Before & After: Bistro Chairs

Before: Our patio table was cheap and dated looking, and the grill was hogging up a lot of extra room. 

Minnesotans cherish their summertime. With the winters we endure here, being outside in pleasant weather takes on a religious fervor. Living in the city means we have to maximize every inch of available outdoor space, since we don't have a large yard. This patio is a shared space, regularly used by most of the residents in our building.

We've been revamping this outdoor room since we moved in two years ago, living with it and making adjustments as we thought of them or could afford it. We replaced a glaring overhead light with softly glowing cafe lights using a lightbulb outlet converter to avoid hiring an electrician to rewire our 120 year old house. I planted herbs in the window boxes and switched out a tired, not-so-white-anymore rug for a more durable black one to handle the heavy traffic of the front entrance. I also rehabbed the mailboxes with chalkboard paint, a great move for an apartment building where the names on the boxes change frequently.

The final touch was replacing this ghastly patio table and chairs, that's been around the place for more than ten years. I hated the cheap looking plastic chairs, and the umbrella hole in a table sitting on a covered porch. We also added a grill to the set up, but it all felt quite tight and constricted.

I found a few patio ideas I liked online at Target and World Market, but I felt they were overpriced for their quality, style and durability. I needed a round table that could comfortably seat four. I decided to see what I could find locally.

Before: We purchased 10 of these bistro chairs
on Craigslist for $70. 

We found a lovely wicker table with a heavy glass top on Craigslist that looked right at home outside. We found the chairs separately, though they needed some serious rehabbing. They were rusty and the seats needed cushions to make them comfortable enough for daily use. However, the shape was just what I was looking for, and I felt up to a little elbow grease. Poor Eric got suckered in too.

He kindly and dutifully scrubbed down all ten chairs with sandpaper and steel wool. Then he coated
the chairs with  Rustoleum spray-paint in Soft Iron. He also found replacement chair feet to keep them from scratching up the deck.

Next, I went over to S.R. Harris to pick up cushion foam and upholstery fabric. I painstakingly traced the wooden seats onto the foam, and cut it out. I used the seat as a pattern for the fabric too, adding four inches to the perimeter of the circle to allow it to comfortably cover the seat. I used a staple gun to cover the cushions, and Eric screwed them back in.

We also moved the grill to a smaller, unused nook on the other side of the patio which opened up a lot of space and helped it all to feel much more relaxed and inviting. The grill is getting more play too, since it's far easier to cook without bumping into the table and chairs. As a final touch, I've been toying with an indoor outdoor rug under the eating area, but I think there is just too much dust and debris to keep it looking great.

After: Painstaking Sanding, Spraypainting and reupholstering gave us a pretty new look. 

I'm pretty delighted with the results of all the tinkering. I think it looks far more polished and airy and I like the way the new furniture complements the iron railings and accents the orange red shades of the bricks. We've been spending lots of time out here already, and the new look feels much more inviting to me.

Do you have any "outdoor rooms" at your place? What have you done to make them more user friendly? If you have mosquito prevention tricks, I'd love to hear them!

The Big Reveal: What Scares Me About Motherhood

The Venus of Willendorf, a paleolithic image of motherhood. 

If you want people to reveal themselves to you in surprising ways, I highly recommend pregnancy. A telltale belly brings a steady stream of people sharing their labor stories, offering snippets of parenting wisdom and unloading their fears and anxieties. It's fascinating.

Pregnancy in Conversation 

"How are you feeling?" is a common question, clearly meant as a friendly gesture. The truth is that my body has very much enjoyed pregnancy so far. I'm in my 19th week, and I've been quite comfortable- no morning sickness, no swelling, no aches or pains. Just breasts that have ripened to four times their normal size- perhaps the size of smallish cantaloupe. What I've discovered is that this question is often an opportunity for the asker to delve into the trials and tribulations of their own pregnancy, highlighting each and every moment of suffering. Sometimes people even seem slightly disappointed when I answer that I feel marvelous.

Another thing that happens when you're pregnant is that people start to tell you all the things you won't ever do again. Now that you're an expectant parent, heels are apparently out, (too hard on your back) as is jewelry that baby may want to grab and cling to. Going to the theater will never happen again because finding a babysitter is nearly impossible, and besides, you'll never want to leave your baby for a single instant.

What Scares Me about Motherhood

I hesitate to even go on the record with these observations, since I concede the possibility that this advice is all true. I know that having a child will change my life in ways I cannot forsee. But to me, that's the adventure of the thing. I'd like to let it unfold without preconceptions.

The thing I fear most about parenthood is a condition of overwhelmed frumpiness. In our culture, the stressed out mom who tries to do it all is both celebrated and vilified. There are at least two prototypes.

