Taking The Long Way Home

Kim and Lauren are a mother/daughter team, training to run the Disneyland Half Marathon in September of 2012. Kim, the the 50-something mom is vegan, and is training at the literally breathtaking altitude of 7,000 feet in Taos, NM. She has never been any kind of athlete before. Lauren, the 20-something daughter, is mostly vegetarian, and is doing her training in Seattle, WA. Running isn't new to her, but distance running is. This weekly blog, written by both of them, documents the journey, and hopefully, will inspire a few others to follow a dream, do something that's harder than they ever imagined they'd do on purpose, and enjoy the entire journey. Find all the entries by entering "Kim and Lauren" in the "search this blog" box to the left. Kim: When I was a teenager, my grandmother, Florence - Gramma to me - was this tiny, soft spoken woman with an iron will and a relentlessly cheerful outlook on life. She drove me nuts finding silver linings to every...

We have a winner! If this is you, please contact me with your shipping info before Sunday. On Monday I'll pick a new winner. Karla   has left a new comment on your post " Running Ahead ":   Hooray for you, and know that you are motivation for the rest of us mid-50-y.o. women. I'm trying to stay with the "Couch to 5K" website.....although I'm not really a runner. I prefer bicycling, and I've mentally committed to a long ride this summer. Training starts soon. I look forward to your dual blog.   This will be the last of the Bead giveaways for a while. Why? Not enough of you benefit from it, and it's not giving me what I'd hoped for. Besides, it's a lot of extra work for me, and you know how I love to streamline my life wherever possible! So... onward to something new. I don't know what that is yet, but I'll surely keep you posted!

One thing leading to another again, as it always does - little people on beads led to little dogs on beads. I really want to show you what these look like as a whole piece, so I shot these short videos. They aren't great film making, but I think they give you a better idea of what these beads are like than a series of photos do. Unfortunately, my bead shop software will only let me use still pictures, but after seeing these, you'll sort of know better what you're looking at. And as a reminder, when I take more than one picture of a bead for the BeadShop, you'll find little arrows beneath the main image, so you can click to see them all, and click on each picture to enlarge it. I think some people don't know that. It's not all that obvious. These beads will be available in the BeadShop sometime on Friday. I'm calling them the "Dog Park" series... of course! I love my little doggies!

Kim and Lauren are a mother/daughter team, training to run the Disneyland Half Marathon in September of 2012. Kim, the the 50-something mom is vegan, and is training at the literally breathtaking altitude of 7,000 feet in Taos, NM. She has never been any kind of athlete before. Lauren, the 20-something daughter, is mostly vegetarian, and is doing her training in Seattle, WA. Running isn't new to her, but distance running is. This weekly blog, written by both of them, documents the journey, and hopefully, will inspire a few others to follow a dream, do something that's harder than they ever imagined they'd do on purpose, and enjoy the entire journey. Find all the entries by entering "Kim and Lauren" in the "search this blog" box to the left. Lauren: “There is a difference between interest and commitment. When you are interested in doing something, you do it when it’s convenient. When you are committed to something, you accept no excuses; only results...

Taos is very different from your usual Small Town USA. We have art, among other things. Boy, do we have art. And all manner of artists who create it. Sometimes it seems like everyone who lives here, no matter what they do for money, is an artist on some level. This is a good thing, rather than a competitive thing, because it makes for a pool of creative thinkers and doers. Like anyplace, Taos has its problems, but lack of creativity is certainly not one of them. A friend of ours bought an Earthship several years ago, and has been lovingly decorating "her" from ceiling to floor all this time. She's turned bare mud walls into glowingly layered waves of color, and shifted the interior from "Taos Hippie" to Earthship Chic. Her love of mosaic surfaces all over the "ship," adding brilliant facets of light, color and pattern, and turning the off-grid, sustainable, sensible dwelling into more of and Earthen Palace. The term "jewel box" is often us...

