Journeying through a season of change

For the next 2-3 months, I am embracing a season of rest, rediscovery and regaining balance in the daily rhythms of my life. I am about 2 weeks into it and as concisely as possible for me :) here are a few things I am thankful for:

• I have the most understanding, supportive, and loving husband and partner in navigating the good, the new and the hard things of life. It is through his encouragement and extra hard work that we are able to give me the time and space to enter this season. Austin Evers, I am beyond thankful for you, mahal kita.

• Our community of friends have been overwhelmingly supportive as we made the decision for me to leave my job and focus on spending time with my family, enjoying the holidays, thinking through my next career move, decompressing from the stress of the last 3 years (work and life related) and working to achieve more balance. I am thankful for our community of friends.

• Right now there is no rush; there is time to sleep in a little before getting the boys to school, there is time for extra hugs and kisses before I leave the daycare (Asher specifically asks for them and a gladly give them), there is time to participate in the classroom halloween party, there is time to make pig hats for halloween costumes, there is time to pick the boys up early and watch Asher play with his friends, there is time to have dinner prepared, there is time to take care of normal tasks (oil changes, grocery shopping, picking up prescriptions, etc), there is time to go to east Texas for 5 days. I am thankful for this gift of time.

  

• We live in such a sweet neighborhood with kind and caring neighbors that get together for monthly potlucks and birthday celebrations. We were able to trick or treat on our street with a group of neighbors and then all gather at a neighbor friend's amazing backyard for games, hanging out, and food…it was such a great evening. I am thankful for our neighborhood and the relationships we are building.

Quick Question

I am trying to encourage one of our Monday Funday girls to open up an etsy shop to sell hand-made beaded jewelry. A few Mondays ago, she helped us design and make these:

Now the question is, do you think people would buy jewelry like this and for how much?

I say yes and $10-15 at least. What do you think?

If she does open her shop maybe I can help her with her grand opening and do one of those fancy give away things like the big-time bloggers do :)

I'll keep you posted.

An Ode to Beard

Here at the Casa de Evers, there is a standing agreement that Austin is allowed to have a winter beard followed by a hipster mustache...little did I know the extremes to which this would lead us.

This was Beard in full effect (3 months) in winter 2010:

And last year's shave:

And hipster 'stache (worn around for 3 days):

This year we bumped it up a notch and went to 4 months with Beard and a week with the 'stache. 

Beard in full effect (4 months) in winter 2011:

The sad night before we said goodbye to Beard:

Just before the shearing:

The progressive shave away:

The hipster 'stache (worn around for a week):

It is so funny how many compliments my husband receives from other bearded and non-bearded men; how many people are inspired to sport facial hair despite their wives' dismay (sorry ladies); and how many people cheer for Beard to grow and are legitimately sad to see Beard go away. Beard has brought many laughs and scared a few children. Beard has even brought me a few compliments (mostly along the lines of being a saint to let him grow it) and a few sighs of disapproval (when I stick hard and fast to the agreement that brings about the eventual end of both Beard and the 'stache). But above all...this beard-growing season brings my husband great joy and for that reason, the winter beards will continue. 

My husband is a good-looking man; and for a few months out of the year, he's a good-looking bearded man. 

For now, goodbye Beard!

I'll keep you posted.

Monday Funday

About four months ago, I invited a handful of girls over to my house for what I now call "Monday Funday." The whole idea is that on Monday nights we get together and cook or craft or both together. So far we've sectioned it off by months, but it's really not too rigid and basically we can do whatever anyone in the group wants.

For the month of September we started off with cooking and learned a few ethnic dishes: pancit and chicken adobo (me); a mexican dish from Guadalajara (Zoe); indian food (ayesha). Then we moved on to baking in October: coconut creme pie (Casey); cake balls (me); the Brown's carrot cake (Sarah); and pumpkin bread (Madison). Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of those awesome meals.

And then the crafting began in November/December: we made homemade laundry detergent (which I gave away as Christmas presents to my husband's extended family as stocking stuffers)

Then we spent 3 weeks trying to figure out how to make Christmas stockings. Casey led the way with her sewing machine and made some cool elf boot curved stockings (sorry no picture) but these are the ones I made for my family :)

And lastly we made these cardboard Christmas trees off of pinterest. And they were much harder to do than it looked. Again sorry no pictures.

Now that it's January, we've started up again with the cooking and this time I took pictures: 

Wild Rice Stuffed Acorn Squash

thanks to Larkin for introducing me to this tasty treat and sharing the recipe

Visit the link for precise measurements and directions 

Cut the squash in half and get all the seeds out. Season with butter, brown sugar, salt and pepper then roast them in the oven.