The All Star Mom

She's a PTA leading, cupcake baking, designer diaper bag wielding cliche. Her google calendar is overflowing with band practices, birthday parties and horseback riding lessons but she still finds time to have her hair blown out, pull together a chic outfit and run a lifestyle business empire on the side. Let's call Gwyneth Paltrow a prototypical example. Our culture would have us believe that this woman is the ideal who we should all aspire to emulate. If we can't be her, we are doomed to hate her because she appears to succeed where we fail.

The Mom Who Laughs It Off

She has given up totally on herself in order to meet the extraordinary demands of parenthood. She hasn't bothered to find a bra that fits after giving birth and is still running around in a sagging nursing bra with frayed elastic. She hasn't had a haircut in years. Every ounce of energy goes into catering to her family. It's all about feeding them, getting them where they need to be and then collapsing in a heap whenever possible, heaving deep sighs and making humorous, self deprecating comments about how little she's managed to accomplish. Our culture idealizes and condemns this mom too. There is a special kind of adoration  for her self sacrifice and willingness to become small in the service of others. And yet, we also wish she could just get it together.

And then, There's Parenthood. 

I feel convinced that there is an experience of parenthood that exists beyond these dualities. What babies do is simple: they exist in the present moment. That's what makes them such holy beings. We look at them and recognize how special it is to live in a sensory world without judgement. We marvel at their life of unknowable possibility.

I believe the job of parenthood is to observe the unfolding of a child's life as it happens across many years. You are a witness as they develop into unique beings with their own curious habits, personalities and talents. I believe that holding to that sacred duty should make you more of what you are. Being a parent isn't about making your child the center of your universe at the expense of all else. It's about bearing witness to their remarkable process of discovery, growth and self actualization. Of course, that means finding new depths within yourself, not giving up on high heels or the theater.

Book Report: The Unsettling of America

Wendell Berry has been calling me for many years. His thoughts glowed like gems in Michael Pollan's books and I've heard his poems from time to time on The Writer's Almanac. But, my illuminated path brought me to him now, at this moment, after about a year of settling into the Waldorf approach to education, and family life.

The Unsettling of Americais about farming, but it's author argues that this subject touches all others. His central argument is that the Industrial Revolution was dedicated to specialization and expertise, which eventually lead to isolation. Modern life has applied specialization and the rule of experts to every aspect of human existence; in farms, factories, schools, hospitals, churches and banks. The trouble is that isolation is deadly to a human being. We thrive on making connections, on our sense of being part of a whole, and on working jointly. 

Though this title was first published in 1975, many of the problems he described  have become further exaggerated. For an example, look at our increased reliance on technology that insists that we connect to each other by being alone in a room sitting before a screen. Consider the way consumerism has become the supreme method of personal expression and goods have become cheap in both senses- inexpensive, yes, but shoddy and disposable too. 

This dislocation and constant striving to separate systems into finer and finer parts, is what I find so deeply appealing about the Waldorf approach. At it's best, it is rooted firmly in holism.

I am not a machine that can be separated into parts and then reassembled, made to run quicker, faster, and more efficiently. Instead, I am a creature with parts that all function differently, but rely on complex integration to work with greater depth and wisdom over time, as I develop my capacities.

I have a spirit, which can experience things my mind and body cannot. It can sense elation, freedom and despair. It knows things my mind and body don't- it has foresight, and the power to restore. It relishes mystery, beauty and the unknowable.

I have a body, which gives physical sensation to my existence- it gives me access to the bounty of sensual experience, the delight of a ripe cherry- perhaps too many, like Zorba the Greek. My body knows the pleasure of sinking into my bed after a long day of hard work, the smell of my husband's unwashed hair, or the texture of his beard on the soft skin of my neck.

I have a mind which relishes the task of absorbing new information, then analyzing it's strengths and weaknesses, then synthesizing it into something that belongs to me because I have applied myself to it and created my own thought from it. My mind enjoys a puzzle, a challenge, sorting, organizing and solving.

But none of these parts of my being can function totally independently of one another. My body must be fed and well for my mind to be engaged. My spirit must be willing, even delighted, for my mind to take on the task of learning with sustained effort. My body's sensations are what help me feel the existence of my spirit- the soaring feeling in my chest that echoes and thrums in the soaring arches of St. Peter's Basillica- that is my spirit stirring restlessly, but it was my body that let me feel it's existence, and my mind that helped me name and reflect on it.

The point is that for me as a human being, these complex systems must interact and work together. They can't be singled out or walled off from one another and still allow me to grow and change- which is what all healthy living things must do.

Here is one particularly eloquent passage about unity. He quotes Sir Albert Howard's words: "Real organization always involves real responsibility," and describes how this man went from the laboratory to the fields to stop studying and start knowing.

"He unspecialized his vision, so as to see the necessary unity of the concerns of agriculture, as well as the convergence of these concerns with concerns of other kinds: biological, historical, medical, moral  and so on. He sought to establish upon agriculture the same kind of unifying cycle that preserves health, fertility and renewal in nature: The Wheel of Life, by which death supersedes life and rises again from what is dying and decayed.

