What's Fueling My Fire....

           Its great to share ideas and to inspire each other with both the thoughts and growth we are experiencing but also with the raw idea of BEING inspired. We should be looking around us for stuff that makes us feel astonished and amazed and full of answers and energy. Please, allow me to go first....
Here's a little peek into my resource room at the moment. These are things in my world that are filling my tank, pushing my edge, giving me ideas and handing out delicious mental gymnastics:

• Magic Lessons podcasts by Elizabeth Gilbert. Every episode makes me want to create, NOW. 
• The movie, Seed: The Untold Story. Saw it on the big screen and my jaw was on the floor.
• The Standing Rock Protest
•  Victor Frankl's book, Man's Search For Meaning.
• The biography of the Cheaper By The Dozen parents, Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, Partners For Life. So well written (yay biographer!) and so unknown (yay for Lillian, one of my heroines!)
• Piano lessons with my three oldest kids...I'm working them through their lessons every day which means I am suddenly, accidentally playing the piano
• This astonishing info-graphic. 
• Women Who Run With Wolves, I just got this two nights ago and its knocking me back on my heels. I'm underlining every other page.
• The incredible music of Yonina....their vids can leave me high all day.
• This Avett Brothers song. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Ever more, since the election. I will always be grateful to Alicia from Posie Gets Cozy for introducing me to the bros. 
• The mind boggling, Understanding Your Child As A Spiritual Gift, believe it or not, written by a friend of mine.

Chinatown Link-Fest

The small city we live in now is hugely Chinese in demographic. There are four giant, full service Chinese grocery stores here, for instance. I have a feeling that Chinese New Year might be a big deal here. We had a little foray into San Francisco this past weekend and fooled around in Chinatown, watching people buying lanterns and food for the festivities and loading up the bottom of the stroller with rambutans and longan. I am not very Chinese in style. I like my Latin culture and my "island time" but I have a hard time with cultures that are particular or rigid or invasively harsh.  I admire their stringency but I am kind of unsettled by their culture of wily, particularity. I look like I'm sick if I wear the orange-red color they are so fond of, I'm terribly fond of being golden tan from outdoor play and I really don't like bean paste desserts. I'd make a lousy Beijing expat. I do love the Chinese medicine culture with their emphasis on observing the body for symptom decoding and clues and their use of herbs and other natural remedies. I also love the lower sugar baked good in their shops. I think the flowers are amazing....the big, lush chrysanthemums and tuberose in fragrant bundles. I have some gigantic white lilies on my dining room table that we brought home with us. Each lily could be a full-sized lady's hat and the whole room is spiraled through by the drifting eddies of fragrance. I like that very much. I'm a little biased. China is a whole universe away and feels philosophically alien to me but I want to appreciate and understand my neighbors and connect to them. China is encroaching in my life. I did a little reading to inspire me. Wanna see what I found? 

Here are my favorites: 

• A photographer, making fashion role models out of Chinatown's elders. (We accidentally wandered past her studio and I peeked in the window and wondered what the exhibit was about as it was closed at the time and I hadn't yet read this article.)
• How Walmart didn't make it in Chinatown. The Chinese are frugal, but protests reigned and it didn't fly. 
• Chinatowns in rural Connecticut. How the World Trade Center attack caused a migration and brought the Chinese out of NYC.
• The largest Chinatown in Mexico is in Mexicali. It includes a large population, and a warren of secret tunnels. Who knew!?!
• One man, eats his way through every restaurant in Chinatown, L.A. He gives you the serious lowdown on where the astounding stuff is and what it was like to do it all.
• Chinatown and public art are intermingled. The Chinese have embraced identity discussion in public spaces and expression of feeling and tradition emblazoned across walls and courtyards.

Hot Links

Sharing a list of wonderful inspiring brain detritus

Image by fabbio via Flickr

Links, links, everywhere!

today. All kinds of stuff that's been tumbling about in my head ever since I saw it, making me smile and think by turns.

• Love John Muir. Love this photo of him. Love the quote below him. (note to self: read a book about his life at some point)
• Speaking of photos of famous men, how's about this provocative shot of Sitting Bull, in full body form, eh?
• I love the idea of wooden toothbrushes. They make me smile.
• These peas sound stunning...gold pods with purple blossoms! Next year, peeps...it's on my seed list. Didn't even get peas in the ground this year.
• Am contemplating my need level for a diy set of glowing garden orbs. It somehow seems like a good idea. DIY geniuses are such raw inspiration.
• Kiwi makes me happy! These little kiwi boats make me hurt, because they make me so happy. I think I need to have a summer party just so we can eat some.
• Milk + Ink makes for breathtaking, soft beauty. Who knew!?!
• Am planning to make time in my schedule to go and see this church, post-haste! I couldn't believe such an undiscovered ecclesiastical art gem was right here in my area.

