Avocado Squirt Gun

I just survived for six days in 2013 without a cell phone, so at least we know it's still possible. I had to check my email on the computer and my primary form of communication was in fact email, or facebook. I felt pretty pathetic. The good news is I now have a function fancy smartphone, we got a huge dump of fresh POWDER last weekend, and the reason I lost my phone is because I went snowboarding on Saturday with Nate. About 14 inches of the fluffiest snow I've seen in years (SERIOUSLY FLUFFY) graced us throughout the day and overnight last Friday, thank you universe!!!! Riding all morning with Nate kicked my butt and we had a ton of fun finding the best (and a little of the not-so-best) snow. Yes!

Avocado squirt gun? My avocado tree has leaves on it! I've been growing this thing for a long, long time and I am so happy to see new life! The kitty ate the first buds it ever had about two or so months ago, but it persevered. And the squirt gun has been brought into play as the official kitty deterrent for plants in the window sill. She will learn, but in the meantime she'll continue to make me act like a crazy person about my house plants.

It feels great to be back in the swing of things after vacation. Classes, classes and more classes. Taking yoga classes, teaching yoga classes, preparing for yoga classes, wanting more yoga classes everywhere all the time.... I am now the Kids Yoga instructor at Studio Zenith and can't wait for class on Monday! It should be a nice challenge for me to teach kids, very cool. I also just submitted my volunteer application for Wanderlust in Stratton this summer! I figure it will be a great excuse to take a long weekend for hard work, practice, new opportunities and sunshine.

Oh right, Valentine's Day. I became obsessed with making homemade caramels for the big day.... So on Wednesday I started by getting all the supplies I needed, ingredients, parchment paper, a candy thermometer and a new pair of yoga pants. DUH. The making of the caramel was actually the easiest part. I let the stuff cool but had some sticky situations and ended up having to put it in the freezer for a flash just to get it to set enough to cut into squares. Somewhere during this process I decided it would be necessary to chocolate coat the caramels and make a variety of flavors.... About 3 hours later I had (with a few minor pitfalls) success! Chocolate covered caramels, peanut butter chocolate covered caramels, chocolate covered caramels with cashews, and sea salted chocolate covered caramels. Phewf. Last night we went out to J. Morgans and I did not cook or do dishes  :)

 

Wishing you all lots of love this time of the year! And so grateful for the return of winter...

You cannot be enlightened as the separate person you see yourself to be because that person has already disappeared, along with everything else from yesterday.
-Buddha

Dear Laura and Tim

Two people have mentioned my blog in the past month and inspired me to start up again: Laura Sturgis and Timothy Perez. This is for you two, so I'm not going to keep it short...

I just got back from a glorious trip to Orlando where my Aunt has resided for 7 years now. It is very much a place I can now visit for a retreat of sorts. Her back yard has a private pool and a bird feeder that attracts not only birds but squirrels, lizards, cats and, a first time sighting for me this trip, rats! We all know that Orlando is great for food, drink, theme parks, gators, conventions and combinations of all of the above, and I of course have been known to enjoy a margarita or two, a bottle of wine (or two), tacky miniature golf and gourmet cuisine. This time around when I wasn't spending time with my dear family, I really took time to chill. Mostly, I'm broke as a joke and have no cash for crap like that (I got a free flight using my Jetblue miles!)...

 How can it be that a bright, young college graduate working a minimum of 40 hours a week still scrapes by on a monthly basis? Oh I dunno, here are a few ideas: my cat, my yoga obsession, my love for extracurricular activities (this season these include snowboarding, snowshoeing, cooking and the occasional social soiree)...

Lola is the cat I've dreamed of owning since I first lived on my own on Mansfield Avenue in Burlington. She is sweet, soft, cuddly, playful and a source of constant love and entertainment. Not that my lovely. live-in boyfriend Jayson isn't all of those things, it's simply a void no person will ever fill. I am trying to get her onto a raw food diet and she uses pine pellets that turn into sawdust for kitty litter. Fascinating, I know. Yesterday was her five month birthday and most of the big expenses are out of the way now, phewf.

Lola in a cardboard box...

Sure, the yoga has sprung me into ultra awareness about my place in the world and what I'm eating/consuming on the day to day, but I've also just finished a book I think you might enjoy that is helping me to stay on track. It's called The Mindful Carnivore by Tovar Cerulli. For the record I still eat frozen pizza and Chinese food so it's definitely a baby step thing for me, it's much easier to force my kitten into a healthy lifestyle than myself.

I received my yoga teacher certification just before Christmas and have registered with Yoga Alliance, you can look me up on the directory. This experience has not only been a whirlwind of a dream come true, but still proves to be life changing just about every time I go to teach a class. BTW Laura, Tim has you beat here because he came to class when he visited in January, just sayin'. There will be much more talk about yoga in my blog posts to come. I am now training towards my 500 hour certification, nexxxxxxxt level ya'll!

Ok, extracurriculars... The winter hasn't been the best for outdoor sports and shenanigans but I've found my way onto snowshoes a few times and to the mountain a handful of times. Here is a picture of fungi on a tree covered in snow especially for you Tim:

And cooking has always been something I enjoy, but now that I'm trying to be more health conscious it also seems like a way to control what I eat. I recently made black bean burgers that came out fairly gooey yet delicious, a lentil-bacon-veggie soup and homemade loaves of bread. The crock pot and cookbook I got for Christmas have only aided my desire to be in the kitchen. Totally off topic but Jayson and I got a tent for Christmas, VERY AWESOME, can't wait for summer!

 BBQ Chicken Pizza

I've been home from Florida for about two hours now and had to get up at 3:30 am for my flight so excuse me for being sporadic and mild, I hope you liked it anyways. I promise that the posts to come will be more entertaining and insightful (maybe). The cat is asleep on my lap and it's snowing outside...

I thank you both for inspiring me to write again, you guys mean the world to me!

"The yogi's life is not measured by the number of his days but by the number of his breaths."
-B.K.S. Iyengar