It remains to be said only what has often been said before, that the best human cultures also have this unity. Their concerns and enterprises are not fragmented, scattered out,  at variance or in contention with one another...If a culture is to hope for any considerable longevity, then the relationships within it must, in recognition of their interdependence, be predominantly cooperative, rather than competitive.

A people cannot live long at each other's expense or at the expense of their cultural birthright-just as an agriculture cannot live long at the expense of it's soil or it's workforce, just as in a natural system the competitions among species must be limited if all are to survive...

The definitive relationships in the universe are thus not competitive, but interdependent...Under the discipline of unity, knowledge and morality come together...To know anything at all becomes a moral predicament. Aware that there is no such thing as a specialized- or even an entirely limitable or controllable-effect, one becomes responsible for judgments as well as facts. Aware that as an agricultural scientist he had 'one great subject' Sir Albert Howard could no longer ask What can I do with what I know? without also asking How can I be responsible for what I know? "

Unity offers the sense of purpose and responsibility that is so woefully absent from the culture I live in. If I can see myself as part of the place I live in, with other people who depend on me and on whom I depend, then the decisions I make have a greater weight, because they are not contained to my life alone.

When I am responsible only for myself, I don't always make healthy or conscientious decisions. (Like, eating PopTarts for dinner with the T.V on.) But when I am responsible to those around me, I am motivated to do my best. (Cooking for days to prepare a Thanksgiving feast for our community of transplanted friends in Hawaii.) Simplistic examples, to be sure, but tangible ones.

Money is like Manure.

Money, Money, Money, Money. It's fascinating stuff. I'm not very accountable with the little bit that I do have- I spend it on eating out, entertainment, shopping, and it's easy to lose sight of long term goals. Since Eric and I have a goal of running Becky Kazana together full time, I recently decided to actually write down those goals, so I'd have a way to measure our progress and to remind myself of the larger benefits of the daily sacrifices it takes to be thrifty.

I turned our goals into an illustration for our fridge. It'a an interesting portrait- remember what Holly Golightly's mobster accountant tells her in Breakfast at Tiffany's? He says her receipts could be turned into a best selling novel. I imagine that's true of almost anyone's bank account.

Our goals include saving money for a baby or two, money for our emotional and physical health, money for travel (those are airplanes, dressed in the national costumes of places we might want to visit!) and money as a result of creative work- a reward for being a producer, not just a consumer.

Another of my cherished movie axioms about money comes from Hello, Dolly!. She quotes her late husband, saying "Money is like manure. It should be spread around, encouraging young things to grow." Originally, I loved his because I thought of it as avoiding stinginess or miserliness. You can't take it with you, so enjoy it, right? But I think it also means that wealth is something that you must cultivate, care for. Money on it's own isn't an end. It's what you can grow with it, what you nurture with it that makes it valuable. For me, that's my health- my relationships, my body, my mind, and the experiences I will gather over the course of a lifetime. It isn't things, the way I used to think it would be.

City Groceries

One of the great pleasures of living in a city again has been the access to such extraordinary food. In Hawaii, we enjoyed beautiful local papayas, with their orange pink flesh and black seeds glistening like shiny pearls, freshly caught ahi in sushi and poke studded with salt and black pepper, and local favorites like crunchy, salty sweet seaweed salad and roasted seaweed chips. But for fine dining, we were mostly on our own. There was nothing to be had but overpriced steaks and chocolate lava cake.

Here in Minneapolis, there is no shortage of incredible places to try, and we've had fun working our way through. The Lowry, Rye,  Burch Steak, Sebastian Joe's, Nightengale and Roat Osha are all within walking distance.

But the grocery stores have been the most refreshing change of pace. We live across from The Wedge which is a community run co-op, and the place we go most frequently for a gallon of milk or eggs. But Kowalski's is definitely my favorite stop. It's a luxe shopping experience, with beautiful lighting and aisles set closer together to feel more like a boutique than a supermarket. Last time I was in, I discovered some recipe cards for creating a perfect cheese board, complete with suggestions for cracker, jam and wine pairings. I felt inspired to have a fall wine and cheese party, and started musing about music, a guest list and which linens to use. It made me glad to be back in a city again, where access to fine things is as simple as a stroll down my block.

Mailbox Refresher

Our mailboxes looked like this. I took matters into my own hands. Goo gone and a razor blade got the sticky mishmash of labels off. I sanded them with a fine grade sandpaper and gave them several coats of black Chalkboard Paint .  

Next, I used a chalk pen to write all the names directly on the box. It's a great solution for an apartment, because we can just wipe it clean when someone moves in or out and add the new line up of names. Our mail carrier actually thanked me. "I can see who lives here!" she said.

 I"m looking forward to returning to my long absence from blogging soon, I need to reclaim my creative space and am glad to have this spot waiting. Where are your creative energies flowing right now?

