the super salve company and a giveaway

comfrey leaf lotion…i use it as my facial moisturizer, too.

I am not one of those girls that goes crazy for beauty products. Ask my mom. She says things like…. “Oh Ivey, you could be attractive if you’d wear a little make-up.” My beauty regime, if it even merits that name, is quite simple. I brush my teeth, moisturize, sunscreen, and pull my mop back into a ponytail. If I’m going to a meeting I might put on mascara. That’s it. 

I don’t like to think about it too often, but the wild west does a number on your skin. High Altitude, a mega dry climate, and being outdoors constantly, is a bad combination, and we gals out here are aging faster than you girls back east. (Just our skin, OK, don’t go getting all cocky.) 🙂

But I have a solution and I am clinging to it.

Say Hello to the Super Salve Co.

Never in my life, have I contacted a company to say hi and thank you and bless your soul,  not until the other day. I figured that while I was at it, I’d throw the sponsor idea out there, and within the day, Denise, the owner of the company had written back. 

Denise is the herbal goddess behind the amazing product line…Super Salve. Everything she makes is  pure love. You read the ingredients and they are an inspired concoction of total goodness. The list starts off with ‘purified mountain rain water’ and only gets better.  See?

 Her sunscreen is a must have. There are lots of natural sunscreens out there, but this one is the real McCoy! It’s spf 30 and I have no problem with it on my face all day, everyday and it’s the only thing I put on my kids. It lives in fridge (as she recommends for many of her products) and is a cool treat for the skin and the senses.

And here is the deal clincher for me. The Oh My Goodness. I do NOT like scents. Not one bit, and especially on the face.  But stop the car, girlfriend. Denise is genius. 

Never in my life, have I been more in love with a smell. Part of it is knowing that it is mother earth’s blessed alchemy, not some chemical formula, and part is olfactory induced euphoria. This could go rated R, but to say that Matt likes it is an understatement. Pure Heaven.

Right this minute, order some sunscreen for you and the kids and some Comfrey Leaf lotion for you and the significant other.  And look at all her amazing product lines…they’re extensive and well conceived.

{If you live in Durango, you can buy her products at Durango Natural Foods or Nature’s Oasis.}

From the girl who’s not into product, but is certainly into anti-aging, and only the best on your skin, east and west, north and south, let me say that you deserve this. You do know the woes of traditional cosmetics, I’m assuming. To learn more go here, here, or here. She also makes make-up for those who want a natural alternative.

And Denise wants to pamper you with a wonderful give away.

She is offering a mini-kit from her Body Nourish Spa line…17 products for face and body.

(CONTAINS (1) EACH: Cleansing Facial Foam, Hydrating Facial Toner, Intensive Vitamin C Treatment, Sunshine Filter, Hydrating Eye Cream, VitaNutrient Face Cream, Hydrating Facial Mist, Facial Steam, Green Clay Refinishing Facial Mask, Daily Renewal Peel, Jelly Mask, Silk Finish Salt Scrub, Cocoa Butter Misting Oil, Comfrey Lotion, Foot Treatment, Coconut Sugar Scrub, and Hair & Scalp Treament.)

It’s a fandango, folks. There will be two winners! Leave a comment and tell me what you look for in a cosmetic product and you are entered. I will pick a random winner next Friday.

Spread the word.

congrats to heather and anna!

this moment…{the ginja ninja does a project}

The Ginja Ninja finished this poster yesterday, for school. 

Now that’s a book. 

You’ve read it, right? Must, must, must!

I’m not going to tell you how the end effected my sweet boy. It has a humdinger of an ending. 

I will say that I heard noises coming from his room, and they were not very ninja-like. 

<div

But, oh, I have a sensitive ninja.

Hope your weekend is a flying side kick to the very soul of Saturday!

thrifty thursday

 I am excited to be joining Lady Cordelia again for Thrifty Thursday, where we lovingly showcase our thrifted junk! Proving, one Thursday at a time, that true style can found in the dumpster nearest you.

Above you will see….my favorite tray, my favorite salt and pepper shakers, and my favorite sugar bowl. They all came from the thrift store for peanuts. Smashing, aren’t they. I actually sort of styled that photo, which I usually don’t do.

In the spirit of full disclosure, here is the reality.

The tray sits beside my stove and holds a jumble of odds and ends that I use almost constantly.

