Last year I worked too hard and had more than a few stress-induced melt downs. I’m learning better boundaries and moving into a new time. Finding a balance at work hinges entirely on getting your insides in order. Otherwise you’re just like a hamster in an ever-spinning wheel, waiting to get out. It leaves you feeling like nothing has any significance.

2012: Quietness, Contentment, Devotion.

This year I am taking more time to do non-work-related things every day. Already I am having a better year spending more time with my husband, not answering emails after hours, not letting everyone else’s emergencies become my own.

Last year nearly every night before I went to bed, I wanted to cry. I always felt so far behind on everything I had intended to do. I’m not going to live like that this year. Thank God for a husband who was able to see the bigger picture and helped me find a better way.

Yoga 21 Day Challenge

I’ve been participating in the 21 Day Yoga Challenge, which basically involves completing 1 yoga practice per day, eating 1 vegetarian meal per day and spending at least 15 minutes in meditation. I’m not sure the reason for the vegetarian meal but I already gravitate towards fruits, grains, and dairy in general so that’s not hard.

Yoga has been a valuable help to my goal of de-stressing this year. It also helps you to be more aware of your body, decrease unhealthy impulses, and improve posture. It’s something I can do every day no matter the weather and sometimes I combine it with P90X (since my husband is doing that) to get more cardio. I’ll post a review of some of the yoga videos I’ve tried in case anyone is looking for recommendations.

2012 Goals:

A few of the less-personal and non-work goals I’m aiming for:

Giving: I want to use the skills I already have to help support the ministries of people who are hands-on in the dark corners of the world. I think that will help to make my work more meaningful. This is a start and there’s more that I want to organize but I don’t have it all worked out yet. My mother-in-law gave me a really good little book for my birthday called “Orphans, Widows, the Poor and Oppressed” by Derek Prince that has tons of verses in it for discovering God’s heart for the needy. I want to find a more strategic way of giving this year.

Reading: There’s a long list of books I want to read this year but never seem to have time to get to. As with most things, I think the best way is to just start giving a few minutes each day.

Getting Up Early: While usually more of a night person, I’ve found that the few days I do get up before 7am, there seems to be so much more time. So this year I’d like to explore the benefits of rising early and see where that goes. Maybe I’ll document that here for accountability’s sake.

Drink More Water: This is kind of silly one but really necessary, because I never drink enough water and it’s really good for your organs, skin and general health.

Make More Things with Pretty Pixels: I want more time to design this year – logos, backgrounds, websites, more time to play with typography. I’m hoping to be able to set aside at least 4 days per month when I can get lost in colors and fonts.

Too much inspiration and no execution drives me mad. That’s something I hope to change this year. What are your new year’s resolutions? I’d love to know. Staying accountable on these types of things really seems to boost motivation.

I wanted to post a few photos from the trip, since we saw so many beautiful things and places while we were there.

Visiting the many breweries was definitely the highlight of the trip for me. My tastes have moved more in the direction of IPAs lately, the hoppier the better. Walnut Brewery was the first place we visited:

Boulder was covered in snow when we arrived. I fell in love with this city instantly – it’s almost like a cleaner, mountain version of Eugene, Oregon.

A cute store on Pearl Street

Delicious hops!

We did a tiny bit of shopping…

The wine festival was held at the Wings Over the Rockies Air and Space Museum, a beautiful venue full of old fighter planes:

This is a picture of my husband drinking a tiny martini made from American Harvest organic vodka. We’re more of a gin family, but this was probably the best vodka I’ve ever tasted. We also had the pleasure of meeting the maker of the Roadhouse Spirits later on in the trip. He let us tour his facility and taste some of his latest work. This was my first time to ever visit a distillery. The Roadhouse barrel-aged gin has an extraordinarily masculine flavor, and I wish we could get this in other parts of the country. The laws are too restrictive in Oklahoma for us to be importing this gin anytime soon.

After the festival we traveled up into the mountains to enjoy some skiing at Loveland and a cozy stay at the Chateau Chamonix in Georgetown. We hopped around a few cities in the mountains and then headed back towards Boulder to tour some more breweries, including Left Hand Brewing Company, a personal favorite.

