Posts focused on taking good care of our mind and body.
Hey, hey! I recently completed a couple epic road trips and had the chance to finish a few audiobooks and podcasts. I’m not listing all the awesome audiobooks or podcasts here, but rather my top picks for the Best Audiobooks & Podcasts for Road Trips from my most recent romp. Sometimes I find lists of ‘best blah blah blah’ to be overwhelming, so I decided to keep it short. All of the following are winners, so without any more chitchat, here are my current favorites :
Better pick up a book and Read With Me because these posts are not slowing down. I had just finished Mark Manson’s, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, and started reading You Are A Badass, but felt the need to pick up something else, something older, something a bit more philosophical and that’s when I found Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching in a thrift store.
I have been interested in Taoism ever since I read The Tao of Pooh last year. That was my first introduction and I must say, I’m happy I read that before the tougher to decipher Tao Te Ching. I actually just finished The Tao of Pooh again in January and it was even quicker and easier to consume than I remembered. I highly recommend picking it up if you are feeling in a rut or if your life seems like it’s not panning out the way it should.
Have you ever used potato stamps before? The idea is super simple : carve a shape into the smooth side of a cut potato, dip it in paint, and print it on paper!
Today we created a simple project inspired by Swimmy, a book written and illustrated by Leo Lionni.
Lionni is said to be the first children’s illustrator to use collage as his main medium. In this book, the illustrations are printed. And, on many of the pages, you can see that the same stamps are used over and over again, as in these examples with the fish.
Swimmy’s story is relatively simple. He stands out from his school of fish, but sadly one day they are all eaten (except him!). He ventures out into the ocean and sees many wonderful sites. Eventually he finds another school of fish, and this time he teaches his new family a way to work together and protect themselves.
If you’ve never read it before, we’ve included a video of the story above. But really, there’s nothing better than reading aloud to your kids, and it’s nice to have the book on hand to discuss the artwork and how to use a couple of stamps to make a complex image, so we suggest picking up a copy from your favorite bookstore or the library.
You’ll see that we focused our work on the pages of Swimmy and his school of fish. But there are many beautiful illustrations in the book that you could recreate (my other favorite is the seaweed printed using doilies).
I prefer keeping projects simple, because I often believe that that helps little kiddos create beautiful artwork without too many complications, confusing steps, or accidental blunders (like mixing all of the colors and just getting brown!). In an effort to keep this project simple, we used just two stamps and two colors, EXCEPT at the last moment when we added a black Swimmy to our pieces.
The nice thing about using Swimmy as inspiration for these projects is that the kiddos can stamp a school of fish going in any direction. As you can see in the original work, fish are swimming up, down, and all around.
And as you can see from our pile of work above, stamping takes a bit of practice. At first the boys wanted to stamp and slide the potatoes. Similar to how they would slide a paintbrush across the paper. It took a little bit of help and some practice to get them comfortable with stamping and lifting the stamp straight up.
This is a great project for making a book “come alive” for the kids. Imitating art found in books is a great way to expose kids to different techniques. It encourages them to start questioning how different pieces of art are made and gives them the tools to start making their own original pieces!
Being grateful for what isn’t is a simple mindfulness exercise I created to cultivate gratitude even in the shittiest situations. Sometimes it feels absolutely impossible to be grateful and that’s okay! I totally get it. That’s why, during those instances I choose to be grateful for what isn’t. Here is why it is important to be grateful for what isn’t:
You probably get the hang of it, but here’s how to be grateful for what isn’t: You find yourself in a crappy situation.You can’t find anything to be grateful for so you decide to be grateful for what isn’t.
Example: Your flight is delayed by ten hours. Here are a list of grateful for what isn’t possibilities:
If you’d like to take a listen, here’s a link to the meditation ‘Grateful for what isn’t. By adopting this mental exercise, we’ll begin to transform our mind. We’ll shift from seeing things as negative to neutral. We’ll flex those brain muscles intentionally until one day they take the initiative and start flexin’ for good on their own.
Happy International Women’s Day!
If you’re a lady or wanna be a lady, I hope you’re doing something good for yourself today. If you appreciate the women in your life, I hope you’ll let them know. And no, not by whistling as they walk by (unless they like that?).
We thought we’d take this day as an opportunity to highlight some of the women-related books that we love.
Have you heard of Fire Cider*? Some consider it a magic elixir others consider it crazy hippie medicine. No matter where you stand on the topic, we can all agree that it’s a bit hard to swallow without a good dose of honey.
This is a post has been on the back-burner for a while. I’ve been wanting to write it and share one of our trusted winter elixirs, but at the same time, I don’t like to spout magic without having a bit of science to back me up.
In the end, I decided to share a recipe for fire cider along with a few links and a suggestion that you do your own research into food as medicine.
Happy Friyay! If it’s not feeling great, you have until the end of this post to flip the script and change your moody mood. Don’t rob yourself of a fun ol’ Friday, cause really just don’t rob yourself of anything, except maybe extra work. I woke up, looked around my room and felt all these little pangs of gratitude and happiness for the inanimate objects that surrounded me so I wanted to share a few of them with you. You can admire along with me or minimize this window and make your own little list of favorite things in your life at the moment. Whatevs, y’all!
That’s that. Just woke up and felt grateful for a few small, but very meaningful little things in my life and wanted to share. Hopefully, as you wander through your day you open your eyes up to all the little things that make your life more joyful and you send them some appreciation.
Hey, hey, back with another Read With Me post. If you remember from A Year in Readview, I mentioned Mark Manson’s, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, was on my list. My Pop actually gifted me this book for Christmas, which we finally celebrated two weekends ago. Once I opened The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck, I finished it in two days.
Funny, well-written, and easy to read, this book gives some great advice and introduces a few new give fewer fucks concepts that are surprisingly easy to digest. I was surprised at how counter-intuitive some of the advice seemed to me, but sure enough, by the end of the page, Mark had me nodding along in agreement. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck provides concise, rational arguments for caring a little less. I will certainly be incorporating some of Mark’s tidbits into my meditation practices and classes.
A couple weeks ago, a cool cat gifted me The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. This book is freaking stellar, interstellar? Should we talk about McConaughey movies all day? No. Books! Although there was a movie made about this book. I haven’t watched it and the ratings look pretty low, so admittedly I not going to.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was written by the late Douglas Adam’s and is actually a trilogy (which ended up turning into quintet), which sold more than a million copies in his lifetime. It’s science fiction doused in humor that is suspense driven – so totally quick, easy, and hilarious to read. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reminded me of works by Tom Robbins or Kurt Vonnegut. Here’s the set of Hitchhiker books and a list of books similar to Hitchhiker’s Guide if you’ve already read it.
Hey y’all! This past month we introduced a few new initiatives, Read with Me & Make with Me and today we are asking you to do even more : Donate with Me. Kate and I find it’s encouraging and motivating to us if we share our mini goals and ask you to participate. It’s like we’re all in this together. It’s as if each page I read acts as a push for you to read more and each project you complete is the inspiration for us to start another one. Ya dig it?
First, I want to share a few reasons why you should donate it all. We live in a society that prides itself on the accumulation of possessions so buying and owning less is counter culture. It won’t come naturally, but it’s something we can all work towards in a way that makes us feel good. I’m not asking you to go on a spending freeze or to move into a tiny home. I’m simply asking that you assess what you own and get rid of what you don’t use and need and by doing this you will end up buying and owning less in the future. Here’s why:
