When you are content with what you have, life gets so much sweeter and everything becomes a celebration.
Here we are.
July.
I missed some time, didn’t I? June flew away from me! No matter.
July feels like it will give me time to savour and breathe. Here is the calendar page for July. This view reminded me of the book The Secret Garden, the first glimpse through the keyhole.
I wish you a wonderful month. x
Edit: it is now TWO WEEKS LATER AHHH but let me just post this and you can tell me has January flown past you as well having fun or is it dragging along for you.
To be perfectly frank, I have been STRUGGLING to wake up at my usual 5.30 or 6 am time. More amazingly my alarm clock i.e. my 5 year old has not been waking me!
Not newsworthy for some but everyday is a slow news day in this household thank goodness hehe.
But with waking up late at 8 or 9 has left me without the extra hour in the morning I usually rely on. It makes a difference for me even if it is a weekend. I have been meaning to finish up designing a few things (including a calendar) and without those morning hours I have struggled. And in a chicken and the egg kind of story I felt like I could not plan out things I wanted to work on in January (it’s almost a third of the way through the month) and January is just flashing past. You would think it would wait for me but nope hehe.
This morning in an astounding (I told you this is a slow news household) turn of events, we are up at 7. Oh my goshness, what a thrill. Made coffees for Mum and I, brought it over to her she was in the middle of a web meditation event (I didn’t realise she was so quiet, understandably as she was meditating), prepared food for little one in case it felt hungry (fruit salad left from yesterday and a babycino, took seconds) and got on with the calendar designing.
I’ve decided on a minimalist design, well, minimalist for me… featuring things I saw that stopped me in my tracks on my walks. There is a space on the side to record intentions for the month.
There is a moving version of it and the variations of light and colours was lovely. I’m looking forward to looking back at the end of the month where I got to with my intentions.
Wishing you a lovely January!
Hello! What a rush the last few weeks have been. I’m back in Sydney and we need to head over to a cousin’s house for Christmas lunch. It’s a potluck lunch and I thought lawd… what can I make that will travel well and be you know, nice to look at? Luckily I’m doing dessert which is easier than say, a whopping great big turkey which is certainly impressive but you probably want to make that inhouse.
A cake would be nice although, by the time you eat a huge meal, how much cake does one need? More pleasant might be a small nibble with a coffee.
I’ve been seeing these very fanciful platters but until now I have always felt timid and unsure how to do one. For my kid’s birthday I had my friend make one. She’s veryyyyyy good at it. We both wept a little that we didn’t take photos of that one haha.
She’s not here with me in Sydney so I’m on my own. Here is what I came up with. I had to go to the supermarket but you might have things in your cupboard you can use?
If you have anything last minute coming up give it a go. Even if all you have is a box of chocolates, with some fruit sprinkled around, it’s pretty to look at whilst you sit around having a chat (or putting your feet up). Also I’ll paste my recipe for egg nog. If I remember rightly, it’s vegan… it’s one of my most popular posts (?!?!!!!) but here it is again in case you would enjoy ithttps://ourzenaissance.com/2016/12/24/nog-vegan-egg-nog-in-less-time-than-it-takes-to-say-bah-humbug-a-christmas-miracle-recipe/
If you have some remember to drink loads of water! Hehe… and I wish you a beautiful day everyday xox
How are you?!
I’ve seen a guy address his audience “Hi there friends and lovers”. Can I pull that off without people thinking I’m serious? Anyway, I missed being here! The last couple of years have been busy and the last year has been a lot of growth. Every year we grow but the last year I have done things like tidy up and organise stuff. I mean…. that’s GROWTH. Place still a mess though but there are spots of tidiness.
I’ve been teaching quite a bit too (for someone with no promotion and unattached to any studio), people have floated towards me and it has been such a blessing.
In fact, it is now almost 10am on a Monday and I just finished teaching someone. How good is it to be freshly showered after yoga?!
Now ready to cook some soup for the day whilst listening to Louise Hay.
How good is it to feel happy?
I wish you a blessed and happy day.
xox
Did anyone else stock up on vitamins instead of toilet paper during the early days this past year?
It took me a week to work up the mental energy to head to the supermarket to do a shop. It felt dicey to go out during the early days of lockdown. We are in Indonesia, which is a super lovely place to live, but healthcare is not the same as it is in Australia, where we are from or Singapore where I grew up. There is (or was) an entire industry called medical tourism and people fly to places such as Malaysia, Thailand or Singapore. No one flew to Indonesia for a medical holiday, they flew from Indonesia so you get the idea. So we are happy to stay where we are and stay healthy. We were very lucky we didn’t need to go anywhere. So many people had no choice, stay home and pay the bills with what money? But what could they do, police would stop you if you were out and send you back.