Lemons. I use at least two lemons a day. There is always a cut lemon on the counter. Lemon makes everything better. Salad dressings, soup, meat, beer. Everything. Write it down.

Butter. We use way too much butter. Even the cat likes butter. If there is a textured trench in the stick o’ butter, guess what? Puss has been on the counter. Don’t tell Matt. 

The rest is the usual stuff…garlic, s and p, ginger, olive oil, a jalapeno, osha tincture, a water buffalo, porcini salt, and Della’s cinnamon sugar.

I think the porcini salt balances the lick trench nicely.

Be thrifty and prosper.

(what sits beside your stove?)

one week of vegetarian meals

the lowly beet just might be my favorite vegetable

We are going vegetarian for the week. I decided this on Sunday in a very nonchalant fashion. I wish I could say that there was some raging conviction around it, but then I’d be lying, and I don’t like to lie to you guys. I like meat. Let’s rephrase that. I like GOOD meat. I like meat that I know to be raised and processed properly and not shot up with drugs or slimed. I’m not going to go on and on about that, because I think you all know what I mean. Meat of questionable lineage gives me the shivs. Quality meat is expensive and I’m frugal, but mostly I believe that it’s healthy to change things up. For adults and kids.

It’s a good idea to shift perspectives, and raise your awareness around things that you do everyday. I believe, deep down, that it keeps you young and fresh and feisty to knock your habits on their ear every now and again. I told the young’uns that we weren’t eating meat this week, and their only concern was that Ben and Jerry’s is vegetarian. Max and Matt did consider their Friday night pizza, but I think that both of them can bear this cross for one Friday of their meager lives.

Just to be fickle, the husband stated that he could eat meat when I wasn’t around, because I’m not his mother.(But apparently, he’ll be too lazy if I am around?!)

Below you will find what I have mapped out for the week. Like Matt, you can eat whatever you like, but a week is a very short period of time and change is good, so feel free to join in. We often eat meatless meals, but I’d like to do it more, perhaps half of the time, so this is a step in that direction. 

Sunday

sauteed veggies (carmelized onions, green onions, red peppers, japs, and swiss chard) on black bean and cheese quesadillas with salsa and cilantro sour cream

oranges and scratch brownies

Monday

breakfast: cheese grits (a staple around here)

kid’s lunch: egg salad sandwich, red peppers and blackberries, corn chips and luna bars

dinner

root soup and purple potato chips

carrot salad with harissa, feta and mint

mango lassi

Tuesday

breakfast: toast with cherry preserves and boiled eggs and green drink

kid’s school lunch: pbj, oranges, celery, corn chips and greek yogurt

dinner

thai butternut squash red curry with cashews and greens

brown basmati rice and cucumber salad

  

Wednesday

breakfast: granola with berries and a green drink

kid’s school lunch: avocado chickpea salad sandwich and beets in balsamic vinegar

dinner

a Southern vegetable plate

mac and cheese, collards, black eyed peas

cornbread and honey

 Thursday

breakfast: crockpot oatmeal

kid’s lunch: cream cheese and olive sandwiches with lots of lettuce, strawberries, popcorn and seaweed

falafel ‘burgers’ with quinoa tabbouleh, tahini, and avocado

red cabbage slaw

Friday

breakfast: we always get bagels at Doughworks on Friday…everything with garlic and herb, and a chocolate donut

kid’s lunch: leftover mac and cheese and what ever is available

dinner

Friday night is a family treat! Homeslice Pizza! (sans pepperoni this week!)

let’s try…the pesto sauce with tomatoes and mozzarella

We grab a movie from the library, and then hunker down for the night.

(and our old friends, Ben and Jerry, might drop by after the kids are asleep)

…..

I hope this gets you thinking!

Would your family give it a whirl or would they rebel?

Happy eating and I am always open to your ideas!

monday love

a picture

 a repost…..from the  DM archives

an idea for dinner

…

…

{from the archives}
Sharon and Karen spent the weekend together. Oi vey!

Read about these testy little girls right here and then the sequel is here.

…

root soup and purple potato chips

carrot salad with harissa, feta and mint
mango lassi

(we are going vegetarian all this week)

this moment…{swelling and shrinking}

I snapped a secret photo. A picture does paint a thousand words.

