Resolutions, Part 2

In my last post I discussed my set of fitness resolutions. My second set of resolutions for 2010 are creative.

I am, as you know (I hope you know) a writer, a photographer and a model/actress. I have a resolution for each of these aspects of my career.

#1: I will send out at least one book proposal this year, if not two. I have already started on the legwork for this project!

#2: Enter at least 3 photo competitions.

#3 Learn my new camera inside out! It does so much that I don't know how to access yet!

#4 Work closely with my agent to land at least two TV or film gigs.

Then there are the desires...
My husband and I have been married over a year and still have not gone on our official honeymoon! We will be heading back to South Africa next December so he and his father can race together (they are both pro drivers) and we're hoping to first take out honeymoon in South America, then fly to Africa from Brazil. Ideally I'd like to see Tanzania and Namibia (the Skeleton Coast in particular) on this trip; our last trip we stayed in-country.

We spent the New Year in San Diego, as I mentioned in my previous coast, and it just reinforced how utterly ridiculous it is that we both love the water so much yet live in the desert. He loves it here, but I'm over it. Perhaps we should live someplace we both love? Neither of our careers dictate we live anyplace specific. Maybe by this time next year we'll be returning from our global jaunt to a new house on the beach! (As tempting as San Diego/La Jolla is I'd prefer to be closer to family, so the East Coast would probably be more in line...)

Resolutions, Part 1

http://www.flickr.com/photos/dafydd359/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

Aaaaaaaaand we're back! Sorry for the disappearing act. We had a guest for Christmas, as you can see in  my last entry, and just a few days after we left for San Diego, where we spent the New Year. By the way, if you really want to usher the year in right, do it while sipping mimosas in La Jolla Cove at a cozy breakfast spot on a cliff overlooking the Pacific. That, my friends, is what we call perfection.

I'm not normally big on resolutions because hello, no one ever really keeps their resolutions, do they? But this year, I've decided, is the year. This year I have two sets of resolutions - not just two resolutions, mind you, but two sets. One is a fitness set, and the other is a creative set. Let's talk about this fitness set.

It's actually relatively straightforward. I don't need to lose weight, but I certainly do need to tone up. Things have gotten awfully jiggly around here, and I do not find that amusing. I'm also not getting any younger, and the healthier I can stay now the better. Where does today's modern woman turn for fitness motivation? iPhone apps, of course! Couch to 5K, 100 Pushups and 200 Squats are my fitness resolution set monitors.

Couch to 5K is awesome, by the way. I started it last year and got about halfway through before my gym closed in the heat of the Arizona summer when running outside is a suicide mission. It basically gears you up from being a lazy slug to being able to run a 5K in nine weeks. Part of my fitness resolution set is to not only finish the Couch to 5K program, but actually run a 5K race sometime this year. This is a HUGE deal for me. I have never, ever been a runner. In fact, I often used to joke that I would only run if someone was chasing me with a knife. However, I hear this rumor that running is one of the best ways to  firm up a jiggly hindquarters, which is motivation enough for me at this point in my life!

100 Pushups and 200 Squats are programs that work in a similar manner... You gradually work your way up to the prescribed number after completing a baseline strength test. I'll end up doing 100 Pushups twice, I think. The first time I'll do it with girly pushups, because frankly I can't even do two regular pushups. Once I complete it that way, gaining tons more strength, I'll do it over again the regular way. 200 Squats should be less challenging. The other day I did the baseline test, then followed that up with my Day 1 set, and wound up totally 90 squats that day! Of course, directly before I had completed my Week 1 Day 1 of Couch to 5K, so as you can imagine walking has been rather difficult for the last two days. All three of these programs have very user-friendly iPhone apps that are easy to use at the gym.

And that gym that closed last summer? A new gym has opened in its place. I'm really happy about this because the other gyms in the area were either crappy or a further drive than I would be motivated to make (or both), and also more expensive. This gym is a 5-10 minute drive from my home, depending on traffic, has beautiful brand new equipment, a gorgeous studio for fitness classes, a huge pool and two saunas. Hopefully they will offer more yoga classes soon - the one they have now is very basic and beginner, and after practicing for ten years I want more of a challenge! Plus, this gym is in the same plaza as my hairdresser, the spa where I get my monthly facial and tanning salon. One stop shopping!

Next up: the creative set of 2010 resolutions!

Merry Christmas, etc.

You guys don't want to know how many bottles of that cava semi secco we've drank since Thursday night. It's criminal. You can imagine, then, that we've had a very merry Christmas! I hope you all did, as well. xoxo

The scent of home

http://www.flickr.com/photos/48363808@N00/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Living in the desert as I do, you miss out on a lot of wonderful natural scents throughout the year: the first riots of flowers in the spring, wet, fresh cut grass in the summer, dried crunchy leaves in the fall and real wood fires in the winter. Our flowers are more subtly scented, there are few large lawns (I actually have grass in my yard - both front and back, will wonders never cease - but it never has that amazing fresh cut smell even right after it's cut), our leaves don't change color and die in the fall (and they are small leaves anyway), and almost every fireplace is a California fireplace. Unfamiliar? It's a gas fireplace, totally glassed off in front, that "lights" with a flick of a switch. Incredibly clean and convenient, but no wood smell.

Combine that with our very tall and very beautiful but very unnatural Christmas tree (I feel bad cutting down a big, beautiful tree only to be tossed a couple of weeks later) and you really have a dearth of important scents. I love scented candles for this reason. Do yourself a favor and stay away from the cheapies. I don't care what the lady on the Glade commercial says, they do not smell like the high quality, more expensive ones.

