Dave Rawlings Machine

For me, this was hands down the best show of the year. And we've seen a lot of good shows this year!

Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings make up one of my top three musical acts of all time. I LOVE their new project, the Dave Rawlings Machine.

I felt like the luckiest girl to have scored front row seats for this show at the beautiful Chautauqua Auditorium in Boulder, CO. And the Dyers were able to get seats right next to ours! (despite my flaking out on getting tickets for them...)

The music was SO good, the crowd was riveted, and the band was primed! What a treat to have three members of the Old Crow Medicine Show join Gillian and Dave to round out the band. Ahhh...heaven!

A Morning At the Farm

This is a great place to visit, and a great place to take kids. My mom, Mari, and I had the best time with Sadie at Berry Patch Farms last Friday.

i've got myself a new mantra

I've loved this song since I first heard Ani DiFranco perform it. I was barely pregnant with Sadie, standing up close to the Town Park stage in Telluride, surrounded by 10,000 of my closest friends, listening adoringly to one of my top three. This song spoke to me then, it spoke to me while I was in labor and listening to it on my labor playlist, and it still speaks to me today. Thank you Ani for all the beautiful messages and inspiration you have brought to me over the years!

lately i've been glaring into mirrors
picking myself apart
you'd think at my age i'd have thought
of something better to do
than making insecurity into a full-time job
making insecurity into art
and i fear my life will be over
and i will have never lived unfettered
always glaring into mirrors
mad i don't look better

but now here is this tiny baby
and they say she looks just like me
and she is smiling at me
with that present infant glee
and yes i will defend
to the ends of the earth
her perfect right to be

so i'm beginning to see some problems
with the ongoing work of my mind
and i've got myself a new mantra
it says: "don't forget to have a good time"
don't let the sellers of stuff power enough
to rob you of your grace
love is all over the place

there's nothing wrong with your face
love is all over the place
there's nothing wrong with your face

Compost Isn't What It Used To Be

Well, my compost pile is well underway. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I'm giving it a go. I'm using this compost bin that my mother-in-law Chris picked up for me at Sam's Club for $40.00. Not bad!


Sadie and I collected sticks and twigs from my parents' property a couple months ago, and I used those as a base layer for my pile. Then I started layering dry grass,weeds and leaves with kitchen scraps. At the base of the pile I also added a little bit of bagged compost from the store, hoping that would help things get started.

And I'm using this fabulous crock for collecting scraps in the kitchen. It was a happy day at the thrift store when I saw this...just what I'd been looking for! It sits right next to the sink and all my fruit and vegetable scraps, coffee grounds and filters, tea bags, and egg shells go there instead of the trash can. Every couple days I empty it into the bin and give it a quick rinse.

Now I just continue to layer kitchen scraps with dried grass clippings. Every once in a while I'll throw a little soil on top to keep the bugs down. I'm not going to be sticking my head in the bin anytime soon, but I have yet to have any complaints about odor. Nothing appears to be going too incredibly wrong. But I can't really tell if anything is going right, either! I'm hoping to have miraculously created rich earthy soil to thrown on my garden in the fall. We'll see....

In the meantime, it's AWESOME to barely be throwing anything in the trash. We recycle everything imaginable, and now barely throw any kitchen/food scraps away. The only things in our kitchen trashcan are plastic wrappers, styrofoam containers (which I avoid like the plague, but sometimes meat products are packaged with styrofoam, you know), and other types of plastic packaging. These days I'm also trying to find ways to minimize the amount of this type of material coming into the house.

So, it's a grand experiment. I'm trying to not overthink it. And crossing my fingers that this compost pile, if mostly left alone, will do what it's supposed to do.

Sandy Beaches, Fancy Clothes, and Super Sweet Dance Moves

A couple weeks ago we took our first mini-vacation of the summer, and what fun we had.

Sadie hadn't been on an airplane since Thanksgiving, when she was not nearly as mobile or curious as she is these days. We stocked up on snacks and some new interactive toys which we hoped would keep her attention for at least a few minutes.

Sadie did very well on the plane. She slept in her Ergo carrier for part of the flight, which was more than we hoped for. And that power nap definitely helped keep her on track for success the rest of the weekend.

We stayed with Granny Sharp the first night and it was so wonderful to be in the beautiful sunshine of southern California. We even left Sadie with Grandma and Grandpa the next day and snuck away with Jeff and Susie to Huntington Beach. Gorgeous....

The wedding was beautifully perfect. Brian's cousin Katie was a gorgeous bride and it was so nice to introduce Sadie to her California family for the first time!



This side of the family LOVES to dance...so it was a great opportunity for the Peterson brothers to show off their sweet dance moves.

We're feeling very optimistic about our many travels coming up this summer after Sadie did so well this weekend. She slept in new strange places and was a trooper about it! We were adamant about sticking to her nap schedule for the most part, and we found that helped her continue to sleep through the night. Now we breathe a big sigh of relief.

Cooking With Love

"You don't have to cook fancy or complicated masterpieces - just good food from fresh ingredients."— Julia Child

I love when you have nothing planned for supper, nothing really calling to you from the fridge, and yet you can come up with a beautiful meal like this!

Tri-color rotini pasta, roasted red peppers, artichoke hearts, diced tomatoes, kalamata olives, fresh Parmesan cheese. YUMMMM!!!