I had a moment the other day. 

A Whoa This Is All Going Sorta As Planned moment. 

Max and a sweet neighbor friend had been outside, playing and jumping on the trampoline.

Max busted in the back door. (He never just comes in anymore. It’s as if he has been expelled by Mother Nature, with a shush of wind and energy, back into the house)

In one long and excited and loud exclamation he was saying this….

“I have to read you this passage! It’s insane and so funny and I can’t stop laughing and it’s this book about a boy and then this guy brings a present over and hold on, let me find this part, you have to hear it. I ‘ll read it to you………….  

Now that’s really all it takes for me. This one thing, this one bit of excitement bursting from my 12 year old son feels like the whole universe nodding yes.

But it gets better. What book, what passage was he so excited by?

He grabs the book from a stack by his bed and Reed sits beside him, and he’s thumbing through and searching and he finds it, and starts laughing and reading and laughing and….

I smiled at the full circle of it all.

Unbidden, with tears of laughter, he reads my favorite passage from my favorite book, that he has found and fallen for, all by himself.

Do you know the armadillo scene in A Prayer for Owen Meany?

Let us recommend it to you. 

And then a few hours later…….

We are all sitting around the table eating dinner. Della is talking about her day at school. She is talking about a Show and Tell that drug on way too long. She is talking about a small incident.

What happened, baby? I asked. 

“I yelled out.” she said.

What’d you say? We were all curious.

“It wasn’t bad, I told her to ‘just spit it out’.”

Yep.

That’s so me. Get to the point, people!

And there you have it. In the space of an afternoon I see the full spectrum of our influence. 

From a literary gold star to heckling a first grader, we are raising these people, best we can, nowhere near perfect, but damn sure unique, and it pays well, with lots of love, and the energy and power they leave in their wake. To get up and do it again….for tomorrow holds another adventure, another mystery, another blessing.

And certainly another laugh.

……

And my dear readers, thank you for reading. For letting me write.

I appreciate you everyday and love our community.

blessings.

thrifty thursday

I am so excited to be joining Lady Cordelia for thrifty Thursday. 

When Cordelia talks about the glories of thrifting, she is singing to the choir here. The honest to goodness truth, for me, is this. I like the element of chance, I like the gamble. Anybody can walk into Anthropology and come out with a treasure (albeit mass produced). It takes a bit of swagger to rock a thrift store. Check Cordelia out and see what I mean. 

At the present moment, I am on a thrifting hiatus. I am trying to donate, not purchase, in the spirit of spring cleaning and yin and yang and such.

So I am featuring some favorites from around the house.

The furball is totally thrifted. Our humane society is also, literally, a thrift store…genius!

I painted the cat portrait, but the frame is, yes, a thrift score.

The antique Pendleton blanket was in a $5 box of goodies. 

The muted paisley quilt is soft and thick. $2

The rainbow walls are my solution to anything that ails you.

The cross stitch ‘viva mexico’ pillow is perhaps my all time fave. 

{anthropology is ripping it off as. we. speak.}

 more next week!

Do you thrift?

how not to discipline your children

Hello folks! I got a question the other day from a reader about our philosophy around discipline. My first thought was, ‘Eee gad! I’m not mature enough to have developed a philosophy!’ and my second thought was ‘I’ll make Matt do it.’ He got off track and proposed (yes, we are already married) instead, but he also churned out a few words on discipline. 


So, here is Matt again, on the subject of discipline, or lack thereof, as the case may be.

One of Ivey’s readers asked what our philosophy was around disciplining our kids and I quickly responded that it’s ninety percent love and ten percent yelling. She then said that I could be a ‘guest blogger’ and talk about discipline. I asked her when she started doing the “guest blogger thing” and she said I was the inaugural guest. Feeling privileged and special, I began to ruminate on discipline. 

Hmmm, discipline? 

My first thought was, “You get to write about art and food and travel and laughter and friends and family, and I get to write about discipline?” Something seems wrong with this picture. I am not even sure what she meant by “discipline.”

So I looked it up.  The dictionary defines discipline as ” training to act in accordance with the rules” or “punishment inflicted by way of correction and training.”  So, it is both the regimen we put in place in our kid’s lives, and the pain we inflict upon them when they fail to conform to the program. The ‘means’ and ‘the end’ (get it?).  Like I said, can I write about my favorite Sponge Bob episode instead?