I wish I had taken more pictures of the dogs. People in Colorado take their fluffy friends everywhere with them and we met many fine puppy dogs on our travels. Driving through the snowy mountains with my best friend was probably the best part. Every day we cranked the tunes and hunted for places on maps like regular tourists. Overall it was a really fun trip, full of beautiful beers and landscapes.

Getting Back to Basics…

Meditation really helps when me when I need to get back on track and have a number of conflicting voices shouting in my ears. I’ve been thinking on this one for the past few weeks:

But I am like a green olive tree in the house of God; I trust in the mercy of God forever and ever. – Psalm 52:8 NKJV

Wikipedia says that the olive leaf was used as “a symbol of abundance, glory and peace …used to crown the victors of friendly games and bloody wars.” I like that, but this is what I found to be the most inspiring:

The olive tree is very hardy: drought-, disease- and fire-resistant, it can live to a great age. Its root system is robust and capable of regenerating the tree even if the above-ground structure is destroyed. The older an olive tree is, the broader and more gnarled its trunk appears. Many olive trees in the groves around the Mediterranean are said to be hundreds of years old, while an age of 2,000 years is claimed for a number of individual trees, and in some cases this has been verified scientifically.

I want to be like that. Also, it seems that the olive rarely thrives at a distance from the sea. Maybe I need a little holiday on the ocean? Since that’s not an option right now, I’ve been doing everything to try to de-stress this weekend.

Lately I’ve been addicted to watching the Longyearbyen 360 Livecam throughout the day. It’s stunningly beautiful. Longyearbyen is the administrative center of the Norwegian island of Svalbard.

I find stark landscapes to be calming and invigorating and I end up reading everything I can of the history of these kinds of places. Every morning this week I’ve turned on that livecam just to see what’s happening over there.

I also spent the weekend catching up on my Youtube subscriptions, cleaning, marinating ribs for Sunday, and getting lost in Kakuzo Okakura’s Book of Tea, which is full of little thought-provoking gems, like this one:

“Slavish conformity to traditions and formulas fetters the expression of individuality in architecture. We can but weep over the senseless imitations of European buildings which one beholds in modern Japan. We marvel why, among the most progressive Western nations, architecture should be so devoid of originality, so replete with repetitions of obsolete styles. Perhaps we are passing through an age of democratisation in art, while awaiting the rise of some princely master who shall establish a new dynasty. Would that we loved the ancients more and copied them less! It has been said that the Greeks were great because they never drew from the antique.”

There’s an artistic challenge in there that I think we’d all do well to consider, although I’m not sure I’m entirely in agreement. I’ll come back to it when I review the Book of Tea on this blog in a few weeks. That’s it for this stream of consciousness ramble. I’m going to take an antihistamine and pass out.

It just so happened that NY Craft Beer Week coincided with our visit and we made the most of our Beer Passports while we were there, purchased from The Pony Bar:

I think my favorite thing about New York is the food. We had Thai, Russian, French, German, Italian, Greek, so many different kinds. We also got to see lots of old friends and make new ones. Football and brunch were a must every weekend.

We took a quick weekend trip down to DC to see my best friend from high school and her family and got to meet their adorable little girl. 48hrs is not nearly enough time to see everything in DC, but we did make the rounds on some memorials. The Jefferson Memorial was so moving. I was totally inspired by the selections from his writings.

God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than these people are to be free.

At times it was super stressful trying to get work done while being in New York, but overall we had a really fun time. I ended up with more than a few realizations about life, business, friends, dreams and goals – mostly through having the chance to sit and talk with my husband over drinks nearly every night of the week. He is simply the best.

Being away helped me gain a new perspective on our lives here and I’m grateful to be home. The brutal summer heat that we endured has definitely caused me to be excited about winter. I’m hoping for lots of blizzards and inclement weather.

Argan oil is the main ingredient of all of the Kahina Giving Beauty products. If you’re new to argan oil, here’s what you need to know:

Containing highly potent antioxidants, argan oil neutralizes free radicals (the second biggest cause of aging after sun exposure), reduces inflammation, minimizes the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles and protects the skin from harsh environmental factors. Light and non-greasy, argan oil absorbs easily to give skin a radiant glow without the use of any harmful ingredients.