Makeover the Moon

 I found this little fellow during a thrifting expedition. He decided to come home with me and spent a few months serving as a paperweight on my desk. I liked his hand carved features, but wasn't sure how best to accentuate them. Then a few weeks ago, inspiration struck and I spent a pleasant morning on my front porch with a cup of coffee, sanding out his rough edges. Next, I added a little iridescent paint and an eye screw. I strung a few glass glitter stars strung on some fishing line and...

now he's shimmering and swinging sweet dreams over our heads each night. I'm crazy about his garbo-esque eyebrows. After all, if the moon can't get away with stage makeup, who can? What have you made new lately?

Delicious Caramels & Caramel Corn from Annie B's!

Annie B's makes incredible caramels and candied popcorn. They are always running fun contests on their Facebook and Twitter pages.

They recently asked: In 10 words or less, tell us why your mom is the best, and win her some caramel-y goodness!

I replied: She still hasn't stopped reading me fairy tales. I'm 30. #WhyMyMomRules #GiveHerCandy

I made the mistake of having them send the candy loot to my house- when really, it should have gone to straight to my wonderful mum. I think you know what happened next... The sweet note inside warned that the popcorn was especially addictive, and it didn't take me long to polish it off.

In fact, I just had to place another order to make it up to my sweet mother, who really does still read me fairy tales.

Best of all, the caramel corn is gluten free, perfect for my Mom, recently diagnosed with Celiac disease and who recently celebrated one year of living gluten-free. She says she feels like a new woman since cutting out flour

I have a feeling she's going to enjoy every sweet, salty, buttery and delicious morsel.

Merci Annie B's!

Escape from the Internet: A Digital Diet for Creativity

Escape Key by Elhorno

Being submerged in the internet for work each day means that managing my screen time has become a central issue in my life. I'm developing tricks for limiting technology use so I can stay present in my life. One is the digital diet outlined here. I like the simple metaphor of food he uses, because we all have to eat, but what, how much and when, all need to be tailored to our own bodies. 

I've personalized my digital diet by staying offline before and after work, (including my smartphone). For me, the five to eight hour window at work to check and reply to emails and get updated on Facebook is more than sufficient. I've also begun using mindfulness practices, list making and task batching to keep focused- a huge challenge since managing social media is my job! The cyclops we know as television is still part of my life, though I like to keep it at less than one hour per day, preferably none. 

However, none of this addresses the issue of finding time to be creative outside of work. Brene Brown says, "Unused creativity is not benign. It metastasizes." This haunts me, and I feel it with increasing urgency being back in a city so devoted to the arts. 

I've been trying to see a live arts performance at least once a month, since the Twin Cities is second only to New York City in theater seats per capita. The quality is impressive, and it's quite affordable if we see something edgy. During each of these performances, I feel that pang Brown spoke of. It's a squeeze of admiration, awe and jealousy for the people up on stage who are living their dream so fearlessly. It's not that I want to be a great actor. It's that I am an artist and I am not practicing my art. 

In the film Pollock, Lee Krasner says, "You are Jackson Pollock and you don't paint!", and it is her deepest recrimination. He's also a womanizer, and an alcoholic, but she can't forgive how he has turned his back on his talent. 

When I had the luxury of more time to pursue my creative work, I often wasted it on household tasks. I love to potter around my house, baking, organizing, crafting and sometimes, blogging about it. But do those things develop me as an artist? They are creative, but are they art? Are they the one, unique song of my soul? 

I don't think so. They are things I do to feel productive, without actually tackling the work. Artistic work is internal, it means peering into your own soul and seeing what bubbles up from that dark, deep, mysterious well. The housework is tangible, I can see the result when I sort my underwear drawer or mop the floor. Art  sometimes has a physical result, a drawing, an essay, but that isn't the reason for it. That is just an after image, a footprint, a shadow. The real thing art does is to fills you up, in an invisible way, with satisfaction at the effort of looking, taking, and making. It also fills you with a yearning for more of that. 

So how can it be that something so good for me can be so hard to do? So hard to make time for? What is stopping me? My jobs aren't stopping me. My housework isn't stopping me. The internet isn't stopping me. It's me stopping me. But why? Where does fear come from when only good things have ever come from practicing art? 

Do you wrestle with finding time to be creative? Do you want to take the time to listen to the song of your heart, but also feel afraid to listen? 

How to Choose a Yoga Studio

"Shoulder Stand" Original Drawing by Becky Kazana. Please do no reproduce without permission.  

Finding the right yoga studio is like choosing a church. You are looking for something intangible, a mood, a vibe. All of these places are pretty similar; usually clean, bare rooms with polished wood floors, maybe a wall of mirrors, maybe plants, maybe candles, maybe a singing bowl. Some use music, some don't. Some are hot, some warm, some cool. The teachers are important, but you will learn something from every person you take class with. The style of yoga is part of it- but you will learn something from every practice, from Hatha to Bikram.

Since arriving in Minneapolis, I'd gone the Groupon route, trying out Heat Yoga, Core Power, Minnehaha Yoga, Your Yoga, and Yoga Studio. I've barely scratched the surface of studios in my area- there is Life Power, Iyengar Yoga and a Bikram studio, all within easy walking distance of my apartment.

So far, One Yoga has definitely been my favorite. They offer a wide variety of classes in many styles, almost every hour, so there is always a class that is convenient. But the intangible something is in the air. Bold letters on the door announce "YOU ARE ENTERING A CALM PLACE." and it's true. You can feel it when you walk in. The rush and bustle drain away as you pull off your wet boots and hang your coat on a peg, find a spot to unfurl your mat and go inward, slowly and deeply.

During practice recently, I had an idea to make this drawing. I love looking at my legs and feet in shoulder stand- they always look so tiny and far off up there, and it's nice to send all the blood flowing in the opposite direction from feet to head for a change. I often have a dream that I am looking at my hands, feet or body from a distance as they slowly swell gigantic and then shrink back down to teeny tiny, and somehow this pose reminds me of that. Everything in your life is a matter of perspective, plain and simple.

Do you practice yoga? What's your favorite pose right now? What do you look for in a teacher? A studio? Do tell!

Movie Review: Ruby Sparks

Ruby Sparksis the story of a wunderkind writer, Calvin, who wrote a masterpiece as a teenager. Now in his  thirties, he's trying to come up with a second novel. He's suffering from writer's block. It's terrible. He's seeing a shrink and his only real friend is his brother. He's gotten a puppy called Scotty, who appears to be as neurotic as he is (he pees like a girl dog), in the vague hope that a dog will help him meet people when he's hiking.

One night he dreams about a beautiful red headed girl, back-lit by the sun, and begins to write about her. His writer's block seems cured- he's writing obsessively about Ruby, as though through the typewriter he's actually spending time with her. He realizes that he's falling in love with this character- and that she isn't real. But he is too lonely, too full of anxiety to stop writing.

That's when Ruby turns up in his kitchen, exactly as he'd envisioned her in the dream, munching on cereal. He's terrified at first, convinced that he's losing his mind. When he takes her out on the street and strangers can see her too, he stops resisting. Why shouldn't he fall in love with her? After all, she's the perfect woman, his dream girl! She was made for him- by him.

Now, in a typical romantic comedy, things would play out from here along the silliest and most trivial lines. But here, they go for the jugular to get at the heart of what makes relationships so difficult.

All relationships are like a mirror. The people we love show us things about ourselves. A new lover, especially reflects a version of yourself that you want to believe in and adore. But as time goes on, the beautiful light fades. We are forced to see ourselves as we really are in the mundane, day-to-day moments of our lives. When faced with our own imperfections, we don't want to gaze as closely at ourselves, and so we begin to look for imperfections in the other person instead.

That moment of dissatisfaction is where the premise of Ruby Sparks gets really interesting. What if you can change the person you're in love with? What if you can control what they say and do? This is the perfect scenario, right? They will love you unconditionally, and you will never have to change.

Calvin tries to resist at first, but it starts to look as if Ruby might not stay with him left to her own free will, and he changes the rule book. He begins to tinker with her, adding lines to his novel so that she will adore him more, never want to leave him, and be miserable without him. She becomes despondent when he goes out to get the mail. In following scenes, she clings to him like a drowning man to a piece of driftwood. Unable to take life as a conjoined twin, he writes instead that she is filled with joy. Suddenly Ruby is deliriously  vacantly, creepily happy about absolutely everything.

Calvin discovers that controlling Ruby's thoughts and feelings destroys his reasons for loving her. Free will is essential to the idea of true love. It's part of the mystery of it- that someone could have the planet full of people to chose from, and from those billions, they plucked you, and you them. What a beautiful mystery!

I won't spoil the resolution for you, I will simply say that this film was a wonderfully thorough investigation of why and how love works and how freedom and risk are the only ways to the ecstasy of true love.

Mama Artists

Having babies has been on my "Maybe Someday" list for a long time. But something is shifting.

Eric surprised me with tickets to Verdi's La Traviata at the Cowles Center. It was a stripped down production with no sets or costumes. One of the sopranos was gloriously, Venus of Willendorf-ishly pregnant. She stood in the spotlights in her black evening gown, hair spun into a French twist, neck and wrists dripping with glittering jewelry. I couldn't stop looking at her belly as she sang- watching it lift and pulse as she belted out arias. I imagined the little baby inside of her, listening to those sounds vibrating all around her body, comprehending none of it, but understanding it perfectly.

A few weeks later, we went to see the James Sewell Ballet at the very same theater. The dances ranged from traditional to modern, the performers wearing tutus in one sequence and leopard spotted spandex in another. One of the dancers, long and lanky with acres of neck and legs, was also pregnant. She wore a sheer black blouse over a black bra and tiny shorts- her belly sitting low and oval, like an ostrich egg. Her pregnancy was unmistakable and yet not the first thing you noticed. Her confidence and self possession shined out of every movement she made. She leaped and jumped all over the stage, so light and free in her changed body. I wondered the about her and her baby- what was their life like? How had she decided to get pregnant? Was this her first baby? Did she ever feel nervous moving like that with a baby?