What do I really know about discipline?  Not much, even after practicing full-on attachment parenting for the past thirteen years, and devoting some serious clinical energy (I work as a family counselor) to a number of folks that struggle to keep the wheels greased at home. And then there was my own childhood, which offered countless lessons in “How Not to Discipline.” (I was once angrily spanked for cutting off all of my little sister’s long golden locks, even though I was actually in the bathtub when the offense occurred.)

Discipline is a strong word…..it connotes what one needs when they want to lose 50 pounds, or run a marathon, or whip a battalion into shape for some bloody conflict. Instead, I like to think of our family program as “Harmony Management”. That has a better ring to it, doesn’t it? 

Harmony is both the program of training, and the goal. It’s…

“We all love each other very much, so let’s learn to live together peacefully and happily, and if we struggle with that, for whatever reason, let’s do what we have to do to come back around to what is important, which is moving forward, having fun, and staying connected. And, oh, by the way, I’m in charge.”

It’s maintaining peace by showing and expecting respect.

So, here is my humble attempt to help you reduce stress and stay connected to your kids as you hold down the fort. I graciously offer you the 7 steps of (home) Harmony Management.

1) Respect the Process. Getting and keeping everyone on the same page can be challenging, arduous, tenuous, and fleeting. Be patient, stay fit, and have faith. Communicate honestly and kindly with these little people, the ones you claim are the best thing you’ve ever done.

2)  Enjoy your Kids.They’re not robots, soldiers, or Chinese factory workers. They are creative energy incarnate…wrap your head around it, embrace it. Laugh and love, first and mostly.

3) Learn to Love Noise. Really.

3) Meet ’em where they are.Try to remember what it feels like to be a kid. Give them responsibility, but don’t overdo it. Don’t spoil the magic.

4) No Bullying.

5) Lead Boldly. They want and need leadership. (pretty much for the rest of your lives together)

6) Spend Time. Most families could radically transform their lives by taking 25% of their TV time, 25% of the internet/smart phoning time, and applying it to their family. Just for fun, add those hours up, and decide if they could be better spent. Hi Dad. This means you, too.

7) Trust Yourself. Most folks already have the answers to the tough parenting questions, they simply won’t trust themselves to accept them. Hint hint….if it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.

These might not be the techniques and tactics you were expecting, but if you follow these suggestions I guarantee the need for “discipline” will diminish. Which makes doling it out, whatever your method, much easier and more effective.

Good Luck!

monday love

a picture

a song

an idea for dinner

…

via poppytalk

…

chicken and dumplings

addictive baby kale salad
chocolate therapy

spring in the air

Dare I say it? The minute I do, we’ll get an arctic blast, and have to shovel out the grill again. Spring in Durango means mud, wind, blizzards, and more mud.

At our house, in our narrow little valley, the  situation is unique. While my garden is still under three feet of snow in the back yard, I can look out the front window and see green grass, yucca and cactus. It’s the ‘sunny side of the street’ effect and it’s a bit of a psyche for us. But Della and I crossed the road the other day and, dodging pointy plants, hiked up to our favorite cave for a little picnic.

This girl is ready for spring. “What the hell, Mom? Look at our house!” It’s the one in the far rear, almost buried in snow drifts.

 I’m not complaining, we walk two hundred yards and get a whole new climate. I should be thankful, and I am.

On an unrelated note, do you mess with your children? Do you know what I mean? Freak ’em out a little? Keep them guessing, play practical jokes, that sort of thing? I do. It’s my nature. They are used to it and are now getting to an age where they don’t fall for my shenanigans, but I can still get them going. (the neighbor kids are an easy target, too, but even they are onto me!)

Max is the most gullible.

Here he is with his friend Berr. I took the picture at school and added an eerie, evil, haunted ‘boy’ in the background. He’s not too hip to photoshop. 

“OMG, Max, this is SO not cool!” I said in utter seriousness and shock.

He fainted dead on the floor. He ‘came to’ and called Berr. I let him tell the whole school that the place was possessed. It’s my duty, I feel, to create a little urban legend and drama in the everyday boringness that is middle school.

He bugged me till I confessed.

Then he smiled.

‘Mom, you are so weird.’

🙂

Hope you all have a lovely!