Pretty Table and Fabulous Requested Recipes

As I am sitting here waiting for two kids to fall asleep, I am trawling my favorite sites. I love to get design inspiration and lucky for us, there are so many amazing blogs out there with great ideas.


I found this picture of a side table on Absolutelybeautifulthings.blogspot.com - one of my favorites.

The pretty table vignette is taken from here (I can't figure out how to post pictures from either blog):

www.kimficaro.com

I love the idea of this little side table with pretty objects and empty frames. We are so bombarded with catalogs and the big box stores selling us a 'lifestyle' that many of us have forgotten (or never found!) our own style. I love the casual idea of making a pretty table in our house. I am going to make my own pretty table (when Liam wakes up - he is sleeping in my room) on an antique secretary desk that I bought from Craigslist a couple years ago. It will be the perfect setting for some pretty objects and frames.

More importantly, I have recipes to share:

Shelby's Restaurant Soy Vinaigrette Dressing (Orinda, California)
This recipe was borrowed by our brother Rich over 10 years ago when he was a waiter at Shelby's. A fantastic basic soy vinaigrette for your own greenleaf salad. Shelby's served this with shredded chicken, almonds and fried wontons. This is the jumbo size recipe - you will need to scale accordingly:

Shelby's Soy Vinaigrette
4 cups Vegetable Oil
1 cup Soy Sauce
2 1/2 cups Rice Wine Vinegar
touch of Cayenne Pepper
Pinch of Salt
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
3 Tablespoons chopped Garlic

Next recipe to come ... Healthy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies ...

Foam Roller

Hi all! Have any of you ever done Pilates and used the foam roller? It's amazing! I'm a huge foam roller fan. Currently I do Pilates at home with or without a video guiding my exercise but I did invest in a foam roller which I learned how to use when I attended classes. We used the roller in a variety of ways. One of my least favorite things to do in the beginning was to roll out my IT Band. The Illiotibial band is a tough group of fibers that run along the outside of the thigh connected by the butt muscles and knee. It can get irritated from overuse (especially for runners) and needs to be stretched out, that's where the foam roller comes in! Basically you lie sideways with the roller under the side of your thigh and you roll back and forth. For some (for me!) it can be quite painful in the beginning if you have never or rarely target the IT band. But after a few roller sessions you will notice that it no longer hurts and you feel loosened up.
In addition, the roller can be used to massage your shoulders and back by laying on it and rolling certain ways (see websites with examples).
Definitely check out the foam roller! You can find it for $20 or less. I bet if you did more internet research you could find a lot of uses for it too. Then share them with us!

Here's a site about using the roller with pilates:

http://www.healthnews.com/blogs/jennifer-gianni/fitness-exercise/exercise-equipment/pilates-foam-roller-2684.html

This site has more information about using the roller to stretch before or after exercise:
http://runningtimes.com/Article.aspx?ArticleID=9911

Another interesting weekend in Vermont

It is snowing today. I love it!
We had a gorgeous weekend, and interesting too. I thought you might like to hear about it. This kind of stuff seems normal to me, but I know that we live a unique kind of life in the green mountains of Vermont. Here's a little glimpse into the lives of the Berkfields for all of you urbanites...

Friday night
My housemate Abi and her son Levi went with Birch and I down to Hampshire College in Amherst, MA (about an hour away)for a panel discussion by the Prison Birth Project. The Prison Birth Project provides doula services to women who are incarcerated and they also provide other services like prenatal and postnatal women's groups and mothering from prison women's groups. They do amazing work - check out their website. http://theprisonbirthproject.org/
We went because there was childcare provided. So our babies hung out with a bunch of older kids while we listened to four women talk. Two of the women were formerly incarcerated and told their stories of being pregnant in prison, and of mothering their children from prison. Their reasons for being incarcerated were ridiculous and caused so much trauma in their families. We need to seriously rethink our current prison system, which does not help people rehabilitate, but actually causes further societal damage. It is so great that an org like the Prison Birth Project is working to support women in prison and their children. Abi and I are trying to think how we can support a project like this. We might drive children to visit their parents in prison. I'll keep you updated. I know there are also good projects like this in California.

Saturday
We had an all day retreat at our farm for the organization that we work with - Post Oil Solutions. We spent time imagining what we want the organization to be like in 5 years and we all agreed that we wanted everyone in the area to be a part of the organization, even if they don't realize it. We want people to be working as a community to solve all kinds of issues that will come up in a post oil society... growing food, sharing resources, sharing skills, working together.

