A Valentine for Family

There are so many ways to approach life.

For the most part our tendency is to approach life the way in which we were brought up.

Not everyone, some people live their lives in contrast to their up bringing...sometimes almost as if they are running away from it.  I can relate.

There are lots of times in my life when I have been running away from the way I was brought up, struggling to be my own person, pushing away from the values I grew up around.

But as is often the case in my life and maybe yours too...the more I ran and pushed and struggled, the more I became what I was trying to resist.  Who would have thunk?

Lucky for me I have had lots of therapy from some really good people and I also have some really great friends.  Friends are the very best, cheapest therapy out there.  Honest...

Once I finally got over my resistance to who I was and where I came from, I was able to appreciate it and build upon it.  One might call this maturing.

What I found out along the way is that I have this family for a reason.  I have this family because they are perfectly suited to challenge me to be a better citizen of the universe.  And they have me in their lives for the very same reason.

So on this Valentines Day...I am celebrating LOVE... a love of those and for those who helped make me who I am.  And while the people that are in my life now hold no less of a cherished place in my heart...it is the four members of my early years that I am celebrating today.

On February 26th we will all be together again doing something we all love doing ART.  It might be said that this is what we do the best.  

 As my sister Nava would say...this is in our wheel house.

(It is misleading to say we will ALL together again for this event, we are missing one person.  And really, we miss her every day, not just at big events.  Can I get an AMEN for my mother Roz Padilla?)  

Although it is never easy being a family, it sure is good to be one.

Hope to see all my CA peeps out on the 26th!  Free gift in it for everyone who let's me know you are coming and then shows up...SERIOUS!  Ask me about it...

Happy Valentines Day!

And remember...a day of love isn't just about our life partners...it's about everyone in our lives that we love.

Mana from Heaven

Bread is the very substance of our human life, the foundation of all civilization.

Every culture does it a little differently.

There is naan bread from the india, pita from the middle east, the tortilla  south of the boarder.  All variations on one theme.

Wherever it is from and whom ever makes it,  I love it.  Unless it is rye bread and then I can't stand it even for a Ruben Sandwich, and I love rubens!

Every other kind of bread I love.

And pasta for that matter.  Give me a carb and I am a happy woman.

I have recently fallen in love with No Knead Bread, a trend that is sweeping the nation...for us foodies that is.

It is a miraculous thing this No Knead Bread.

I have taken to making it with rasins and walnuts using whole wheat.  And I don't knead it, ever!

It is so easy, anyone can do it.

All you need is:

3 Cups flour-I mix it up with adding whole wheat flour sometimes, especially when I use walnuts and     rasins
1/2 teaspoon dry active yeast
1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 2/3 cups water
Cornmeal or flour for dusting
***Any add in you want; walnuts and raisins, olives, roasted garlic, rosemary, black pepper, jalapenos...

You will also need a bowl, plasitic wrap, a non-terry cloth dish towel and a cast iron or glass dutch oven,      a heavy oven safe dish with a tight fitting lid.

Start by stirring together flour, yeast, salt and any of your accouterments together in a large bowl.

Pour in water and stir until a ragged dough forms, this will not take very long at all.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let is sit at room temperature for 12-18 hours.

The dough will rise and be a bubbly wet dough.

Dust one side of a dish towel with flour or cornmeal, turn out dough onto towel.  Let it rest for 15 min.

Form dough into ball with your hands and place seam side down on the towel.  Sprinkle the dough with more flour or cornmeal and cover with the other side of the dish towel.

Seam side us up here.

Let the dough rise at room temperature for 2 hours.

Half an hour before your dough is finished rising, heat your oven with your oven proof lidded dish in it @ 450 degrees. (oven and pan should preheat for half an hour.)

Two different dutch ovens...both work, as would a glass casserole dish with a lid.

Carefully remove pan from oven and turn out dough seam side up into the pan and cover with lid.  Place back in the oven and bake for 20 min.  Remove lid and bake another 15-25 minutes till crust is brown.

This is all white flour with roasted garlic.

Remove from oven and cool bread on a wire wrack.  Leave it too cool as long as possible before cutting into it.

I could make one of these every day my family eats it so fast.

I hope you try this out...you will feel like a real rock star when you see that bread come out of the oven!  I feel like that every time without fail.

Walnut Rasin-2 Cups all purpose flour, 1 Cup whole wheat.  It is outrageous toasted with a little butter and jam, or no jam at all.

Year of the Rabbit

 Happy Chinese New Year!

I am  chinese.  I always have been.

My mother was chinese, as was her whole family.

Yet my mother was so different from her family that I never really connected her or myself with that side of our heritage.  I connected with my Mexican and Native American heritage much more.

Growing up, my mother wove into our lives little of her own culture, the bulk of my understandings about chinese culture came from my grandmother.  And even what I did glean was just skimming the surface.

