled out all the remains of our veggies, threw the leggy plants into the woods and solidified our dependence on the CSA for fresh produce. That's it folks! We had one little moon-white cucumber left. Ru ate it for lunch.

I have decided to do it right this time and make a careful, orchestrated blueprint-style plan for our yard before I move in a single forget-me-not. I'm hoping this will help avoid turning it into a botanical three ring circus and make sure that we use our space well. A friend of a friend from church who was a landscape designer in her past life has offered to help advise and direct me with design and layout and making logical choices. I am so excited about that. A real design person!

Before we even look at the property together her first assignment she gave was that I make a list of what we'd like to work into our yard. Heh. The list is a bit long but, she told me to put down even my wildest dreams and scrimp not...better to dream big and finagle ways to work things out than to downsize our ideas and have a so so yard that we wish we'd been braver with. (So goes the theory) I haven't emailed her the list yet but so far this is what I have:

• Stone bread/pizza oven
• Cottage garden style flowers (annuals and perennials, sun and shade)
• Fruit trees (at least some, espalier style)
• Grassy, open area for play/football
• BBQ area
• Water feature of some kind
• Vegetable bed
• Compost area
• Herb garden (can be small, even potted)
• Berries
• Grapes
• Stone bed borders
• Butterfly attracting flowers
• Places to sit
• Sandbox w/ cover
• Board and rope style swing?
• Window boxes and front porch plantings
• Arbor
• A garden statue or two
• A beehive

Do you think that's a bit over the top? I'm all for extravagant dreams.

I'm thinking something like this: