Mom's Kitchen Remodel Options

My mom, brothers, and I are working to remodel my parents' house, our childhood home (Mom and Dad purchased it in 1978 and didn't move since). Mom still lives there but has been looking to improve it for both liveability and marketability. It's not without deep emotion saying goodbye to many familiar, quirky, fun things about the home where we grew up, but it is time to update the home, particularly the kitchen, which hasn't really been updated much since we moved in as a young family 34 years ago.

Here are some potential designs for mom's kitchen, which is currently enclosed by four walls with two small doorways (no doors), one into the dining room and one into the laundry room.

Note that Autodesk Homestyler, the program used for these designs, doesn't allow for half walls or cutouts, so the south wall cabinets appear to be "floating". This wall will actually be a passthrough/cutout with small cabinets overhead. The passthrough would look out into the living room.

Also note that we MUST replace the kitchen floor (and the flooring Mom has selected is much lighter than that shown here--flooring options were limited in Homestyler), but the hardwood flooring in the dining room is original and beautiful, so we're keeping that, and also the dark, brick-red ceramic tile in the laundry room. Thus, three different kinds of flooring.

Please vote for your favorite design in the comments and explain what you like/dislike about each one, and if you have any other suggestions. Mom (and all of us) could use some expert opinions!

Option 1: Red-finish cabinets; base cabinets divide kitchen and dining room. View from dining room:

View from laundry room:

Option 2: White-finish cabinets; base cabinets divide kitchen and dining room. View from dining room:

View from laundry room:

Option 3: Natural-finish cabinets; base cabinets divide kitchen and dining room. View from dining room:

View from laundry room:


Option 4: Red-finish cabinets that extend into dining room; no divider between kitchen and dining room. View from dining room:

View from laundry room:

Option 5: Natural-finish cabinets that extend into dining room; no divider between kitchen and dining room. View from dining room:

View from laundry room:

The Anniversary Cave

Jon and I spent our 6th anniversary in Kokopelli Cave in Farmington, NM. It should be one of the seven wonders of the world--a 1250 sq. ft. cave blown out of the sheer cliff face, fully furnished and stocked with all manner of food, drinks, and amenities. It was the perfect, romantic way to celebrate our six years together!























After our one-night stay in the cave, we visited nearby Mesa Verde national park to see the amazing ancient cliff dwellings of the Anasazi.

We spent our remaining evening in lovely Durango, Colorado, a perfect way to end our sixth wedding anniversary.

Musical Inclinations

Two of several reasons we've been so busy (and not updating the blog):















I'm taking fiddle lessons while Jon is enrolled in guitar. We've also been practicing and teaching ourselves at home from online video tutorials and sheet music. It's such a blast, we're wondering why we didn't pursue music this passionately earlier in our lives. Our first round of lessons ends in just a couple of weeks, and we'll miss them!

We experienced the unifying power of music last night when my family came over to celebrate my mom and dad's 50th wedding anniversary. We had a small, informal family dinner at our place (BBQ ribs and potato salad with celebratory champagne!), and I broke out my fiddle to play a song I had been learning all week for the occasion: Auld Lang Syne. The song couldn't be further from an anniversary song (look up the lyrics sometime), but it's such a beautiful song on the violin and it's in my songbook, so I couldn't resist playing it for them.

As I played (despite the screeching and missplaced notes--I'm still learning), I watched everyone's face relax and their eyes wander off into distant places in their minds. But nothing was more gratifying than to hear my mom begin to softly sing along--in French. Apparently, Americans aren't the only ones who sing this song each New Year's Eve. And my mom said that during WWII, people sang it to each other as a way to say "we'll see each other again". It was so moving to play along with my mom's sweet voice.

Then my brothers took a stab at playing my violin--which was pretty funny--and Jon broke out his guitar, which prompted my brothers to participate in showing him a few chords, since both of them are proficient in guitar and bass. The evening became a serenade of various instruments and my mom and I listening to bluegrass tunes I want to learn to play on the fiddle someday from my iPod in the other room.

As Leonard Bernstein is credited with saying, "music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable." Last night, it certainly brought our family together in a delightful way we've never experienced.

Name Our Farm!