My brother sent me an article a few weeks ago that was an excerpt from Amy Chua's book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

If you haven't heard about it...look it up.  Controversial stuff.

Attached to the email, my brother wrote, "Good thing mom and dad were slackers!"

In her book, Amy Chua (I haven't read the whole thing, just the excerpt) outlines the reasons she feels that the values of chinese mothers have of rigorous and strict academic values are far superior to the western mothering style of fostering independence and free will.  Her excerpt starts with a list of things her daughters have NEVER been allowed to do.

They include, play dates or sleepovers, be in a school play, complain about not being in a school play, watch TV or play computer games,  have anything less than an A in a subject that wasn't PE or drama, choose their own extracurricular activities, play any other instrument than piano or violin.

My brother's email also said..."Think of waldorf education...now think of the polar opposite."

I am grateful that my mother was no Tiger Mother.

She may not have been June Cleaver...but what mother is?

What was outlined in the article was so different from what I experienced growing up.  Some of what the article outlined I could vibe with...the majority and the tactics...not so much.

The article further supported the distance I feel from that aspect of who I am.  Yet in an odd way, it explained so much about aspects of my life, my upbringing, my relationship with my mother, her relationship with her mother, and myself.  Like the Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, I didn't want to connect with it or understand it...but in some deep uncomfortable way I did.

We have this life given to us by our parents, and their parents and their parents before them.  This is no accident.  We have these people as our heritage for a reason.  What that reason is, is up to each of us to figure out or not.

And while I may not understand or connect with the ways of my chinese lineage, it is none the less a part of me.  It is an aspect of myself I may or may not choose to delve into further.

In the meantime, it is chinese new year and I DO know it is the Year of the Rabbit, my zodiac sign.

According to my most recent restaurant placemat, I am the kind of person other people like to be around.  I am kind, pleasant, affectionate and obliging.  Apparently Michael Jordan is also a Rabbit.  I have always thought Mike and I were very similar...it's the jump shot.

 I liked the old place mats better...those ones said I was attractive, creative, and a free spirit. I think they also said...prone to spend freely. Ah...how well those place mats know me.  Amazing those place mats!

I don't know much, but I do know that a bowl of rice is supposed to bring good luck.

Traditionally a bowl of tangerines or oranges is placed out for  prosperity.   I didn't have any of those, so I used felted beads.  The red envelopes are filled with money for prosperity as well. Usually those are given to unmarried folks from the married ones.  I think I will use this money to buy a danish from the bakery down the street instead.

We always had these from my grandmother for chinese new year.  They are ever so yummy!  I used to take them into school and give them to all the kids in my class.  Okay...I think I only did it once.  

There isn't anything good for you in these candies.  I hope there isn't any lead either.

Gung hey fat choy!

(Happy New Year!)

The Human Spirit

It might be easy to find ourselves in despair about what is happening in the world.  Blizzards, oil spills, joblessness, foreclosures, riots, recession, the list goes on and on.

 These days beautiful stories of strength, courage, and ethical fortitude are few and far between.  

I somehow don't think that is because those things aren't happening, I think it may have something to do with the fact that those stories don't sell quite as well.

My brother Ian, (who is a political lobbyist, 8 years older than me, keeps an impeccably organized closet, and once licked my entire Best of The Police CD because he wanted it and I was unwilling to trade for Prince) sent  this to me.

He, like myself, seeks out these sorts of stories and images.

This photo is of Egyptians making a human chain around an army Republican Guard Tank in Cairo's Tahrir Square helping to protect Cairo's museum during anti-regime demonstrations. 

I think the human spirit is stronger than CNN, MSNBC, FOX  would have us believe.

Let us not despair, the human spirit is alive and strong.

Rather, let us find inspiration for our own lives, the struggles and the triumphs, in these stories and images of bravery and courage. 

Because the strength of our spirits and the strength of the spirits of our brothers and sisters in Egypt are one in the same.

The Art of Felting

                                                 When I begin work, I sit down to this.

Washed and cleaned 100% wool batting.

And these. 

 These are felting needles, if I had gotten close to them with the camera you could have seen little barbs on them that tangle the wool together.

Oh and I mustn't forget these too.  Without the foam...I would stab myself over and over.  I still stab myself sometimes, since I gave up coffee...much less.

I must begin every piece this way, with all these materials,  no exceptions.  

It can be a tedious prospect at 8am.

Because I always want to jump ahead and start with these...

100% dyed wool roving...same stuff used to spin yarn.

But alas, I have learned the hard way (in life and felting) that if there is to be any thing of lasting substance...there are no shortcuts, one must do all the work...not just the stuff you like doing.  Not just the stuff with pretty colors.

See...I have been doing my work, not just playing on Facebook all day.  

Once that is all done...the fun stuff happens.

Roving is sold by the ounce and comes in long skeins with the fibers of the wool all running in the same direction.  

I pull the fibers off the skein and use them like I would paint on a paint brush.

