Saltwater for Blood

Are you a mountain person

or an ocean person?

Sea sprite or wood nymph?

Do you need the calm + quiet of the forest and the protection of tree giants? Or does your spirit require salt on your skin + sand between your toes?

Do you crave elevation?

To take deep + pure breaths.

Or feel the need to climb up + touch the ever-loving sky?

Does your heart sync into an ever constant rhythm with the waves under its full moon commands?

Pushed + pulled by the ebbing energy sent magnetically to earth by Luna?

Or are you like me, do you need both to feel complete?

Like you have saltwater for blood, stars in your eyes + inhale thin mountain air just to be able to be?

Gardeny things, a recipe, cute dogs and whatnot...

Things are finally starting to turn around in the garden. After the seemingly endless rain. After the bugs had their way with everything, quite the smorgasbord, the sun has turned it all around.

Everything is growing bigger, taller, stronger...

The echinacea and chamomile and calendula are in full bloom and the bees are loving it!!!

I made a fantastic herby raw beet, green onion and kale salad today.

The recipe went something like this:

-1 big bunch of kale

(I ripped it up into pieces by hand after pulling it off the stock)

-3 small-medium beets, peeled and roughly julienned

(also by hand, I don't have one of those fancy food processors that can do it for me)

-1 green onion slices thin

-1 lemon

-olive oil

-gomasio

-maple syrup

-salt

-fresh herbs

(I used basil, thyme and rosemary from my garden)

Once I had the kale, beets and onion all cut up in a large bowl, I mixed the juice from 1 small lemon with maybe 1/4 cup of olive oil, gomasio to my liking, a glug of maple syrup and salt to taste. I then poured this mixture over the veggies and mixed it all up. I let it sit for a few minutes and then viola!

Sorry my measurements are not very exact. I am not very good at following recipes or truly paying attention to exactly how much I am putting in... But if my directions are too crazy, this is a good basic guideline that you can jazz up however you like.

I have been taking the doggies to my favorite beach in the area in the morning.

They have been having a grand ol' time running, playing with other dogs, retrieving the ball from the water and eating sand (yes, I said eating sand. I know, YUCK!... Right?)

Veda has been like a swimming champion. Oh, I love her so!!!

Mu has been the ambassador, testing out all the other dogs playing and running skills. She seems to be quite fond of a little havanese named Teo.

She has also been super cuddly (but that's not really a new thing).

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Oh, and I have been working up a storm. I have (some might say) feverishly been practicing my screen printing skills. And I have to say, I am pretty impressed with myself.

I have 3 shirt colors I have been working with right now:

grey, charcoal and navy (and I am waiting on a purple).

The grey has my "Mountains" design in white, charcoal has it in green and navy I have been playing around with a lighter, almost sky blue and also a "purple/lavender" which actually comes out as more of a grey. I am undecided as to which I like best or which I will use as the actual color.

All of them have the mountains design printed on the front and a Little Owl logo on the back.

Anyway, I think they look fantastic!! (I am a wee bit proud of myself right now, can you tell?)

I can't wait to get them in the shop!

Ok, well that is all.

I am off to see a friends reggae band down the street.

Spring Snowboarding

This weekend was the last weekend for snowboarding up at Bolton Valley.

So we made sure to take advantage, especially since our friend are moving to Maine and won't be working there anymore.

(Safe and easy moving, guys!)

We had 3 days of different spring skiing.

Friday was raining at the house, but snowing and foggy at the mountain. The snow was soft, but sticky.

Saturday was BEAUTIFUL! You couldn't ask for a better day of Spring skiing. It was sunny and warm (like 50 degrees warm). There was a traditional pond skimming contest which is always fun.

*For those of you who don't know what this is, it is a spring skiing sport where people (usually dressing in a costume or not much of anything at all) try to ski or snowboard across a pond. Obviously the goal is to make it to the other side, but oh the hilarity of watching the people who completely bite it!*

Say hi to Dave, a man of many talents, pond skimmer safety extraordinaire!

(and our friend who is nice enough to let us crash at their house and give us passes to snowboard at Bolton) How fab is that suit!?! He is like an orange Gumbi!

 

Sunday started off a bit rough.

It was overcast and the snow had somewhat frozen overnight making it tough to see and ski on. There were some serious "death cookies" to avoid, but as the day went on and as people skied on the trails the snow softened up. It was super sticky and harder to snowboard on, but so much fun!

I am already ready to go snowboarding again.

We have been very lucky to be able to go as much as we have, but it just won't be the same at Bolton without our friends there! And as much as I am ready for warmer weather and green things poking their little sproutiness out of the dirt, I am not ready to be done snowboarding for the season.

However, we have been thinking of moving to somewhere along the coast of Maine, so now we can start taking trips up to start checking out where me might like to live...

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The Last Stops

The last few towns we were in before I left for home:

Tecino (Lugano), Prattln and Zurich.

There aren't many pictures to truly represent the last few stops before I left Switzerland, those may have to wait a bit for Katrin to get home (I put most of my photos on her computer to save room on my camera) or for me to upload and edit the ones on my "real" camera.

In the meantime, a photo of me with one of the largest rosemary plants I have ever seen, along with a sunset behind the mountains in Tecino. Kat playing in the tapas bar, Corazon, in Zurich and then my view from the airplane window heading home.

No pictures from Prattln. I never thought I could say this, but I think it must have been the bum-hole of Switzerland, it was all industrial and not pretty at all. Honestly, we couldn't wait to get up the next morning and leave for Zurich (which is a wonderful city, I must say. And this is coming from someone who isn't a city person!).

So now I am home, trying to teach myself German and get back into the swing of things.

It is definitely an adjustment, after being gone for almost 2 weeks, I had just started to settle into the routine there, as well as feel a little calmer about the language barrier.

Today I will be trying to catch up on some things for business, as well as try to clean up the house a little bit. You know, super fun stuff...

How have the last few weeks been for you?

The view...

...from where we are staying in Tecino.

Driving through the mountains

We literally drove through the Swiss Alps yesterday. These mountains are so grandeous! We were on our way to Lugano and Tesseret which is in Tecino, the Italian speaking part of Switzerland (which is where we are now). We are just a stones throw from the border of Italy!

From Frick to Nyon and on throught the Swiss Alps

Last night Katrin played in a 2000 year old roman cave in Nyon which is French speaking Switzerland. Kinda cool..

Now we are driving (literally) through the mountains to Lugano, in Tecino which is the Italian speaking part if Switzerland.

Zug, Switzerland

We spent last night in Zug (sounding like tzoog)... What a beautiful view! They have a wonderful place to walk around, view the lake and some of the Swiss Alps. They also have an outdoor aviary with all sorts of parrots and exotic bird and they have reindeer (that originate from china)!
Now we are in Frick, but more on that another day.

XO

Just arrived home from a long weekend of snowboarding with the bf.

We sort of forgot that it was a holiday weekend, therefore didn't quite anticipate all the people that would be enjoying the mountain with us, but we sure had a wonderful time!

We visited friends and then went riding all day and even at night (which I had only done once before on a smaller mountain).

We even had some fun laughing at old ski suits...

Who ever thought a one piece was a good idea?!?

(really wishing he actually rocked that bad boy in daylight!)

The sunset from the lift and top of the mountain was so beautiful, we could see all the way to Burlington!

Such a good weekend!

I kind of wish we were still there.

How was your weekend?