We're ready to register our farm name in the state of New Mexico, and we'd like your help!

Here's the backstory on a few name candidates we've come up with. Vote in the poll provided below the backstory!

A few facts about the farm:

• produce only, driven by market requirements and our ability to grow (so far we've grown watermelons, cantaloupes, tomatoes, Japanese eggplant, herbs, chiles and sweet peppers, beans, cucumbers, and squash)
• we'll be a local provider, not national (within 100 miles of the farm)
• we use organic practices but are not certified organic (at least not right away)
• not only do we plan to sell our own produce, we'd like to also distribute for other local farmers

Name Candidates:

1. Thunderhead Farms - We always marvel at the enormous thunderheads that accumulate in the big skies of New Mexico during summer growing season.

2. Que Sera Farms - After the song "Que Sera, Sera", "what will be, will be". With farming, so many elements are out of our control, and each season is a miracle. "Que sera" is also a great life philosophy--have faith, let go, and live in the present.

3. Maximus Farms - As many of our friends know, Maximus was our first pet together (a very fat cat), and we moved him to the farm from San Francisco. He's since passed, and we've entertained the idea of naming our farm after him, designating a % of any proceeds to Best Friends Animal Sanctuary in Kanab, Utah.

4. Cat Scratch Farms - Just a funny name, and indicative of our two current cats. Again, % proceeds would go to the animal sanctuary (which we plan to do no matter what we name the farm).

5. Labyrinth Farms - "A thoughtful path to better living." We were married in San Anselmo at a seminary that featured a meditation labyrinth. The labyrinth became a symbol throughout our wedding festivities, and we plan to build a small one on our farm. Labyrinths symbolize spiritual focus and make for cool (and memorable) designs. Many small farms feature a "corn maze" or labyrinth for kids to run through during harvest festivals, and we could incorporate something like this into the farm.

Please vote! Also, comment with your own ideas. We'd love to hear them!

poll by twiigs.com

The Sound of Silence

It's been a long time since we've updated the blog. Busy times! Jon has been researching and writing articles for the Health Fitness Professionals Network in addition to preparing for Spring projects on the farm, and I've continued to be overwhelmed with work at Autodesk--but better busy than unemployed!

We're also trying to decipher and wrap up our tax return (like everyone else in the U.S. this month) while trying to figure out what we want to do when we grow up. It's been long days and long nights at our desks, eagerly awaiting the first budbreaks of Spring....

And just Monday I made the delightful discovery of finding already-flowering crocuses while accompanying the cats on their daily outing in our courtyard. Then I noticed that all of our other bulb flowers have started to break ground. If you have a garden and haven't planted bulbs--they are the most gratifying display of early Spring after a long, desolate winter. Can't wait for longer, warmer days!

Sabbatical Recap VII - Playing in the Desert

One of the highlights of my sabbatical was an overnight camping trip near the Chihuahuan Desert in southern New Mexico. Jon and I decided to do the overnight trip on one of the two days the Trinity Site is open each year, so we could stop by the historic site and learn more about the Manhattan Project and the first atomic test detonation on July 16, 1945.

So, we packed the car and took off for the long, six hour drive through Socorro, the Trinity Site, a gorgeous area called the Valley of Fires (a sprawling valley of ancient petrified lava that's really something to see), then off to Alamogordo to head to our campsite at Oliver Lee Memorial State Park. It rained on our way through Alamogordo, one of New Mexico's dramatic, Indian Summer thunderstorms that lit the brooding sky on fire and cooled off the 80-degree temperatures.

We arrived at our campsite after the rain, and a couple hours before dark, just in time to set up camp in the waning daylight. The campsites around us were abuzz with activity: families setting up their tents or hooking up their RVs to a water source, walking around to orient themselves to the grounds and exercise their dogs--until suddenly Jon and I noticed that the campground became very quiet. Everyone had disappeared, and we realized that we were the only ones left on the grounds. We joked that perhaps incognito G-men from the nearby White Sands Missile Range stealthily abducted them and that perhaps we were the rejects.