I love natural products so I was excited to try this line at my first opportunity. Here’s my personal review:

Kahina Eye Cream – This is the best eye cream I’ve tried this year. Because it’s oil-based, it seems to moisturize and become a natural part of my skin more easily than other eye creams. I’ve actually been dueling it against Benefit – It’s Potent Eye Cream this past month and the Kahina Eye Cream is hands down the winner in my book.

Kahina Eye Serum – I like the Kahina Eye Serum but not as much as the eye cream. It’s a bit lighter, if you’re looking for something that’s not as heavy as a cream. It seems to be more of an intense treatment as well.

Kahina Facial Cleanser – I absolutely love how natural the cleanser smells and how well it takes off makeup. I didn’t notice its exfoliating properties as much, but I certainly feel that my face is clean and moisturized after using it. It doesn’t make your face feel stripped, like some other cleansers. For example, I use Origins: A Perfect World cleanser in the morning and I love the way it works but immediately feel the need to put on moisturizer afterwards, like my skin is tightening up. The Kahina cleanser makes my face feel like it still has its own moisture.

Kahina Antioxident Mask – I tried the Kahina mask tonight and I very much enjoyed the tingly, minty feeling you get after it’s applied. However, this is not so much of a deep cleansing mask, in my opinion. It’s one that I would put in the radiance-boosting category. When you remove it, you’re supposed to massage your face in a circular motion to take advantage of the exfoliating properties. After I washed it off, it seemed to have taken away a lot of dullness from my skin. I felt fresh and minty and ready for bed.

Kahina 100% Organic Argan Oil – I like the way the Kahina oil feels on my skin, but unfortunately cannot endure the smell of it. I will not describe it here, because I think it’s a great product. Although the smell prevents me from using it, my husband likes it, as he has much more dry skin than I do. I like to put different products on him and write down his man reviews of them from time to time, so perhaps I will amend this post after I try some of the other products on him. We’ve also tried Skin & Bones, which is a similar product that smells better, but again on this one he was more into the oils than I was. I still haven’t tried the Kahina toning mist or the facial lotion, but I suspect those would be better options for me.

Also, I was happy to discover that the Kahina website is running on WordPress. Open Source CMS + Organic Beauty Products is just about my favorite combination in the world.

Get out of the era of reactionary work flow.

Instead of reacting to everything in your inbox, make time to work on your own projects. When we have our email open 24/7, it’s like we’re constantly fulfilling everyone else’s to-do list and never making it to our own agendas. I experience a small but constant level of stress due to having my email on all the time. Turning off email, twitter, and any other outside communication will probably be the most difficult for me to implement at first, but I’m becoming convinced that it’s a necessity. Preserving windows of non-stimulation may in fact be akin to drug withdrawal, but I’m hoping it pays off with a greater level of productivity.

Oh, sure, we delude ourselves into thinking we’re being extra-productive by obsessively checking and responding to our email, but in reality we’re attending too frequently to our own desire for gratification and sabotaging our own productivity in the process. – Jeff Atwood

Spend energy on being organized.

This is a simple one – putting energy into being organized will give you more time to get things accomplished. Instead of spending time sorting through the confusion, you come to work already on target. I just got a new desk, which has initiated a new era of organization in our office. We now have matching trestle desks with plenty of room for organizing work-related items.

Create a culture of capturing action.

This essentially involves voicing what you’re going to do next, especially outloud to others, because that makes it more real and more likely that you’re going to make it happen.

Create a ritual for recording and returning to backburner items.

This is one of the few that I’ve already got down. With the help of my favorite online productivity app, TeuxDeux, I have already recorded 36 “Someday” items underneath my normal daily to-do list. I’m able to revisit these when I have time, but I never lose an idea this way. Now, if they’d only make an Android app…

Make your office a monument to progress.

The inspiration to come up with a new idea comes easily, but the inspiration to take action is more difficult. It’s like falling in love – the part where it’s so new and everything is glowing is always the most fun. However, a never-ending stream of new ideas is nothing but a pile of rubbish if you have no forward momentum. Urging yourself on to progress means life or death for your idea.