Sautee celery, onions, thyme, salt, and pepper

Mix with wild rice, dried cranberries, and pecan pieces

Divide equally among the halves and continue roasting in the oven

The final toasted product! Enjoy!

If I can keep up with this blogging business there will be more Monday Funday cooking adventures and crafting creations to come.

I'll keep you posted!

Running Blues

This morning my sister-in-law, Lakyn, and I went for a run around the neighborhood and it was brutal. I think we ran a solid 12-minute mile for the first mile, slowed it down a little more for a little bit and then I had to walk. We visited with a neighbor and then started up again. But I could only make it about 4 blocks and told Lakyn that that's all I had for today. We finished walking around the neighborhood and ended back at the house. A whopping total of 1.5 miles (I'm estimating, hopefully underestimating).

This is the start of my training for the November 2012 San Antonio rock'n'roll half-marathon that I'm planning to run with a friend. Good news is it can only get better from here.

I'll keep you posted.

Garden Love

I took these photos of the process of creating my garden with the intention of blogging about the process, so instead of a series of blogs you'll get the photo timeline version...kind of like the boxed dvd set of a TV series; no commercials, no waiting, just all at once satisfaction of knowing how it all happened :) Enjoy!

Starting seeds indoors to be ready to plant after the first frost (mid-late February):

I took a citizen gardener class with the Austin Sustainable Food Center and learned how to make these 4x4 planter boxes based off of Mel Bartholomew's book Square Foot Gardening. (March-ish)

And so it began: Here is our overgrown backyard

Building 4x4 beds, seven total for our backyard (day after and weekend after gardening class)

    

Then we lay overlapping cardboard boxes over the grass to solarize and kill it, preventing it from crowding into the garden (only moderately successful three months later).

We covered the cardboard with wood mulch, and it looked beautiful!!!

Obviously we filled the boxes with dirt and transplanted the seedlings following the square foot gardening model as best I could.

And lastly, I built trellises with string as the platform for the vining plants to climb.

That's all for now :) 

Hopefully I can get another blog post in (soon) about our recent harvests...very exciting!

I'll keep you posted.

Extreme Home Makeover

Lots has happened since my last post in September, i.e. we became home-owners! We have a wonderful home on the Austin eastside near MLK and Airport blvd. We love it! It kind of reminds me of the Kenwood neighborhood that I lived in near USC; lots of socioeconomic and racial diversity. Hopefully, I will be better about chronicling our adventures and attempts to love our neighbors in our east-side community in order to share it with you all through this blog (especially those of you who don't hear from us on a regular basis).

We were SUPER blessed to find such a great home, in just the right neighborhood, with such a huge space (mainly the huge living room to host lots of people and three bedrooms is nice for a family we hope to have soon). It fits us so well and we still think it is odd that it is ours, but it is. And for this, we are thankful.

We didn't start out crazy with the house projects, but we've been busy. We started small by painting our living room (blue-gray) and our kitchen (green tea). Austin and his step-dad built us a dining table (it just needs a final wax coat). And Austin put up a pot and pan rack, cookbook rack, and magnetic knife strip up for me for Christmas. These were the projects we started out with.

With the new year, we're finding ourselves deep in the middle of other, much larger DIY home projects:
1. We're putting in hardwood floors! We, mainly Austin and a mix and match group of friends depending on who was available any given day, pulled up the laminate, measured out and cut the boards, and nailed them in one by one. I'm sure there was a step or two that I skipped in that description. Right now we are hoping to have the living room and entryway nailed in, sanded, and sealed by Monday...wish us luck :)

    

2. We've started a compost pile! Right now its literally a pile. Austin will fence it in with some posts and chicken wire by the weekend (somewhere while he's working on our floors :). It's been interesting setting aside compostable things and taking it out to the pile. We just bought our first shovel and we've only been at it for a week, but this is going to be awesome!

3. We are going to garden! Really the hope is to invite our neighbors and friends to garden with us in our backyard as a sort of community garden...we'll see how that pans out. Our backyard is overgrown, but we have high hopes for the soil underneath the weeds, looks better than clay and looks dark and earthy (super technical gardening terms, I know).

I've started little egg cartons for seedlings and will transplant as they grow. I'm slowly working on clearing out the weeds and tilling the ground, so that come March it'll be ready for me to put our seedlings into the ground.

These are the happenings at the casa de Evers...all works in progress.

We'll keep you posted :)