And then we spent a few hours doing an Anti-Class assessment. This was a follow-up to an Anti-Racist Assessment that we did a year ago. We are an org mostly made up of people who are white and middle class. We were working on recognizing the assumptions and values that we bring into our work. And then working on how to be more effective in working across classes. We feel that our movement towards a post oil society must be a cross class effort. And if we are working to make our world a better place we envision a world without classes, where there is equality, instead of people with money using their power over people who don't have money. We are setting our goals high. The woman who facilitated was from an organization called Class Action. Check it out http://www.classism.org/

While we were in the retreat Birch was in the greenhouse with our roommates - we planted onions, leeks, kale, chard and spinach this weekend!


Sunday
It is hard to believe, but it is the time to cut and split wood for next wintera. Our housemate Dan is a logger and he cut down about 6 trees on the property and on Sunday we split the wood. Here are a few photos of our work. It was a gorgeous day and it felt great to be working together and committing to next winter.

HI SISTERS! I MADE IT! 

Check me out (but don't read the comments.. yikes..)  http://www.elle.com/Fashion/Street-Chic 

NY Fashion week just ended... here's are some of my favorite looks... 

E xxx

Nightgowns

I love nightgowns. I was just perusing one of my favorite websites, Garnet Hill - and they happened to have my favorite nightgown on sale for $14. I paid wayyyy more a year or two ago. Here is the link to the smocked nightgown:
http://www.garnethill.com/jump.jsp?itemID=7409&itemType=PRODUCT&path=1%2C2%2C2425%2C10714%2C10714&iProductID=7409

Buy it today, love it tomorrow.

Nighty night ...

Crocodile Attack!

One of my little obsessions over the past few years has been crocodile furniture and accessories. I am not talking real crocodile OF COURSE, but "mock crock". I had a headboard made for my king size bed out of a chocolate brown mock crock and its slightly tufted.  Here is my husband Gonzalo reading a book with my son Sebastian, and you can see our crock headboard.

 This gives my room a more masculine look, but then I have other feminine touches so it doesn't look like a bachelor pad. I very much love the look of crock tables. Here is one I saw in Santa Monica at the Jonathan Adler store - which I loved. I saw the one in white and it was gorgeous, but the brown one is equally nice:
http://www.jonathanadler.com/shop/product.php?productid=17563&cat=0&page=1&initial=4797#


And check out this side table  From Graham and Green- I love this!

 

I even love these croc placemats from Urban Barn - how cute are these:

Awesome Accessory Alert: Purse Hook

While drinking a beer at my local dive recently, my friend Kat and I were having a very serious discussion regarding the importance of hooks under bars (and tables for that matter). Everytime I get to a bar or restaurant I immediately run my hand under the length of my bar area searching and hoping for a hook to put my purse. This can be quite an unpleasant experience, especially if it ends with the discovery of gum instead of a hook. If there is no hook, you are forced to either keep your purse on your lap (which is uncomfortable and gets in the way of my drinking) or put your purse on the floor. We are all well aware of what may await us down there on the ground. Nothing pleasant awaits for you or your poor purse. Anyways, a few weeks after Kat and I had this long talk, she surprised me with the best gift ever! A purse hook! The hook can hold up to 35 pounds and safely keeps your purse (or jacket, scarf, whatever) off the floor! You can even have the circular part that sits on the table personalized (mine is yellow with a "B" in green gem stones). These go for about $20 but I saw some cheaper ones on Amazon. Next time you are at a restaurant or bar or wherever, take notice of how annoying purse placement is and consider the purse hook. Here is a link to a site that makes eco-friendly hooks. They also have hooks that double as bracelets, however I am unable and unwilling to vouch for that product.

http://pursehook.net/

Spice up a fruit salad!

Add lime and chile powder! This is a staple food stand item in my neighborhood (The Mission District). Add these two ingredients to any fruit salad. I picked one up for lunch today at a local torta shop and it included papaya, pineapple, melon, grapes, jicama, and cucumber. Yum!

Perfect Parent

There was a time when I first was a mom that I had this idea of a perfect parent. For me, a stay at home mom, that meant basically keeping a totally clean house and home cooked meals as well as hosting fun playdates for moms (oh yah, and kids too). Then we moved back to the U.S. And I had another baby ... and life happened. And things got crazy and then I had another baby. So ... I have started to learn over the past (nearly 6 years) of parenting that there is no such thing. And the ones who look perfect are probably crazy.

So I love this website that I just came across:

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/tools.php

And I also love to remember my childhood and try to draw inspiration from the amazing parents who raised me.

I have also learned so much about judgement being a parent. There is a book a couple of moms wrote a few years ago called "I was a perfect mom before I had kids". That about sums it up. I think for the most part, as parents, we all try to take the best from our own childhood and incorporate from our own lives what works well and just run with it. There is no perfect parent and no better or best - I try to keep in mind what type of end result I want for my kids: happy, well adjusted, confident, contributing members of our family and our planet.