Don’t put every project on high priority.

Accept the fact that you cannot do everything and don’t prioritize too many projects at once. You’ll make more progress and find that your stress levels will be much lower.

Give up “insecurity work.”

Insecurity work is defined as those things we do to try to feel like things are moving. These are things that do have their time and place but not all the time throughout the workday, such as checking your analytics, finding out news, researching things on Google or Twitter, etc… just because information is available to you instantly through a couple clicks does not mean that right now is the right time to access it.

Recognize the power of communal forces.

Community plays a strong role in pushing our ideas forward. Competition can be a very healthy motivator. Stay connected to positive relationships that help you to move your objectives forward.

Conclusion:

There are a few people in life who I admire as the “Get shit done” type of people – high levels of initiative combined with efficiency. I’m trying to move more in that direction, instead of getting overwhelmed and buried under hundreds of emails.

Achieving Inbox Zero is one of my first priorities, followed by a number of important changes in how we run our business. I have to admit, I’m a little scared to let go of control, but I’m desperate to be more effective, so I’m pushing myself to remember this:

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear and timidity, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” – 2 Timothy 1:7

It took days of stripping, sanding and staining:

I have to admit that there were many moments of regret during this project, but in the end we were really happy. We now have a unique, solid wood dresser and a sense of satisfaction at having transformed into something beautiful.

Here’s a closer look:

This is a huge dresser and I love the way it looks now. I hope to be able to tell my grandchildren that we refinished it ourselves. No, it wasn’t fun – but it was totally worth it.

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die.

But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
– Rom. 5:6-8

Thank You. You mean everything to me.

I don’t usually let myself spend much money on makeup, but I love love love trying new things- mostly natural products and items brownish/bronze undertones. Anything too bright pink, purple or blue makes me look like an underfed clown.

Included: China Glaze Vintage Vixen in Ingrid and Foxy, Mad Hippies No More Crows Peptide Repair Eye Cream, MAC Too Chic Beauty Powder, 100% Natural Fruit Pigmented Lip Glaze in velveteen, 100% Pure Fruit Pigmented Pot Rouge in Ballerina, China Glaze Anchors Away Collection in Life Preserver and Hey, Sailor!, Kahina Organic Argan Oil and samples of eye serum, cleanser, antioxidant mask, etc, Diana B. 60 second Miracle Tan, and MAC Impeccable Brow Pencil in taupe.

I plan to review the products as I get the chance to try them. So far I’ve only tried the China Glaze Vintage Vixen polish in Ingrid. It’s an earthy brown and silver color that reminds me of Seattle and makes me feel studious. I’ve posted a picture here so you can see how the shade turned out – please forgive the sloppy home-manicure

Would I wear it again? Probably. I think it’s definitely a winter color and that may be why it was given an Old Norse name. My obsession with Norse names knows no bounds.

Stay tuned for more reviews and a few more reflective pieces coming up. Despite all these potions pictured above, I leave you with this quote from William Shakespeare:

With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.

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Beer

We rolled out of bed and headed straight for High Gravity, our local home brewing equipment shop. Marion has started brewing his own beer and has his first batch, a Belgian Tripel Ale, in its secondary fermentation stage. It’s very sensitive and scientific. He has bad dreams about it, but I’m sure it will be fine because everything he attempts is magic.

It’s a beautiful beer! I’ve tasted it and can’t wait for when he adds the bubbles.

Water Bottles

Since we forgot breakfast, we hit every single sample stand at the Target and the Sam’s Club. No sense in getting hungry as bears and clawing each other to pieces! While romping nearly all over town we found the cutest water bottles with tiny carbiners attached to them.

Mine is, of course, the matte pink one and he opted for the more manly canteen style.

Baguettes

We also made baguettes this week – our first adventure in bread-making, inspired by my friend Keslie and her excellent recipe recommendation.

This is the baguette dough before we baked it:

And here are our happy baguettes fresh from the oven:

I think you should come over and have beer with us and tiny baguette sandwiches. Next time I’ll have to write a real blog, instead of a phone photo essay, but it’s past my bedtime.