I thought about these two women for weeks. How strange see two hometown performers in different mediums both pregnant at separate shows only a few weeks apart. Both women were doing creative work that demanded so much from their bodies- they had to be completely engaged in what they were doing. Both could have opted out, maybe were even advised to, yet neither one did.

You can choose to become lost to yourself. You can ignore the lessons life offers you by looking at the wrong things, avoiding pain, deadening your feelings, zoning out. So it must be the same with parenthood. Children can either be something to lose yourself in, or something to discover yourself through.

Entering into parenthood feels even more sacred than marriage to me. You are guiding a spirit into a body, teaching it how to be human, how to move through the world. You must be worthy of imitation, in the words of Rudolf Steiner. It fills me with awe to even think of it- bringing something from the void. By mixing my soul with my husband's, we can bring forth a new being- it's such an honor and tremendous responsibility.

That's why seeing those Mamas up there touched me so much- I couldn't look away. For them, motherhood didn't stop their work, it enhanced it. It pushed them further into the mystery of living, pushed them deeper into the reasons they make art to begin with. At it's best, art puts you in touch with the unknowable, the awesome, the deep possibilities. And at it's best, parenthood offers you the same lessons. I wonder why I never understood that before.

A Murder of Crows Stay the Night

"A Murder of Crows" original illustration by Becky Kazana. Please do not reproduce without permission. 

Crows don't migrate like some birds, and there is a massive group of them circling in Minneapolis this winter. You can see them fluttering through the air like bits of singed paper, especially in the evenings at dusk. I've seen them roosting in different places- always in tall trees and often in loosely formed clusters, not too near one another, but most definitely in a group.

The other night as we were starting dinner, I noticed their calls outside the window and went to look out. Sure enough, they were all settling in the tall oak trees that line our street. These glossy black birds are so associated with Gothic literature and bad omens, (a group of crows is called a "murder" after all,) that it felt a little eerie. On the other hand, Eric loves to tell me how they are among the smartest animals on earth, able to solve complex problems, use tools and recognize and distinguish human faces. It's not their fault Edgar Allen Poe decided to immortalize one in a spooky poem.

Their acrid calls and awkward shuffling is rather endearing when you imagine them as a gaggle of cranky old men. They certainly were striking up there silhouetted in the tangle of branches as the sky darkened around them. In the morning, they were all gone, a spray of splintered branches on the sidewalk and snow the only evidence of their night spent on our street.

TCB Means Taking Care of Business

Elvis had a personal crest of sorts; a lighting bolt emblazoned with the letters TCB. It stands for Taking Care of Business. Since reading Peter Guralnick's monumental two part biography of The King, TCB has become part of our household lingo. We've even created our own complementary phrase, TAB, which stands for Taking A Break. Eric and I like to joke that we're always doing one or the other.

For my 30th birthday, Eric presented me with a sterling silver replica ofElvis's own TCB design. The necklace is my secret good luck charm and I love to wear it under my clothes on days when I know I need extra stamina. There have been lots of those days lately. I feel like I'm moving at top speed from place to place, ticking task after task off my to do list. It makes me feel like Superman.

Do you have any household lingo? Or a little trick to make you feel invincible on days you know you're gonna need it?

Flower Arrangement of the Month: February

Trader Joe's is one of my favorite places to pick up flowers during the winter- they have a lovely selection to mix and match and have alternatives to the carnations and gerber daisies found in most grocery stores. I'm hoping to carry on with my fitful arrangement of the month series now that we're a bit more settled in. Things will be thawing out here any moment and spring flowers bring an almost painful pang of joy to my heart. Those first crocuses are mighty brave flowers, to poke through the snow and slush.

This arrangement features red tulips, burgundy godetia and, my favorites, orange roses. Pinch the blooms at their base when you are choosing them- they should feel firm but not too stiff. This signals that they are ready to open beautifully the way these did. Too firm and they stay tightly shut before withering. Too soft and the heads go limp. I would have added a berry of some sort and maybe a bit of curly willow, had money been no object. I love making romantic arrangements at Valentine's day that don't involve a dozen red roses. After my years at Dilly Lily, there is nothing I find more boring.

Did you get flowers this Valentine's Day? I loved Tahiti's take on being your own Valentine- great advice!

Soaking in Winter with Old Friends

Soaking in Winter original illustration by Becky Kazana. Email me to purchase. Do not reproduce without permission. 

A few weeks back, Prem invited us for roll your own sushi night- we had fun making rice, chopping fish, frying tempura, making a huge mess in the kitchen and getting full of tastes of this and that long before we ever sat down at the table to eat properly.