I walked to the ranger station to see if anyone was still on duty, but it was closed. Instead, I found an announcement on the bulletin board that a full moon was to rise that night. Everyone had gone to a 7:00 storytelling about native American moon folklore at the group shelter. Apparently the park rangers do this for every advent of a full moon at Oliver Lee park, and it's such a great idea. Too bad we missed it, but we certainly didn't miss the drama and the glory of the full moon slowly making its grandiose entrance over the Sacramento mountains escarpment, shining brighter than any flashlight ever could. It was so close to the earth, its light shone nearly like daylight well into the wee hours of the morning--and it was fabulous. We toasted the moon with a glass of wine while cooking our dinner over an open fire and retiring to a game of gin rummy by moonlight.

In the morning we cooked breakfast, packed camp, and took a quick hike up part of the Dog Canyon trail, the main attraction at Oliver Lee. We didn't make it very far into the canyon before deciding to turn around as we were running short on time, but by all accounts it's a New Mexico hike you don't want to miss. On our drive out of the camping area, we were greeted by a tarantula wandering lost in the road, perhaps to tell us, "y'all come back now, ya hear?". This was the first time either of us had encountered a live tarantula in nature, and it was the crescendo to an already fascinating trip.

After our short hike, we headed to White Sands national monument to play in the blinding gypsum dunes for a couple of hours before making the long drive back home. Growing up in New Mexico, I only had one opportunity to visit this unique place in all the world but was thwarted by a haboob-style sandstorm, and being only 12 miles away this time around, I didn't want to miss even just a short visit.

Mid-way home, we had the pleasure of stopping at Laughing Sheep farm near Lincoln, New Mexico, to stock up on grass-fed beef, pork, and elk--the latter for dinner that evening, thanks to the fine cooking skills of our dear friends and neighbors Karen and Jerry. After communing with nature as we had that weekend, it was fitting to sit down to a well-cooked meal that was itself well-fed.

Some people travel the world on their sabbaticals--a wise and wonderful choice--but I chose to explore local treasures, and discovered that I am none the poorer.

Happy New Year! 2010

We wrapped up a wonderful 2-week holiday season with a New Year's Eve "Around the World" party with friends Scott and Chere who drove all the way from the Phoenix area, and our neighbors Jerry and Karen, before they left for their second lives in SE Asia this week (sniff, sniff).

For the party, we prepared several small dishes from around the world, accompanied by their local libations. So, for Ireland Jon made shepherd's pie (technically, he made cottage pie because he didn't include lamb) and paired it with Guinness and Irish soda bread. For Italy, we arranged fancy salumis and artisanal Italian cheeses on a platter, and for France we prepared my mom's traditional New Year's Eve French onion soup, paired with a 2008 Beaujolais.

From North America, we had deviled eggs, French onion dip with Ruffles, and a local microbrew from Albuquerque (Marble I.P.A.), and blue tortilla chips with salsas and guacamole with Coronas to represent Mexico.

For Asia, Jon and Scott (who doesn't like fish!) prepared ahi tuna sushi paired with sake to represent Japan, and Jerry and Karen graciously presented us with Southeast Asian delicacies such as Laotian and Thai jeows (spicy dips) with purple Cambodian dipping rice.

At midnight, to ring in the New Year, we "flew" to Russia and indulged in whitefish caviar on seaweed rice crackers with crème fraiche accompanied by sparkling wine (Gruet, from New Mexico). Finally, we traveled to South America with chocolate Brigadeiros (a type of Brazilian fudge), displayed with a bowl of floating candles, to honor a Brazilian new year's tradition.

What a great way to ring in the New Year, but it's time for moderation again. Gotta go--all this writing about food made me hungry!

Sabbatical Recap V - Books I Read

I know it's the holidays, and I should be writing about wintertime glee (and I'll get to those posts), but I've saved several draft posts to savor and recap the short-lived seven weeks I had off earlier in the year (a.k.a., sabbatical). While I didn't physically travel much (save for a brief trip to California), I did manage to take a journey in reading, catching up on a book I've been meaning to read for years, as well as being introduced to a new author (to me), a new way of eating, and an education in art.

