Remains of the holidays

[the drawing is still open until tomorrow]

Here are a few moments from the end of the holiday season.



Alder's remains and our new side board


Curtains that Grandma and I made for Alder, the beginnings of revamping his room.


The quilt Kevin made for Alder [click on the picture if you want the full story]

How to get where you want to be...or the reality of the immediate needs versus the eventual goal

"House!" he said as he dumped the bin of blocks onto the floor.

For a long time now I have had goals for what I want my life to be like. I want to have the ability to choose for Alder the best educational setting that I can, and that I want to raise him consciously and full of creativity and passion. Ideal I would love to stay home with him a lot and work some as a writer. Of course that isn't our reality right now. The economy is effecting how many clients Kevin is seeing and it just isn't enough. Since we moved I have been working part time doing high end retail at a natural parenting store (read cloth diapers organic clothing, baby slings breast pumps and the like). It is a job I have a hard time with, I love helping new parents to choose the right diaper set up or baby sling but I have a hard time with the need for $60 children's hat or $18 a pair underwear. But it was a job that I got quickly and I love all the people I work with.

But our bills (which are not very much to begin with) are out of our reach still. A few nights ago I couldn't sleep and I went looking on-line for a new job when I found one that looks like I would be a good match for, it pays better and it is still only twent hours a week. But the best thing about the job is that it is one where I would be helping people reenter the work force. Teaching them to write resumes, do interviews, help them with employment skills. It would be making a difference in a real way. So once again I am rewriting my resume and fiddling with words to make me seem like the right person for this job.

I haven't even gotten the job and I feel bad. I am not ready to send Alder off for childcare yet, not as much as this job would require. I am guilty of being a dreamer about how our life should be but don't want to go through the in between stage of working other jobs while working towards becoming a better paid writer and while Kevin builds a consistant client base but we have to.

I'll admit I have a lot of envy for the lives of many of the women whose blogs I read, I want the house, the calm life, the ability to choose what I do with my time. But this envy isn't a negative it has helped me to clarify my goals and makes me realize that to end up living this life I aspire to I must be active in creating it. So I start slowly, I write article topics, I design cards, I look for work, I build toys for my son, I take him to to the woods alone and with friends, and I find joy with the new and deep connections that I am making with my family. But it doesn't mean that I don't stare longinly at the crisp photos taken with better cameras or wonder what it would be like to live in a space wholly our own.

These are only examples the reality is much more complex because there is an outside world impossing itself on me and there is a husband who doesn't always agree with me and there are days where I much rather look at blogs of other people's life than live my own.

Studio Inspiration

Spaces click here for flickr credits




Moods click here for flickr credits

The New Years Post

It seems like New Years is a good time to take stock of my life. Family has all left and we have entered the lull of winter where the sun is returning but the ground has months to thaw. It is the time of year when coyote stories can be told and favors asked of the moon. For now I'll just look back and look forward.

LOOKING BACK

Started Writing for Travels in Paradise
Kevin Graduated from Grad School
Moved to Vermont
Started a Seven Mountain
Started Blogging
Learned to really use a sewing machine

LOOKING FORWARD

I know myself well enough that listing my hopes for the next year will lead to disappointment instead I will share my resolutions for the up coming year, and the story behind them.

1) To make our house more of a home, giving Alder his own room with a bed, keeping the house much neater, not letting my projects migrate around the house as much.

2) To bring story telling back into my life.

I don't know how you come up with your resolutions. Growing up we actually made them for each other not for ourselves, but Kevin doesn't like that practice so I have had to create my own over the last eight years. So this year I thought about what might be something that will help make my busy life happier, and having a home that I want to spend time in topped the list. We shared them as we went to bed on New Year's Eve (yes we were asleep before 11). That night I had a dream, not one that I can remember what happened during it but I know that the point of the dream was that I need to bring storytelling back into my life.

Before Alder was born I wrote a lot, every morning before work I would write for an hour or two. When we first moved to Denver and I still didn't have a job I took a two month break from hunting to finish a novel, which no one has ever read. It was an eight hour a day job and I cried when it was done because I was lonely for the characters that I had gotten so used to spending every day with. But since our lives have gotten busy with Alder and moving and business my writing has been limited to the blog and my biweekly articles. I don't even get to read a lots of novels any more.

But this dream I had made it clear that my second New Years Resolution would be to bring storytelling back into my life. When I told this to Kevin he agreed, he is even willing to help me find time during the week when I can got write away from the house. I have my stack of yellow pads and fountain pen waiting for me and I can't wait to begin.