Then I stab the s&%* out of it with my felting needles. 

Then I take up a new color.

And repeat over and over again just as I would do with a painting.

Once I have the basic design and I am happy with it, I do detail work...with just one needle.  Yes, these babies are a lot of work.

You can sorta see the barbs on the needle, the lighter places on the end of the needle.

Felting is an ancient art, dating back to the Bronze Age.

Fragments of felt have been excavated and dated back 2000 years.

No one is certain about it's inception or original origin.

In Asia, the nomadic people used felt to create the walls and flooring of their yurts, the homes they traveled with.

Within those homes, those nomadic people also created art with their wool to protect and invoke blessings on them and their homes.

Although it is my belief blessings and protections are largely created by our own thoughts and beliefs about ourselves and the world, those ancient nomads may have been on to something.

I do not intentionally invoke Druid Magic as I weave my felted tapestries.

But there is certainly a lot of thought and love poured into every piece, into every layer of color.

The rest of the magic I suppose, would be up to you.

http://theartfilledlife.blogspot.com/p/felts-for-sale_07.html

 

Friday's

On Fridays at Chez DeLap, our week ends and we get three nights and two days to recharge for the coming week.  We often take Friday nights for sleepovers, friends over, movie nights and the like.  And as an added bonus, we get to sleep in...that's right...Saturday Sleep In...an institution everywhere.

I am under no delusions that we are the only family that experiences this every week.  I relish the collective exhale of Friday afternoons.  The experience is palpable.

But to get to the afternoon...there is the the morning.  And because I procrastinate, things are often quite busy and a little stressful on Friday mornings.

I teach an art class to 7th and 8th graders of Friday afternoons...last period of the day...end of the week.

Generally speaking, they are fried like everyone else...maybe more so because of the raging hormones and all.

I really think that for the students, art is the perfect end to their week.  A calm, quiet, reverential closing to the hectic roller coaster week of the typical early teen.

Great for them...

For me, I would prefer to teach Monday morning at 8:00am sharp, because that is when I am ON.  That is when I am focused, ready and most importantly because then it would be out of the way leaving the rest of the week for other pursuits.

Alas the world rarely arranges itself around how I would like to have it.

Oddly, I think this is good for me.  But clearly I dislike it.

This week I left everything until after the kids left for school this morning, irritated with myself for procrastinating and a little panicked about my lesson plan for the day.  There were many factors at hand in my level of stress about this weeks lesson, so many reasons they hurt my brain.  I won't go into them all, I already went over them with Marcus this morning and I think he fell into a coma for a minute or two.

There has to be a lesson plan this afternoon, so I had to get to work.

Every once in a while as I am dreading something and panicked about it, I do something that doesn't come naturally to me...I let go...and roll with it.  If I were a religious person...I would say something here like...I let go and let God.  Since I am not...I won't.

Maybe if I got out of my own way more often, things might get a little easier.

OR...maybe if I don't control everything, the world will spin out of control causing mayhem and chaos everywhere and I will finally be able to tell Marcus..."I told you so."  I bet he would love that.

Friday morning lesson...Get out of your own way.

New Year

Happy New Year!

I'm back in action.  Kids off to school, Christmas tree taken down, bedroom rearranged, workspace rearranged, travel dates lined up...it's all good.

I want to start by apologizing for the lie about the tamale recipe.  It wasn't really a lie,  I fully intended to get it all together and out there to you all, but alas a number of reasons kept me from doing it.  The biggest being that my iphoto library is stupid...yes...I said STUPID!  I digress.  

So another year begins and I have the opportunity to live on this earth, what a gift that really is.  How easily I forget to be grateful just for waking up.  How easily I take for granted the world around me and all it's beauty and possibility.

Well, this year will be different.

This year I am going to be perfect.

This year I am going to be a magical combo Mother Teresa, Selma Hyack, Barbara Kingsolver, Frieda Khalo, Martha Stewart, Hilliary Clinton and as always, a little Betty Ford.

This year I will be everything I ever wanted to be and more.

I will be kind, thoughtful, beautiful, smart, funny, athletic, good at singing, acting, dancing, good at moderation, generous, become a dog whisperer, I will go somewhere warm that I don't have to wear shoes...I will follow my heart.

I will blog more often, I will run more often, I will make the bed every day, I will do laundry before someone says, "I'm out of underwear.", I will pick up the phone and call the people I love more often, I will eat more Quinoa, I will exfoliate, I will be on Facebook less, I will tell my kids I love them more, I will kiss my kids more (first I will have to catch them, which means I will be running more often...two birds...one stone!).

 I will complain less.  I will remember I have a very beautiful life...everyday...every moment of my life.

Or maybe I will eat another Muffin that tastes like a Doughnut (Recipe forthcoming I swear!) and get back in bed...that is always and option.

We are Blessed to have been given this life and everything in it.

What we do with it and how we see it is our choice...Lucky us!

Let's broaden those horizons!