How to be Kind and Gentle (To Yourself)

I recently found myself giving a Pep Talk to someone I love, and I was telling her that she needs to be kind and gentle to herself, and to treat herself to little treats.

"I don't even know what that means," she exclaimed.

Here are a few suggestions to anyone who likes the *idea* but isn't sure how to implement it:

*Make your bed each morning.  The simplest act, an act of self-care. If you are too busy to make your bed, I suggest taking the two minutes it will take and just do it each morning.  You will feel better!  A neat bed makes the world a better place to be.  This sounds trite but it's a deep spiritual issue.  Get up in the morning and do something nice; the you who crawls into a neat bed at night will thank the morning you.  Plus, every time you walk into your bedroom you will see a neat bed, instead of a tangle of sheets.  The power of making your bed cannot be overstated.  Just try it!

*Take a bath. For a cheap and healthy soak, get Epsom salts at the grocery store for just a couple of dollars. You can add a drop or two of essential oils to them to have a fragrant bath, or leave them plain.  Or you can go fancy (I love this bubble bath).  Or you can use an ounce or so of olive oil (really!) which is probably in your kitchen already.  Or you can just have a plain bath.  Take books, or a candle, or a magazine--something relaxing.  Don't read the newspaper!

*Bring the outside in--buy fresh flowers at the grocery store (alstromeria are routinely about $3-4 for a dozen and they last a long time!), pick a yard bouquet, or just get leaves, acorns, rocks and arrange them on a platter. Anything will work!  Just something pretty for a table, a little reminder that nature exists and is a pleasure to behold.

*Make a list of the exercises that don't feel like exercise and then do a few times a week.  For me this list looks like swimming, yoga, walking or hiking, and the elliptical trainer (if I can read or watch something good while I'm on it!).  I don't like aerobics, sprinting, or anything that requires coordination.  This morning I swam laps under a blue sky and when I did the backstroke I could see the beautiful moon looking down at me.  This is good.

*Sleep.  Go to bed an hour or two earlier, or take a nap.  Sleep always feels like pampering to me. And it's free!

*Rest. Rest is underrated in our culture.  There is value in sitting down and spending ten minutes (or more) with a a cup of tea, a book, some prayers, some deep breathing, some stretching, drawing.  Do something that will give energy for later but is not so distracting that you get lost in it (TV, Internet). You're looking for soul restoration here!

*Read something that will inspire you but not tell you how to be better at anything. I like poetry for this, particularly Mary Oliver's poetry.  She is good for my spirit.

*Write.  Write  a letter to yourself, or write in your journal, or just write a few pages of freewriting about anything or nothing.  Writing is my favorite way to get to the bottom of the issues that ail me and to find my way out the other side; I find it cathartic and healing.  It is good self-care to self-reflect.

I tend to think that if we practice kindness and gentleness to ourselves we will be more likely to be kind and gentle to the big bad world.  And this world needs kind and gentle people!

Vintage Theatrics

At a wedding last week my great-aunt thrust a bundle of photos into my hands to pass along to my uncle, who is 'digitizing' old family photos.  I looked through them in our hotel room and enjoyed all the typical photos of parents with children, mothers with babies, children with dogs.  

But I got a kick out of Aunt Pauline.  Oh, she was a character!  I was named after my grandmother, and my grandmother was named after Aunt Pauline, and Aunt Pauline was named after her mother...you get the picture.  

Aunt Pauline was a teacher who never married.  She passed along her collection of antique books to me, wrote me letters encouraging me to write, and she even wrote and self-published her own book about our family, which is a gem!

Here she is in a sort of  midsummer fairy's vibe (not her real hair!)--

and on the back of this photo was written "girls at home dressing up in the boys' soldiers uniforms."  My jaw literally dropped! 

Thanks to Aunt Pauline for giving me a laugh, once again. 

Walk in the Light

"Walk in the light of your vision of God's will. If you do not, you will be a slave to ideas and views that are foreign to Jesus.  Our conscience must respond to the unveiling of a truth."

    -Oswald Chambers

Late June Sunset from the Deck

The sky was so majestic over my grandparents' house last week.

I had never seen a configuration like this before.  I wonder about the science behind it.   If anyone knows, please educate me!

And then there was a Yoda photo-bomb, thanks to Finn. 

 Glorious!

That Which Dominates

"A person will worship something, have no doubt about that. We may think our tribute is paid in secret in the dark recesses of our hearts, but it will out. That which dominates our imaginations and our thoughts will determine our lives, and our character. Therefore, it behooves us to be careful what we worship, for what we are worshipping we are becoming."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Hosta Bouquet

On Saturday we hosted one of my husband's colleagues, who is relatively new in town, and his girlfriend for dinner.  I'd never met them--I love hosting people who are Strangers.

My menu was simple and easy to prepare ahead.  The biggest hit was the roasted pork loin. I made a variation on Anna's recipe.  For my pork loin, I juiced two lemons and a lime, heavily doused the pork loin with Jane's Crazy Salt and Pride of Szeged Chicken Rub, then roasted it (covered) for 20 minutes at 450 degrees, and then an hour at 350 degrees.  Delicious.

Nothing is really blooming in the yard right now other than the day lilies, so I did not have any flowers ready to cut for the table.  I was sweeping the patio when the hostas caught my eye.  Their blooms are still not open, but they were beautiful!

Yard bouquets are the best--free, simple and always unique.

And we had a nice time--our guests are much younger than we are (born in the 1980s! Imagine that.) and were up for a game of boys v. girls trivial pursuit.  The boys won!

Dress for a Flower Girl

Annie will be a flower girl in a wedding in August and yesterday I *finally* had some free time to work on her dress.  I based this dress on vintage Advance 7933, which I have made before in a pink-polka-dotted print.  This time I lengthened the skirt by 9 inches so it is floor-length, re-drafted the back bodice piece for a lower neckline and omission of back buttons, and messed around with it so I could figure out how to sew it without the bias binding on the sleeves.  Lesson: it takes a long time to simplify things...and to sew without instructions!

The bridesmaids are wearing "capri" blue, so I wanted to incorporate blue into the dress somehow. I made it in a white cotton sateen from the big box fabric store--about $7/yard. I bought some pale blue organza and tried my hand at an organza overlay, something I'd never done before!  I bought a wide pale blue ribbon to attach around the waist.  My goal was to make a comfortable dress because the wedding is outside, in mid-August, when our climate is usually *extremely* sticky and humid. Her hair will be up and she will wear a flower crown. 

Last night at midnight I triumphantly finished the construction and admired it, only to soon realize that I had sewed the front inside bodice piece to the back pieces when I attached the gathered skirt. I said things like "no! oh NO!" After the initial shock I ripped the skirt off, losing a few gathers in the process.  And then I went to bed. Lesson: when your intuition tells you to sew bodice pieces together at the waistline, do it. 

This afternoon I rallied myself and re-attached the skirt (after sewing the inside and outside back and front bodice pieces together!!!).  I'm celebrating by leaving it in my closet for a week or two before tackling the hemming.

Very simple and sweet!