Afterwards, we went out into the moonlit snow, bravely stripped down to our swimsuits in the freezing air and climbed into the steaming hot tub.We four sat there talking about nothing, huddled close together, knees and feet bumping into each other from time to time in a kind of intimacy that is rare in my life here. It comes in part from having grown up together, then watching each other's lives unfold from afar. I know and love these people, and have for a long time.

The tub overlooks a pond on a golf course, frozen solid, lined with bare trees silhouetted against the clouded sky, perfectly still. For a moment, the moon passed out from under the clouds, glowing white, round and huge through the veils of cloud and we all looked up at it in silence. There was the gurgling of the water around us, the crackle and ping of the ice, the gentle flutter of the snow settling over the ground and steam rising up around our faces, turned up towards the sky.

Before & After: Becky Kazana World Headquarters

One of the challenges with living small and working from home is finding a way to concentrate on work tasks when personal tasks (that pile of breakfast dishes, the grocery list, the lure of facebook) surround you. Living in such a small space, we desperately needed an office space to shut out chores and concentrate on growing our business. 

My Dad's massive Victorian house had a tool room in dire need of organization. Though of ample size, precious floor space was squandered; strewn with tools, construction remnants, paint cans, electric supplies and various furniture left by previous tenants.  I felt certain that we could relocate the tool room to a walk in closet by editing and organizing, leaving this space free to become Becky Kazana World Headquarters! Here's what it looked like when we started out:



Yikes! The room was so choked with clutter, I could hardly get photos of the space.

After several hours of work, with the mantra "Like Things Together", I started to create some space. I pulled out anything I could sell on craigslist. All told, I made $175 selling items we found down here, all of which went back into the house. Still scary, but looking a great deal better.

Once my dad (on the left) saw the room cleared out, he started to get excited about really making it special. I had planned to move in "as is", perhaps with a coat of paint or two but he called his construction expert Tom (on the right), and got things rolling. The first concern was containing the asbestos paint on the ceiling, which they sealed up by powder coating with paint. The ugly pipes snaking overhead disappeared when the ceiling was painted black, which hid the pipes without sacrificing height. Then an electrician installed several florescent lights and additional outlets on each wall. It was incredible to see the transformation of brilliant light- the room suddenly seemed like a legitimate work space, no longer part of a dingy old basement. But it also shined brightly on the cracked and crumbling concrete walls and floor!

 A bucket of leveler helped even out the dips and crevices in the floor and gave us a smooth surface on which to install a beautiful wood floor. Eric spent quite a lot of time on his knees with a bucket of glue and a jug of foul smelling mineral spirits to get it installed.

My dad had a stack of pine lumber cut from our backyard (my friends may recall the infamous Log Rolling story...) and he decided that would create a nice texture for the walls, also solving the problem of putting drywall in a damp basement where it is likely to warp and crumble. It created a nice warmth for the space and the whole room smells like pine- clean, rich and warm.

All that was left now was to furnish it. We spent a lot of time combing craigslist and made more than one Ikea trip for a row of tables that would create a long L shaped work space.

Here, at last, is the finished product. We are so proud of it. The artwork is all by talented Etsy artists; the Man Riding Lobster poster from Nate Duval, the Ironing Ostrich and Piano Playing Pachyderm are from Wild Life Prints. The matching fawn colored leather chairs were craigslist scores, hardly used from Ikea. The tables were new from Ikea. The custom monogrammed wastebasket is from Two Sisters Designs. Our lightbox is now a permanent feature in our studio, making snapping beautiful photos much easier and we have ample storage for our inventory and all my crafting supplies in the cupboards mounted on the walls. 

Our packing station is actually a cabinet door mounted at waist height so you can stand while you assemble boxes. Eric's greatest innovation has been finding a way to print first class postage at home so that our parcels can go out with the mailman on the same day, without us ever leaving the house. He also mounted a towel rack above to store tissue paper neatly.

I'm so delighted with how this project turned out- it was far better than what I had initially imagined, thanks to my Dad, my husband and the talented Tom. I know great things will happen in this little room.

Our goal is to make this our full-time income stream, with the capacity to support a family someday soon. We'd love to run a business from home, giving us the flexibility to be with our family every day. I'd like to focus on my writing, finding new outlets in free lance writing and adding new facets to the blog and website. Eric is planning to expand our sales outlets to include Amazon and Ebay, in addition to Etsy.

These are big dreams for such a humble little room, but when I look back at the dusty junk yard it was, I have no doubt that it is possible to imagine and create beauty in unlikely places. The first step is making room.

Minnesota Winter Must: Sorel Boots

"There is no bad weather, only bad clothes." -Scandinavian Proverb

For a few weeks, I tried to make do with second hand boots in a Minnesota winter. Two sizes too big meant swinging them along like leaden anchors and my hips quickly felt the toll. Wearing ordinary shoes is a terrible option as well, leaving your socks soaked and toes instantly turned icy, red and numb.