Books I Read on Sabbatical

Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner. Although I was an English major in college and read a good deal of modern American literature, I had never heard of Wallace Stegner, a legendary American short-story writer, historian, environmentalist, professor, and novelist. It's not a dramatic novel with lots of blood, sweat, sex, and tears, but a quiet novel about the subtelties in a lifelong friendship between two couples. One would think, with a topic like that, the book would have been a snoozer, but I couldn't put it down. Stegner writes descriptions as if you were in the novel yourself, witnessing the characters first-hand as they win their victories and make their mistakes, and living the story as it unfurls.

Clean: The Revolutionary Program to Restore the Body's Natural Ability to Heal Itself by Dr. Alejandro Junger. Aside from my early education in the wisdom of the Bible, I've read a few books I can say have fundamentally changed my way of thinking about taking care of the everyday business of life, among them How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie (don't knock it before you read it! Everyone should take a refresher on this book in the 21st century) and Die Broke by Stephan Pollan. Clean is another one of those books that reset my basic understanding of something we all typically do about three times a day (EAT!) and the effects of our modern lifestyles and environment on our bodies and overall well-being.

Clean prescribes a healthy three-week cleansing program to reset your body's rhythms while balancing physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional activities in a demanding lifestyle. And the best part about the cleanse: it's not just water and grapefruit--it involves real food everyday to uberboost your health. After the three-week program and continuing some of its principles in my everyday diet, I haven't felt or looked this healthy in years!

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon. I remember when this novel won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature in 2001, and I've been wanting to read it ever since. Eight years later, I finally picked it up and embarked on the amazing 656-page journey myself. I took two months to finish the novel, but it was worth every page. There were a couple of slow parts in the journey, but I savored every minute of this story about two young Jewish cousins--one American, the other Czech--during WWII in New York City, the rise and fall of the superhero comic book era, and the dawn of the nuclear age. In some places, the novel reads like a comic book itself, and takes you on a colorful, forbidden escape. Most of the novel, though, is a metaphor for life, love, art, sexuality, innocence, and childhood, peppered with the perils of war and the power of hate on the stage of world history. Most authors would be taking on too much to tackle all of these topics in one novel, but Michael Chabon nails it in a single bound.

Smile of the Buddha by Jacquelynn Baas. This was required reading for one of my art classes during sabbatical, and it was a pleasure for me to learn about artists such as abstract expressionists Agnes Martin and Ad Reinhardt, and Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi. The book explores the influences of Asian thought (particularly Buddhism) on modern-era European and American artists, thus the title of the class I took, "Bridging the Gap". Each week, we read about one of these artists and how Eastern thought influenced their work. After discussing the chapter in class, we'd emulate the artist's work using their principles and techniques. Each week was a meditation and helped me slow down during the first few weeks of my sabbatical.

It's rare that I have the time to even read one book in a month so if nothing else, this sabbatical allowed me time to expand my library and stretch my thinking.

Sabbatical Recap IV - Adventures in Art

I spent a good deal of time in the art world during my sabbatical, and for that, I am grateful. Not only did I visit local museums to appreciate others' art, but I had the opportunity to enroll in a couple of art classes: another monotypes class at New Grounds Print Workshop in Albuquerque and a unique course called "Bridging the Gap", with celebrated local artist Deborah Gavel.

Deborah's class was about bridging the gap between Eastern and Western ideologies in art and thinking through using the five senses. For example, in one class, she had us work with encaustic (melted) beeswax to evoke our sense of smell. In another class we worked with precious metal clay to exercise our sense of touch. She had us work with subtle shifts in color to use our visual senses. Next week we'll be going to a video art installation in Santa Fe to engage our sense of hearing. We never figured out how to do taste, but we did talk about creating art with food. An intriguing idea....

We read the book Smile of the Buddha and talked about each chapter as a class once a week before getting into our work. Each class was a meditative exercise for me, and transported me to a calmer, more thoughtful place in my creativity than I had experienced before. I thank our friend Shelby for introducing me to the class and to Deborah, who was a fantastic guide through what I find to be complex terrain--the world of art.