While I'm not necessarily advocating a $40 expenditure on a single candle, I think $10-$20 is fair if the candle is truly high quality and therefor long-lasting. Target, for example, has a great line of scented soy candles and scented oil diffusers called Lume Luxe that ranges between $13-$15. My personal fave is their Blackberry Creme. It doesn't have that cloyingly sweet fruity scent you would find in a grocery store version. It is deep yet subtle, perhaps with the slightest hint of musk? It also doesn't totally overpower your room; you smell it wen you're right next to it, and the effect it has on the rest of the room is just one of freshness. Before I started using these, our home would smell stale when we came home from a long trip, but now when we open the door it smells fresh. (By the way, although the website is sold out of most of the candle scents, my local store is still fully stocked so your may be, too.)

However, Blackberry Creme isn't the most festive of scents for the holidays. I have a difficult time with fake holiday scents (as opposed to real pine from a Christmas tree, real sugar cookies baking in the oven, real candy canes in my hot chocolate, real cinnamon on my French toast) so I generally hate holiday-scented candles. There are very few scents I despise more than fake cinnamon. Fake pine is nearly as bad - like your living room was doused in generic Pine-Sol.

But today, my dears, today I found it. The perfect holiday candle. It's burning right now - in front of my California fireplace - and I'm in love. I found it in Bath and Body Works, but they don't have it on their website. It's called "Winter Cabin" and is made by Slatkin & Co. It seriously smells like a winter evening in your uncle's cabin at Lake Tahoe. Very woodsy without the fake chemical smell. The scent of burning pine logs in your fireplace without the smokey scent. It's quite lovely. Like I said, they don't seem to have it on their website; in fact, the only place I could find it online was one listing on eBay, but my local Bath & Body Works had piles so yours should, too. $20 for a 14.5 ounce, three-wick candle with a burn time of 40-65 hours. $20, in my opinion, that is well-spent for the sensory experience of the holidays when your area is lacking in such.

PS - Here's the full line of Slatkin & Co candles offered on the Bath & Body Works website. The one called "Winter" is not the same, nor are any of the tree scents. Definitely swing into the store and check it out if you're at the mall finishing up your shopping this week!

Christmas with friends

Photo copyright Bloom Creatives 2008. All Rights Reserved.

My husband and I are fortunate enough to be welcoming a dear friend into our home for Christmas. She arrives the afternoon of Christmas Eve and will be spending the long weekend with us. This is perfect timing because I have just discovered a wonderful blog called The Blushing Hostess Entertains, written by another old friend of mine with whom I recently reconnected on Facebook. (Isn't Facebook great sometimes?) Catherine, the writer, is someone I have long admired for her poise, success (both personal and professional) and warmth. I spent a memorable summer living with a mutual friend in the lovely town of Bedford, NY, and Catherine was always kind enough to at least pretend to turn a blind eye to my heathen ways. Her blog reminded me that my cloth napkins are all terribly stained and that I needed to purchase new ones right away. For shame! Now I have a nice stack of brand new, sparkling white cloth napkins, and hopefully a box full of the remainder of my wedding china on its way if I've guessed my mother's gift correctly. (Fingers crossed!)

Isn't it amazing how one changes through the years? I'm truly interested in napkins and dinnerware, new cookware, what to make for dinner, etc. I used to go to raves. Now, however, I am spending my Sunday evening carefully spreading anti-wrinkle serum under my eyes (perhaps I should have gone to fewer of those raves) and planning our Christmas menu.

I'm mainly looking at Christmas Eve dinner, Christmas brunch and Christmas dinner. The rest of the weekend will be more casual and of course will be planned, too, but those are the biggies.  Brunch I think will be bagels, cream cheese, lox, bacon, eggs, coffee, mimosas and fresh fruit.

Here are a few things I'm toying with for Christmas Eve:
A lovely white wine (will see what AJ's has in stock)
Crudite and toasted flatbread with fresh hummus (probably artichoke and red pepper)
My variation of Quiche au Frommage (using Jarlsberg and mozzarella, sauteed onion and bacon)
Baby spinach, pear and walnut salad
Dessert: Rum egg nog

Christmas dinner:
A lovely pinot noir
Rib roast with roasted garlic thyme sauce OR Roasted rack of lamb (my vote is for this, as I already have one in the freezer)
Creamed corn pudding (I made this for Thanksgiving and forgot to put it out, but the bit I tasted beforehand was delicious. Did not reheat well, so we'll have to eat it all. Also, just use frozen corn, for crying out loud.)
Lemon-thyme green beans
Popovers with cheese and herbs
Dessert - Malva pudding (a traditional Afrikaans dessert in honor of the South African heritage of the hubs),  substituting this vanilla custard sauce for the one in the pudding recipe
Asti Moscato

Sexy time with Sade

Ah, Sade, how you have been missed. The smooth songstress will release her sixth album, Soldier of Love, on February 8, 2010 - just in time for a cozy Valentine's Day. Judging from this single teaser, it is everything you want in a Sade album - sexy, sultry, with the perfect beat for a Hollywood-style hot hot love scene in your own home.

And of course, the beautiful album art:

I miss album art. It's rare that artists include it with digital downloads from iTunes, and if then only with the whole album. (Singles at the record store used to have great art of their own.) I haven't actually bought a CD in years and have no reason to do so other than the art which, although compelling, is also a very wasteful practice. Digital downloads save resources and money. Anyway... Good album art complements and completes the musician's vision. I do wish more musicians would include them as extra files with album and single downloads.

P.S. A package arrived yesterday, addressed to my husband, from Waterstone's all the way from England... I wonder what it could be?  : ) Guess I'll have to wait until Christmas morning to find out...

Alice in Wonderland trailer!

CAN. NOT. WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cannot cannot cannot wait for Alice in Wonderland to come out! Tim Burton is the absolute most perfect director for this flick. Did I say I cannot wait? Because I cannot wait.