I decided to invest in a pair of Sorel boots. Thanks to a coupon code from Piperlime, I paid $75 for them. What a wonderful pleasure my walk to work has become! If it's snow and ice, the grippers dig in and give me sure footing. If it's slush and puddles, my feet arrive at their destination dry and toasty.

Though these boots aren't exactly fashion forward, they have the sort of ugly cute quality that seems to be in vogue right now, and have the added benefit of being enormously practical. (How I pity the fools I see in their tennis shoes or ballet flats full of ice!) Between the right gear, the necessity of a daily walk and my strict policy of not complaining, my time outside each day has become a true joy. I look forward to my walk, knowing it will clear my head, invigorate my body and connect me with this place I call home.

P.S) This original illustration is available for $20 if you're having a love affair with galoshes as well! It will easily fit in a standard 8x10 frame. Email me at thefabulousmissbATgmailDOTcom if you'd like to purchase it for your house!

Movie Review: Young Adult

Young Adult stars Charlize Theron as a deranged teen fiction novelist who returns to her hometown in northern Minnesota, fixated on stealing her high school boyfriend Buddy, away from his new baby and happy marriage. Although Theron is famously glamorous, with mile-long legs, luminous skin and a Christian Dior contract, her character Mavis is a bum. She parades around town in a saggy Hello Kitty t-shirt and grungy sweatpants, stringy hair pulled into a ponytail. Upon waking face down in the clothes she wore the day before, she guzzles Diet Coke straight from the bottle like a thirsty horse. Mavis has a drinking problem that is veering into serious alcoholism and compulsively pulls out her hair while watching television. The young adult series she's been ghost writing has come to the end of it's faddish popularity and she's trying to figure out what to do next.

Diablo Cody wrote this film, and her stamp is everywhere. The dark, mentally disturbed, but gorgeous anti-hero feels perfectly in line with her other work. She and director Jason Reitman make a great team, because this film has his touches of modern day American realism. The strip malls and cheezy chain restaurants aren't glossed over, because they are part of the story being told. This is the same world you and I live in, with people we might actually know. 

As Mavis tries to put her ham-fisted plan into action, she runs into someone else she and Buddy went to high school with. Matt (the brilliantly cast Patton Oswalt) is still the dork he was in high school, now an accountant at a local bar, busy perfecting an elaborate whiskey distillery in his garage and painting Star Wars action figures in his ample spare time. He's trying to forget the physical and emotional scars of an attack that happened their senior year, when a group of jocks jumped him, mangled him and left him for dead because they (wrongly) thought he was gay. Eventually most of the people in town forgot all about it, though the pain is still fresh for him. When Mavis drunkenly reveals her plan to him, he half-heartedly tries to stop her, but they are both lonely and in need of a drinking buddy. 

As the story unfolded, there were a few things that got in the way for me. One was Charlize Theron. She's beautiful even in her schlumpy clothes and her celebrity overshadows her considerable acting talent. I would have loved to see this part go to some lesser known actress who could help me sink deeply into the story for the entire film. The part of Buddy seemed forced, perhaps because he had the unhappy task of convincing us that he was uninterested in Charlize Theron. In order for the plot to move forward, Buddy has to show disinterest without registering obvious disgust at her mental illness. This allows her character to continue making her advances toward him, not realizing, or simply ignoring the fact that he doesn't want her. It didn't work well in my opinion- and the climactic confrontation scene felt contrived.  

 But most pressing of all is the problem of a resolution. Though Mavis doesn't get what she wants in the end, she doesn't appear to have learned much either. Perhaps that is the ultimate mark of Reitman's realism. Real life doesn't usually have tidy endings and dramatic, overnight personal transformation either. This dark little film gave me plenty to mull over in the days after watching it. I definitely enjoyed it.

Have you seen it? What did you think? Any suggestions on what to watch next? 

Quirky Picks for Valentine's Day

Say Anything Illustration from  Hello Small World

I don't know about you, but I have a love/hate relationship with Valentine's day. It's not because I'm bitter and sitting alone with a bottle of wine. I love the love part- I get a kick out of making valentine's and sending them out to EVERYONE I care about. In this regard, I dig the cheesy, corny, silly, kistchy, kid friendly nature of the day.

What so often goes wrong is the romance part. It so easily turns into something torrid- a flat sugared up version of passion that is sex-shop tacky. Think lacy red polyester lingerie, reservations at a fondue restaurant (Seriously, what's so romantic about melted cheese on bread cubes?) the obligatory FTD red rose arrangements and heart shaped Jacuzzis.

I'm looking for a Valentine's day that is quirkier, or more grown up than all the usual cliches. Although I confess, there is no color that screams passion better than RED. Check out my Etsy picks for Valentine's Day right over here. Also, make sure to watch Say Anythingagain this month sometime. I bet it inspires you to make a mix tape for someone you love. Don't forget this song.