The book introduced me to artists I may have heard of but knew nothing about: Jasper Johns, Agnes Martin, Ad Reinhardt, Constantin Brancusi, and others. While I didn't like all of their work on the printed page, I was particularly inspired by Agnes Martin. One evening, Deborah brought in a guest speaker to our class, Mary Lance, an award-winning film producer who had interviewed the elderly Agnes Martin in her Taos studio before she passed away a few years ago. Mary compiled the interviews into a movie called "With My Back to the World", which we had the unique pleasure of viewing in class that night. After watching Agnes paint and hearing her views on art and life ("I’m very careful not to have ideas, because they’re inaccurate" and "when we are born we are full of ambition and ego, but as we get older we begin to understand that we have to adjust"), something switched in me. The simplicity, honesty, and innocence of her work inspired me. This piece is my tribute to her gentle, thoughtful, lonesome soul:

My other piece from Bridging the Gap class may not show as meditative or calming, but the process of making it was. I'm calling this piece "Red Tornado" because it represents a recurring nighttime dream about tornadoes that I've had for decades, while also representing the turmoil of the daily struggle we all experience. This piece originally began as a grade-school collage project cut from old magazines and glued onto cardboard, but as we continued to work on the pieces, more and more layers of media, such as encaustic wax, string, fabric, and even precious metal clay pieces, fused into them. To me, it was the process that was the art, more than the finished piece itself, although I'm rather pleased with it and want to continue to work on it.

I also pulled out some old pieces to reminisce about classes I took in San Francisco, where I first learned to paint. Here's the first reductive charcoal piece I completed in Nina Wisniewski's "From Drawing to Painting" class, which started the evening after 9/11/2001. It was my very first painting class, and appropriately so, as I had been completely changed by the events of that dreadful day in human history. The class was an emotional haven for me during that time, and perhaps because of my heavy, contemplative heart, new channels of artistry opened up within me that I didn't even know I had. I'd like to do more of these reductive charcoals now that I'm looking at this really elementary piece again....

During my time off, I also enrolled in another beginning monotypes class. I didn't feel as inspired as I did in my last monotypes class. I felt more whimsical, and ended up producing a chain of nautical pieces, which goes with my longing to be near the ocean during this sabbatical:

I also relished the opportunity to visit local art museums and galleries: Bright Rain Gallery in Old Town Albuquerque with my mother, Albuquerque Art Museum with my mother-in-law during her visit (an artist in her own right), I even joined the Georgia O'Keefe museum in Santa Fe as a member after taking a long, languorous tour of the museum again for the first time since it's opening day more than 10 years ago, when I lived just off Canyon Road in The City Different. I also watched the made-for-cable-TV movie about Georgia O'Keefe, starring Joan Allen and Jeremy Irons. She had such an intriguing yet complicated and somewhat sad life. I suppose that's true of so many great artists. Perhaps that's why I can't seem to produce anything "great"--I'm too normal and happy. :-)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

We are so thankful, as always, for our families, our friends, our home, our pets, our livelihood, and our lives. What are you thankful for this Thanksgiving? Leave us a comment and let us know.

God Bless Us All!

Sabbatical Recap III - Solvang to Santa Barbara

I think the tiny California town of Solvang made a cameo appearance in the cult wine movie, "Sideways", but I otherwise didn't really know much about this charming, Disney dwarf-esque village.

Solvang lies among a trifecta of three famous California wine regions: Santa Maria Valley, Santa Ynez Valley, and Santa Barbara wine country. Because of its location among world-class vineyards, sprawling farmlands, and abundant orchards, it's downtown is replete with wine tasting rooms, a regular farmer's market, and incredibly delicious restaurants, delis, patisseries, and ice cream shops.
The town's heritage is Danish, and the architecture is an amusing dwarfish and European. When we arrived in Solvang, the weather was perfect: sunny and balmy, in the high 70s, and barely a breeze. Everyone walking on the streets was laughing or smiling. The lush, green trees and landscaping were perfectly manicured. For a minute, we thought we might have driven through a black hole into somewhere like Stepford, Connecticut.

Solvang should be a food photographer's paradise. The colors of the fresh vegetables, fruit, and flowers were stunning. I hope to paint some of these photos someday....

We topped off our visit with a delicious ice cream cone from one of the local shops, before heading off to Santa Barbara, the last stop of our California stay.