I love Dr. Sears for medical and growing advice: http://www.askdrsears.com/ and love the Happiest Toddler on the Block (Dr. Karp). Also Louise Ames Bates wrote great books, published in the 70's called "Your One Year Old", "Your Two Year Old", etc. You can find these in used book stores and they are awesome for referencing behaviour specific to a childs age during the appropriate year. It is also a good reminder for me of where each child is emotionally and developmentally - I think I expect my 3 1/2 year old to be where my 5 1/2 year old is ... since they play together so much.

Postings for later today: my delicious oatmeal chocolate chip cookie recipe (okay, it is out of Martha Stewart's Cookie Book) and the famous Shelby's Salad dressing (Uncle Rich may have accidentally memorized this recipe when he worked at Shelby's in Orinda - the menu ahs changed - maybe this is the balsamic glace from the Chicken Spinach Salad on the lunch menu? Only Rich will be able to tell us: http://www.shelbyseatbetter.com/docs/lunch.pdf.)

In the meantime, it is Ash Wednesday and I am going to put it out right here and right now - I am giving up alcohol for lent. That is right. I don't think I will be able to get ashes today, but I am participating in lent. There we have it.

Now while the kids are napping, I will be setting up our new computer. If I am back online tonight, it worked.

i needed a little inspiration!

Hola hermanas! I have to say thank you for the home improvement motivation that you gave me. The blog must be working because I just painted my bathroom! When we moved into our new place I decided that I couldn't live long with the peeling wallpaper in the bathroom - even though we are just renters. Richard gave me the "i'm gonna kill you" face when I suggested we redo the bathroom, but I think he is happy that I insisted. The project took about two days (over a period of three weeks). We spent $15. We used the dregs of four different paint cans that were in the basement and came up with a zippy blue that makes me happy and chill all at the same time.

Before...


During...



And after!

Living Room 2010

So, as you can see from this very unprofessional photo I just took at 11pm, I have changed just a few details in my living room. I added in some green and turquoise and fushia. I need to show you my dining area next because it will make more sense - I have fushia chandelier lamp shades and some other green and turquoise accents. I loved the pashmina idea that Katie was inspired by and used my turquoise pashmina on my couch, although you can see it needs to be ironed very badly! The main piece of furniture that I added is a black suede tufted bench....done by Andres Alsina himself. Andres was my interior design teacher and is an inspiration and also a lot of fun. I will post some of his work later.

What do you think???

Living Room Before (1 year ago)

Ok...here is a photo of my living room area 1 year ago...Since then I have made a lot of subtle changes. First, I got rid of the red accent color. I decided that I don't like red at all. I have added in fushia and turqoise accent colors instead. The other change was I decided to try and wash the curtains. I took down one side and tried to wash it and it didn't work out, so I ended up throwing it away! Now I only have one side of curtains. I only keep it there to keep the sun out during summer (which is now in Chile) and because we are most likely moving soon and I don't want to measure and do curtains for this apartment.

The Mirror

How much would you pay for this mirror? Seriously.

Here is a daylight photo from today (notice the pashmina decor):

And here is the "Before" mirror. This is after Tara waved her wand - moved my rug, moved the CD rack, all the furniture in this room ... and voila, I have a french provincial style room. Kind of.

Here is the work in progress. The first challenge was finding the right size and shaped frame at Wertz Brothers antiques showroom. We found an awesome 70's style Drexel mirror for $39.99.

Oh yeah.

And of course we tried to negotiate -but they don't negotiate at all there. So we paid full (!) price. Then, Tia Tara researched the exact color online at Benjamin Moore, I swung by the paint shop 5 minutes before closing and grabbed two sample sizes of the color we wanted (4.95 thank you) and some gold paint. We did two coats of blue and then added the gold trim when the second coat was wet.

Note the shiny black chairs behind me. That is the next story.

I tried to quit.

I really wanted to quit my job today. I mean, if I can't get a kid to nap, doesn't that indicate some type of failure? I told Liam and Claire that I needed some quiet time in the car on the way to pick up Sofia from school (round 4 of carpool today, final circuit). I think Liam was scared, it worked. At least for a little. He kept talking but didn't really expect a response.

In other news I have discovered another use for the pashmina (maybe my #1 favorite accessory of all times). Seriously, what did people do before pashminas? Did they just try to make a big old knit scarf look great? Or perhaps the predecessor to the pashmina is a silk scarf. Chic, stylish but lacking in warmth. I have a few pashminas in my collection and recently was inspired to use them as blankets on the couch. Super warm, lightweight, guests don't feel like they are wrapping themselves all up in your afghan (do you have one?) and they can add a great complementary color to a couch.

I have a great recipe for pea soup - it is cooking now - bag of pea soup, chopped carrots, onions & celery, couple cans of broth or water and ham bone. Delish.

Isn't it cocktail hour already?

Missing you all out here in California ... lonely in SoCal for my sistahs!!