Kim and Lauren are a mother/daughter team, training to run the Disneyland Half Marathon in September of 2012. Kim, the the 50-something mom is vegan, and is training at the literally breathtaking altitude of 7,000 feet in Taos, NM. She has never been any kind of athlete before. Lauren, the 20-something daughter, is mostly vegetarian, and is doing her training in Seattle, WA. Running isn't new to her, but distance running is. This weekly blog, written by both of them, documents the journey, and hopefully, will inspire a few others to follow a dream, do something that's harder than they ever imagined they'd do on purpose, and enjoy the entire journey. Find all the entries by entering "Kim and Lauren" in the "search this blog" box to the left. This is the first installment of the "Kim and Lauren" posts, which we'll do about once a week as we train for the Disneyland Half Marathon , coming up in September. Go back to my last post for my fir...

Just a couple of days ago I was thinking, I really need to come up with a way to trick myself into exercising more regularly . It was just a passing thought, and I didn't put any further energy into it at all. But thoughts are creative little beings all on their own, and I had turned one loose. Yesterday morning I was having my tea in bed and checking my email, like I always do in the winter, and my phone rang. It was my daughter Lauren, who sounded a little bit stunned, and laughingly told me that she'd just signed up to run the Disneyland Half Marathon in September. This is a first for her, and being a supportive mom, I said something like, Great! That's so cool! And then jokingly I said, Maybe I should do it with you ... to which Lauren said, Yeah Mom! You should! Do it!  Somehow, within about a minute, I was actually considering it, and within an hour I was signed up too. How did this happen? I am not a runner, or any other kind of athlete. It has never ever occu...

Time for another Bead Giveaway! But first, this is LAST CALL for our January winner to claim her prize. If this is YOU, please contact me by email before Friday. After that, I'll choose a new winner from January's entries! " Bella Chic aka Gina  has left a new comment on your post " Here's to Creative Maladjustment ": Very awesome quote! Thanks for the chance to win your giveaway :)   " UPDATE - 2-11-12 We have a new winner! (Sorry Bella Chic. You do have to be sort of "present" to win...) Here's our new winner... "Anonymous  ✆   to  kim show details   Jan 16 Anonymous has left a new comment on your post " Here's to Creative Maladjustment ": Kim, artists and thinkers who are not joiners and who don't have a political or group voice are sometimes call "The Cultural Creatives" - a term coined by Ray and Anderson in a book by that title. They maintain those 50 million CCs are changing the world...

We all wish we had more hours in a day, and more days in a week, and more years in a lifetime, right? But we get what we get, and we have to make choices in how we spend it. I'm getting better and better at choosing what I want over what I think will make someone else happy. I guess that's one of the perks that comes with age. A certain amount of uppityness becomes more socially acceptable. It makes us seem interesting, hopefully, and also hopefully, not too bitchy. Yesterday was the Superbowl. I'll be honest. I hate football. I mean no offense to those of you who love it. I just happen to find it a huge waste of time and money, and I've noticed that the mere act of watching it on TV tends to make people act all crazy and mean and aggressive. I know I'm in the minority with my football disdain, but I'm used to that. And I've gone to enough Superbowl parties over the years to know that I never have to go to another one again. Not that I was actually invit...

We had the best trip ever to Cabo, to celebrate my son Danny's 30th, and my daughter Lauren's 26th birthdays. It was Danny's call, to have his party there, and Rick and I were proud to be the only "old people" in our group of ten. Except for one night when I just couldn't walk another step, I think we kept up pretty well. We had the "all inclusive" package deal at Solmar , which worked out great. We spent a lot of time by the pool, and were never without food or tasty beverages... once we figured out that even though tips are technically included, the service gets a whole lot better if you slip your waiter a few bucks or pesos at the end of a long hard day in the sun. Communication is tricky enough in our own country, and when the desk clerks themselves neglect something as important as the intricacies of tipping, it can get kind of awkward. That passed quickly though, and now I have to say I'm a huge fan of All Inclusive. In fact, it see...