Hopes and Dreams

I sat at work today and had lots of ideas about what I wanted to say here. It was a cold day and not a lot of people were out on the street so there was a lot of time to think and do things like sort through another tin of buttons and knit half a hat. But walking home I realized that most of what I wanted to do was complain, except for one thought. So I decided that I want to share with you my secret dream for my future.

This is not necessarily a pragmatic dream but it is where I want to be five or six years from now. It is also something that I have wanted to do in some form for years. I want to live on a small farm where part of the facility is a retreat center. Where we can host health wellness and creativity retreats. I don't mean that we would be constantly assaulted with groups but maybe six weekends a year there could be a group staying with us who would focus on one of those areas. Nothing too new age-y just good for you pauses in life that people don't get very often.

Part of this plan will happen sooner when we open an online version of Seven Mountain (not the acupuncture part). The idea is that we might be making enough money between the three parts of the business that we could afford to hire someone to be at the shop five days a week, leaving me to do the online orders and be with Alder at home on this someday farm.

A lot of this is rooted back in the reasons that I started CITY (creative independent teaching for youth) back in Denver. I don't want to be a teacher, but I want to help connected people, and kids especially, with creativity in a non school setting. I would never want to host classes from city schools or anything like that but I would love to have families from these same schools come together for these weekends.

Of course when Kevin and I talk about this we joke that we would end up renting space out for weddings by default (no I do not want to have destination weddings in my back yard, unless they are willing to get married on the compost pile). But when we talk about our future there is always an aspect of being integrated in the community. I could see renting out the space for very reasonable rates for local groups to use and to donate the space for nonprofits to use.

This is all integrated into our whole life dream that includes educating Alder ourselves in a very rich environment. Rather than searching out bits and pieces of the community of learners I would rather start cultivating it now. Of course it would be nice if I could have a moments rest where I could sit down and introduce him to play-dough (that's on the table for tomorrow).

All of these dreams are starting though, we are going to use some of the walls at Seven Mountain as a gallery sometimes and we are having our first artists show in January, Patti Williams and her 50 paintings. Like a garden this dream needs a lot of gentle tending.

I hope you all out there have your own dreams to nurture.

warmly,
Stacey

Answering a Couple Questions

The machine is a Wards Signature, from the 50's or 60's I think since it does have some plastic on the plug but it's the older very hard sort, back when they looked at plastic as a fancy alternative not a throw-away, like now.

Kevin and I have shared space in a few past places but one of us ends up moving out after a while (usually him) and camping out in the dinning room. The worst was one place where there was only the dinning room for projects. Now we're in a house that has a lot of small spaces. While we say we have divided the space by use the reality is each of us has our own space. The studio is for all sewing and art making projects, but Kevin doesn't do as many as I do (although he used to do all the sewing). Alder has a place space, a sort of room/ alcove between the kitchen and dinning room that houses his clothes and toys (there is a little floor bed for relaxing on but we all sleep together). There is a library, that used to be Kevin's office until he moved his space to the shop. It isn't a library for any lofty reason only that we were sick of reshelving books that Alder constantly pulled off the shelves when they were in the dinning room. That's where Kevin does his creative stuff, although he practices his Tai Chi in Alder's room.

My father jokes that when we finally do have our own home it won't be a spacious as this place. The thing is we only have 1700 feet (plus a dirt floor basement) it is just split up really well. They really knew how to use space well a hundred years ago.

The real test of the space will be this winter when we aren't going outside as much... although we'll be in the shop a lot... it's warmer there.

What Home Looks Like Right Now

I promised a while ago to show what our home looks like. It finally really feels like it's ours, no more boxes to unpack or things to reorganize.

My mother-in-law gave these to Alder, I've always loved the blocks, being magnets is a bonus.



This was my birth quilt made by the mother of a friend of my parents. She was a seamstress and sew this entire thing out of scraps and by hand. Since I left home at 18 I have always had it hanging in my room. Back during the chaotic time of college I was spend hours decompressing by just looking at the quilt and listening to NPR. I am always finding new things about it, and it still brings me calmness during times of stress.


The wooden things on the wall are saints carved from the wood of wagons during the 1960's when they were being phased out in Sicily, my parents brought them home after one of their trips.


This is our first piece of artwork we bought. It's done by Denver artist Kelsey Dalton.


I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had acquired a cut paper piece at a flea market, this is it.


This is Alder's space. It's down stairs near the kitchen. The landlord called it an office but since it has a door into the kitchen and one into the dinning room it has become his place to play and hang out, we keep all his stuff down there so the bedroom isn't too stacked with stuff.