Happy link hopping! Sometimes it's good to skip the descriptives and just share the raw material that's dumping into our brains. Got any links for me?

Potpourri of Favorites

A little smattering of everything tonight. We have just finished a whirl-storm of cutting and pasting and I can finally say that all our valentines are finished, never mind those bright blue paint splots on the tablecloth. As they say in Spanish, "No hay importa!" I have no huge thing to say, I've glued and painted it all out on red construction paper, I'm afraid.....and so, you get to take a little stroll through my odds and ends bin and see what goodies I've been keeping on hand to share.

First, this wonderful post from the esteemed Anna about mothering boys who skateboard. I had misty eyes when I finished.

This lovely video will make the faintest among us peppy. How could it not?


This bright little lunch is definitely on my list for the very near future. Feels like a perfect cure for spring fever.

How beautiful is this hairdo? How in the world do you think she did that?

And this. This had me in stitches. (In case you don't know it....you might need this chart topping hit as background to understand.)

And as a parting shot, this painting. Talouse Latrec....I'm a fan.

Much love to you, I'm over and out!

Lots O' Links

Am just kind of confetti brained tonight and so am sharing with you all the shiny bits, tossing around inside my cranium. Have a lot of interesting non sequitur fun with  me! Hooray random, fascinating, sparkly thoughts!

(I am a magpie in my soul)

• I am planning to be grounded tomorrow by the blizzard that's sweeping in and am hoping to make this with the extra milk we have in our fridge at the moment. How fluffy and alluring does that bowlful look? I learned to like cottage cheese as a grown-up. Sometimes I learn slow.

• I was reaching past a woman for a whole roasting chicken in the grocery meat department the other day and I was suddenly stopped in my tracks by her breathtaking perfume and I forgot all about the bird and started an animated conversation with her about why I must someday find a way to get some of her Estee Lauder perfume. Usually I find floral scents well meaning but in the end, fake and overwhelming but this one was spot on gardenia, totally exotic and romantic.

• I took two paintings in to be framed at this art shop and accidentally happened on a 70% off sale they were running on custom frame work. The framer was artistic and thoughtful, I cannot believe how good my paintings look in the hands of a professional. 3 weeks and I can go and get them back! Hooray! Can't wait!

• This video made me almost cry.

• Still shopping for beekeeping goods but am so excited to drool all over they keyboard at this site while I mull. I think I should join. Support is good.

Beautiful Diversions

Nib is discovering knobs and buttons and switches. He's very interested in pulling on things and putting them in his mouth and yanking them off of whatever they're attached to. It just looks like he's working the Etch-A-Sketch here, but really, he's just trying to pry off one of the knobs. Hey...diversion, is diversion...intended by the designer or no!

Here's a stack of fabulous links for you to enjoy. This is the pile that I couldn't keep suppressed. So much good stuff out there in the interweb!

• This fabulous song is stuck in my head.
• This couch is a brilliant, brilliant use of thrift store embroidery finds. Am so tempted to copy it. Do I dare to try?
• Have you tried halvah? Its my new naughty snack craving. Think sesame instead of peanut butterfinger. Completely addictive.
• Our Indian corn will probly come down very soon and when it does, I am considering making one of these, seasonal beauties.Seems like just the thing to wear when visiting the friends and relations.
• This fabulous scene gets my very largest vote for touching video of the week. 600 opera singers dressed casually and masqueraded as crowd members and surprised all the staff and shoppers in a Philadelphia Macy's with a live rendition of The Messiah. I cried. Super moving.
• I love this list of things to do when bored. There are about 57 that I wanna run right out and try instantly. (Lots of them would make fun dates too!)
• And speaking of list-ology, this list is a genius compilation too. Words are so great.
• And isn't this a brilliant, helpful tool? You know...for when we get all spellbound by the brilliant diversion of the interweb?

So, that's my current round-up of inspiration for the time being. Got anything that you're dying to share because its so genius?

End of Week Potpourri

Just a crazy potpourri today of all the delicious little tidbits I have been accumulating all week and haven't found a place to share. Have a little bit of everything....

Chubby toddler tummies in swimsuits...just, delightfully off center

Smiles so big they almost look fierce

This amazing video which is painfully inspiring and makes me madly itch to put together a million vibrant quilt squares.

This amazing take on the staycation. I totally, totally wanna do it. Any takers?

This brilliant book. Am putting it right on my library hold list. It looks like the kind of fabulous homeschool/mommy happiness book that may end up amongst those books I just packed yesterday...on the bookshelves on my new home.

And look! Speaking of flowers...one of my orphaned orchids that I bought for pennies, all shriveled and missing tags when I was a newlywed...just finally rehabbed enough to bloom for the first time.