So this supermarket shop. It needed to be done, I couldn’t get any online deliveries because they were booked out for days and days. We could have used a few rolls of toilet paper (I’m talking about 4 rolls not 40 rolls) and some rice, some fruit, so we didn’t sit around marinading in scurvy whilst chewing on the furniture. And I wanted to get some staples for some people we knew who did not have a lot of money. Not everyone can just work from home. So I headed off with my little face mask and at the time I thought gloves were a good idea. I wasn’t even the most wrapped up person there – there were people in HAZMAT type suits. Although how do you go about disinfecting those things? Don’t you need a special chamber? We had to queue for our turn to go in and people were jittery. We looked like we were waiting in an emergency room. Once we were released inside, everyone was back to normal, chatting to each other about this apple or that durian.
There are a few things that are considered staples here in Indonesia: flour, oil and rice. Another one is instant noodles. They don’t spoil easily which is important in a country that can be so hot and not everyone has a fridge. People in Australia were making the news for fighting over toilet paper meanwhile over here people were pushing trolleys stacked with cartons of instant noodles. You can’t eat toilet paper in a food shortage. So I got myself a few boxes of instant noodles, flour, oil and rice to give to people we knew who might appreciate some support. I didn’t go back to the supermarket for a long time after that. But I did get stocked up on vitamins and supplements. At first I tried to buy from local pharmacies which was hit or miss. Sometimes there was no stock, or they were expiring soon, or they were superrrrrrr expensive due to import taxes or when they arrived the glass was broken. So I got myself an iherb account and that has been pretty helpful.
I appreciate the range but at the same time it’s a bit exhausting to go through especially at first. Later during the course of the year I also had some health issues so I was really glad I could get some things from iherb to help me out.
I’m not sponsored by iherb but they give every person a rewards code that apparently gives users a discount? What I would do is CHECK if they have any promotions. Every time I go on the website they have “20% off homeopathy products” or “10% off vitamin d”, etc, really random things going on, so check first if there is a discount that you need and then type in my code CEI0659 and see if you get more money off. It works for me. This is the link you can try clicking on that or just manually enter the code.
If you would like to know what I tend to get from iherb I will be happy to share with you in another post. A few of my friends asked me about my shopping experience on iherb so I just thought on the off chance you were also going to buy something from iherb you would appreciate the discount code. x
(Only joking I don’t get the vitamin gummies)
as usual I have left gift wrapping to the last minute. and this year I had the gall to pick up a few bits and bobs for the stocking for the child. Fun! I thought. Sure it is, until it comes time to wrap them. Do we wrap stocking fillers? I scratched my head trying to remember as I wrestled with the scotch tape dispenser. I’m telling myself that tomorrow morning we shall have tea, eggnog (vegan!), meditate and then open presents. Unless my terribly wrapped presents unwrapped themselves in the night, oops.
Happy Holidays!
How incredible is this? Ben Folds was given a key and told to make a new song in 10 minutes. I love the humour in the approach as he sang, “These new spaces are all designed to be…flexible.” And as the song progresses in its growth all the musicians watching and just absorbing the idea. Isn’t this synchronicity?
I hope you are having a great day and find yourself creating something to enjoy today.
The Child and I are both really digging this song at the moment. I was even more into this song after seeing all these wonderful women featured in the video. I like the original (do you?) but THIS VERSION IS SOOOOOOOOOO GOOOOOOOOD. Definitely on repeat.
I think it even makes a good accompaniment to some of my Pilates videos. (Do you?)
https://soundcloud.com/iamdudleyalexander/i-wanna-love-you-ft-kent-jones
I’m having a lovely morning and thought I would share! Baby is napping and I discovered this loungey bossa nova jazz music channel on Youtube. It is so upbeat but also relaxing at the same time. It’s so good to have a soundtrack for going around home getting things done. I’ve made a batch of porridge for our lunch and a great big pot of barley water for us to sip on throughout the day. And the dishes are done, hurray. A small thing but I love it when the kitchen sink is empty and gleaming. I remember the last time I made a batch of barley water and felt this productive, only, I forgot to scoop out the pearl barley afterwards and they soaked up all the water so there was about 10 ml of water and I swear, a KILO of barley hahaha. I felt so sheepish after offering barley water to B so loudly. Well fool me once and all that. Today I am prepared and now I can kick back and enjoy my hour or so of jazz.
My great pleasure during naptime for The Child is to watch videos on Youtube, in addition to quickly taking a shower, a stretch and also squeezing in a nap. I just came across this in my recommended page and the house in this video looks so organic and earthy.
I love the idea of a place designed around movement to encourage being active.
One of my dream goals is to have a space dedicated to Yoga and Pilates and Ballet. As the video progresses this house looks more like a jungle gym, fun!
I think my space would be a little more sparse but you know, different people find different things comforting. Who knows though? Perhaps by the time I came around to creating my space it would be just rainbow coloured everything!
In the meantime I’m happy with my little nooks of space here in our apartment. We got a carpet for our bedroom which I feel helps to mark out a space and then out in our living room we got rid of the very bulky (and sharp cornered!) coffee table. It was incredible how open the place felt after that table left. We lay down mats and wriggle around there as well. Ideally we’d have a little more greenery but I am very happy with my flowers.
The main thing is that you feel at ease wherever you have your movement practice and that you move a little everyday. I’m off now to quickly shower and then do a little stretching AND a nap. Going for the trilogy!
Our Zenaissance 