Starting the New Year with Yums

Happy 2013 everybody! I'm leaving behind 2012 and entering the new year with a bit of trepidation, since it will be a year of much work and many changes and decisions to be made for our family. Also, this weekend The Little Man (TLM) will be officially entering the so-called "terrible twos," which he is already showing some signs of, in terms of voicing his opinions more loudly and decisively. However, in keeping with what I've been learning about staying positive, I am also seeing the challenges up ahead as an opportunity for many new adventures and achievements. Also, TLM has always been remarkably well-tempered and continues to be so the majority of the time, so I'm holding out hope that his twos will be more terrific than terrible. Most importantly, it's good to remember that in 2013 God will lead and provide, as always.

I've done my share of New Year's Resolutions, but this year I'm calling them Plans for 2013 Improvement (it seems more solid and promising). One thing we have always been mindful of in our home is healthy nutrition. We try our best to purchase food that is ethically grown and free of harmful substances. I am a Seventh-Day Adventist, and health and wellness are a big part of my church's ministry. I am grateful that this has given me a life-long background in health awareness. Lately we turned our attention to not only eating healthy things, but also going down to our preferred weights--two things that don't always happen together. Turns out if you eat too much of healthy food, you still gain weight! Anyway, I decided I was ready to be rid of my accumulated college/grad school/baby pounds once and for all, so I stopped beating around the bush and went all in. I have been on Jenny Craig since September, and I'm happy to say it is actually working really well. It involves picking up meals, but it also includes adding your own vegetables, fruits and dairy products.

Since one of my 2013 plans is to "Do It Now," or stop putting off doing things I want/need to do, I signed up for Groupon (which I had meant to do for a while) and happily found a deal for a CSA in my area (something else I had been investigating for months for never actually did). CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and involves paying a subscription fee to get a box of delicious fresh foods delivered to your door (or a pick-up location nearby) from a local organic farm. This fulfills both our plans to eat a larger variety of fresh produce and to support local agriculture, especially since we've gone to visit some of those local farms with TLM. If you haven't done so, I highly recommend looking up farms in your area to see if they have visitor days. Some have animals to look at and hiking trails, which are great activities for littles.

But anyway, I just finished signing up, and we'll be getting our first box next week. They even include some recipes for the items they give us. I'm so excited!
Here's what we'll be getting - any suggestions?

	12	cnt		Satsuma Mandarin Orange
	3	cnt		Gala Apple
	3	cnt		Navel Orange
	2	cnt		Meyer Lemon
	1.5	lb		King Richard Leeks
	1	cnt		Butternut Squash, winter
	1	bu		Red Beets
	1	bu		Nantes Carrot
	1	bu		Bunched Broccoli
	1	bu		Assorted Kale
	1	cnt		Bulb Fennel

Violins, Stop-Motion and Vinyl - What Could Be Better?

In following one of those procrastinator-friendly chains of online browsing, I happened onto several very cool things today, culminating in a music video from a collaboration album between violinist Hilary Hahn and Hauschka, called Silfra, and featuring a fabulous stop-motion animation by Hayley Morris. Let me see if I can trace the degrees of separation and highlight some of the treats along the way.

I started out from my FB homepage, which I hadn't visited in a while. I saw a post by a guitarist friend I haven't seen in years and from there went to browse his page. I noticed violinist Hilary Hahn among his "likes" and, a fan and player of violins myself, followed the chain to her page. I took a side trip from a link there to this article on the website "Vintage Guide to Texas" (those of you who know I'm a transplanted Texan and have a weakness for vintage can see how this was an inescapable trap). The article was there because it mentions that Hahn's album, the forementioned Silfra, was presented for sale ON VINYL during intermission at the  Dallas Symphony (swoon!). The article then goes on to talk about the return of vinyl and its superiority over other formats (word!).

At this point you can see an almost unbelievable series of irresistible crumbs seemingly left for me specifically by some (beneficent or malevolent?) guiding force of the global inter-webs (who clearly is an enemy of my dissertation). From the article I went to the album website, lured by the (a) violinist, (b) the album cover art (love!) and (c) the possibility of a good excuse to buy my one of my favorite things - one of those cool vinyl/mp3 combo albums (the record comes with a code to download a digital copy - what else can a millennial girl ask for from her music?). Once there I went to check out the advertised music video for "Bounce Bounce," was delighted by the animation, jumped to check out the page of the director and animator Hayley Morris, and was even more delighted by the photographic proof of her surely enchanting elven childhood, affinity to things miniature (me too me too!) and the rest of the description of her sources of inspiration.

Has there ever been a more worthy and fruitful internet chain journey? I think not. With that, I leave you with the music video for "Bounce Bounce":