Sabbatical Recap II - Cambria, CA

During the first week of my 7-week sabbatical, we traveled to the San Francisco Bay Area to see friends and family. During the second half of that trip, we indulged my inexplicable craving to be near the ocean by driving solo down part of the California coast, and stayed in Cambria, "where the pines meet the sea", a super tiny, quaint beach town with a row of hotels and motels along the beach. This was the view from our hotel room for two nights:

Once we arrived, we were very excited to indulge in fresh, local seafood and fine wines from nearby Paso Robles wine country. While all the guidebooks said that the Sea Chest restaurant was the best seafood in town, we were disappointed by the menu when we stopped by to check it out (most of the seafood was Atlantic or imported vs. local!), so we ended up on the oceanside patio of the Moonstone Beach Bar & Grill both nights of our stay, and we weren't disappointed. The food was deliciously prepared and very fresh, and nothing could beat dining on the oceanside patio and listening to the waves roll in. It was a perfect paradise, and we hope to make it a habit to visit the area regularly.

The first night of our stay, we slept with the windows wide open to get the full experience of sleeping near the ocean. Funny enough, as exhausted as we both were, neither of us could sleep because of the sheer ENERGY bursting through our windows from the ocean. It was the strangest sensation: a delightful insomnia. I've read that the ocean emits a ton of positive-ionic energy, particularly along beaches where the waves crash in. I don't know about all that, but I know what I experienced that night, and it was pure, blissful, positive ENERGY. I don't know how else to describe it. We didn't sleep much that night, but the second night we drew the curtains over partially-opened windows, and we slept through the night like content kittens to the sound of gently rolling waves.

Cambria is an immediate neighbor to the town of San Simeon, the home of Hearst Castle, the ridiculously sprawling estate of the late newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. We didn't stop by the Castle on this visit as we have toured it before, but if you're ever planning a trip to the area, it's definitely a don't-miss attraction.

Cambria is also near a town called San Luis Obispo, at the heart of Paso Robles wine country. Paso Robles isn't as easy to get to as Sonoma or Napa, so it's not quite as popular, but the wines from the area are excellent.

Because it's much warmer than other California wine regions, the wines in Paso Robles are typically heavier, red Rhone-style wines (like Syrah, Grenache, Petite Sirah), but sophisticated winemakers in the region also turn out some great Bordeaux varietals and blends (Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Malbec). We took a day to visit several wineries and found that there are two halves to Paso Robles wine country: the west side and the east side. We found the wineries on the west side (closer to the ocean) to be more sophisticated and concerned with quality rather than just getting tasters drunk, as on the east side.

We visited Denner Vineyards, Tablas Creek, Justin Vineyards & Winery, and Tobin James, with a stop in San Luis Obispo for lunch and some olive oil tasting. Olives, artichokes, citrus fruit, and avocados grow rampant in the area, so farmers' markets and olive oil tasting are among the region's attractions. I've never tasted oils like wine (smelling aroma, tasting, and evaluating in a designated tasting room) and it was a pleasant surprise. My favorites were the high-quality extra virgin olive oils, and oils infused with local citrus oils, such as lemon and mandarin orange. Needless to say, we took home a bottle of local olive oil to enjoy on our salads and countless other dishes.

Cambria was among the most relaxing and enjoyable memories I'll entertain from this sabbatical. What a hidden gem!

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Sabbatical Recap I - Burlingame to San Francisco

Meandering through the streets of our old neighborhood in Burlingame, California, enjoying the sweet, warm yellow light of an autumn afternoon, stopping at Weimax Wines & Spirits for a couple of fine wines to bring to Jon's sister's house for dinner later that evening, discussing with the wine shop staff how great New Mexico champagne is (and perhaps how they'll now carry it because they keep hearing about how wonderful and tasty it is!).

Afterward, driving into the mysterious, claw-like fogbank hanging over the hills approaching San Francisco, visiting the newly renovated California Academy of Sciences ($50 admission-ouch!) and marveling at the green rooftop, complete with grass, maritime skylights, weather detector...and plunging inside to float among luminous jellyfish, an albino alligator, and so many other undersea wonders. Felt a little guilty about eating sushi just afterward at Hotei on 9th Avenue, but also reveled in feelings of the past, when we shared dating bliss at many a sushi meal in that neighborhood just seven years ago....