Bohemian glass as far as the eye can see

I posted a travel highlight to AFAR's website about the Glasmuseum in Passau, Germany. I'm also sharing it below.

So delicate and lovely. 

I sailed into Passau on the Danube river and woke up that morning to see a postcard perfect Bavarian city. Passau is a small town on a peninsula, surrounded by three rivers (Danube, Inn, Ilz), and completely walkable. I had just one day to spend there. The plan was to shop the Christkindlmarkt (Christmas market), attend an organ concert in St. Stephen's Cathedral, and wander residential neighborhoods (one of my favorite things to do when I travel). Even after accomplishing all of that, my friend and I stumbled into the Glasmuseum on a whim.

We thought we'd maybe kill an hour and see a few tea sets. We had no idea what we were getting into. Well over four hours later, we were still going case by case and room by room, taking hundreds of photos and marveling at how little we apparently knew about the art of glass. The woman at the reception desk told us there are over 30,000 pieces in total, but they only have room to display 13,00 at a time. The collection on display covers 200 years of history (Baroque, Empire, Biedermeier, Classicism, Historicism, Art Nouveau, Art Deco, and Modernism…thanks for the era reminder, Wiki). We rode an elevator to the top of the Hotel Wilder Mann and worked our way down all four floors and through nearly 30 different rooms. It's gorgeous and esoteric and one of the best surprises of my two weeks abroad. Whether you spend four hours or forty minutes, go.

Nearly 30 rooms over four floors!

The jar on the right nearly jumped into my purse. Oopsie...

Lose Your Way in Paris

Saint-Michel station

AFAR is hands down my favorite travel resource. It's combines the best aspects of a web 2.0 crowdsourcing model, and it manages to feels like you're having dinner with thousands of your most well-traveled fabulous friends. The concept of the site is for globetrotters post short travel highlights and then clusters of highlights are grouped into wanderlists. You can star and save other people's highlights and/or lists, or you can post your own.

I recently posted a highlight about Paris, based on my third time there this past December. I'm sharing the highlight below. Have you been to the city of lights? What's your favorite memory?

_________________________________________________________________________________

Just get lost. There's no better way to experience all that is Paris. Wear comfortable walking shoes (the only un-Parisian element of this intentionally-vague itinerary) and spend hours making your way in and out of the metro, up and down from street to train, under and over the Seine and back again. There's a romance and a freedom to it. Do not over think it.

I recently flew through Paris on my way home from a vacation. When booking my flight I debated if I'd be up for one more city. In the end, adventure won. It always wins. I booked the longest layover I could (19 hours), and rode the RER-B train into the Saint-Michel metro station in the Latin Quarter. I dropped my bag at the hotel and wasted no time getting lost.

The magic of Paris is in the details. You can only feel Paris as you walk right through her. You smell the sweet boulangeries, you see every flourish of Beaux Arts, you hear one of the sexiest languages to ever touch the human tongue rolling and rolling among friends at cafes. The magic is tangible. Paris is a sensory feast and to share that moment in time with the locals you have to ditch the maps.

My favorite memory of Paris is leaving Notre Dame on the evening of Christmas Day, walking aimlessly in the opposite direction of my hotel, and stumbling onto a trio of jazz musicians. The moon was full, the river flowed quietly beneath us, the air was crisp, and people danced joyfully with complete strangers.

That's the magic of getting lost in Paris.

Like cooking meth, only it smells better.

I've never actually cooked meth. I have no idea what it smells like. I've also never seen a single episode of Breaking Bad. And yet, cultural osmosis tells me there's a comparison to be made when declaring my Wednesday night was a hippie version of AMC's acclaimed drama.

Essential oil lotion...in process.

Beehive Braintree is the brainchild of my friend Dallas (and his friend Paul). Per their mission statement, it's an affordable, grassroots, community-sourced series of courses taught by experts and enthusiasts in Salt Lake City. Two nights a week, a rotating cohort of curious souls gather at Higher Ground Learning (gorgeous loft space on Pierpont Avenue downtown). Classes range from calligraphy to landscape design, maintaining a home bar to artisan marshmallows, and in the case of my first class: Essential Oils 101.

Sea salt + essential oil can be diluted in the bath, to mop the floor, in a humidifier, etc.
Photo by Dallas Graham (c) Beehive Braintree

I learned more than a few facts about essential oils. These are a few of my favorites:

• Pure essential oils are, by definition, 100% organic. They come directly from the bark, leaves, roots, flowers, or fruits of plants. The oil is either distilled out of the plant or cold pressed. To generate a single pound of essential oil it takes 50 pounds of eucalyptus, 150 pounds of lavender, 500 pounds of rosemary, 1,000 pounds of jasmine, and over 2,000 pounds of roses. In other words, rose oil is very expensive and eucalyptus is cheap. 
• Pure essential oils are volatile. Meaning you can test if an oil is pure by putting a drop on a piece of paper. If it evaporates completely, it's pure. If there is any residue, it has additives. 
• Carrier oils keep essential oils from evaporating and carrier oils allow the essential oils to get into your body safely. Any oil you would eat/cook with, is safe as a carrier oil (i.e. almond, coconut, grape seed, etc). The ratio is a quarter-sized carrier oil to one drop of essential oil. 
• Less is more when it comes to essential oils. They are highly concentrated and you never need more than a drop or two. A lotion made with essential oils is not synthetic junk like Bath & Body Works, for example, so the scent will be lighter and you can use less. 
• The safest place to put oils on your body is your feet. Our feet contain a roadmap of our entire body and the essential oil (+ carrier oil) we put on our feet is smart enough to figure out where to go inside our body. 
• Lavender, for example, can calm our nerves and also boost our mood. Our body and the lavender know how to talk to each other and they'll sort it out. Your feet will get it where it needs to be. 
• Essential oils have a time bomb effect because they absorb into the fluid surrounding our cells. They know when to release and when our body needs them to bust out and do their thing. 

The carrier oil we used in our lotion was coconut, which is solid at room temperature. 

We gathered around in the kitchen and all contributed to making a lotion. The lotion was our carrier oil and we could then decide which essential oil(s) we wanted to incorporate. I was surprised how easy it was to make the lotion. The ingredients felt a bit obscure, but our instructor Kindee told us where we can find everything we need. If you're feeling adventurous...

1/2 cup - extra virgin, cold pressed, organic coconut oil
1/2 cup - half sweet almond oil
3 tsp - stearic acid (stabilizer/thickener)
6 - 12 tbsp (depending on desired thickness of the finished lotion) - emulsifying wax (vegetable based)
1 tsp - citric acid
2 cups - distilled water
3/4 tsp - xanthan gum

Mix the first four ingredients in a double boiler until temp reaches just over 100 degrees (photo directly above).

Mix water and xanthan gum using a stick blender (first photo in this post).

Mix oil/wax mixture from the double boiler with a stick blender, then slowly add the water/gum mixture. Continue to blend until lotion cools to room temperature and has a creamy texture. To cool the mixture faster, fill a bowl with ice water and put your lotion mixture bowl on top of the ice bath while blending.

Measure your lotion into containers of your choosing and add essential oils. Remember: one quarter-sized amount of lotion needs only one drop of oil.

www.aromatools.com - lotion containers (or recycle containers you have already)
www.fromnaturewithlove.com - for all the weird ingredients
Costco has the best coconut and almond oil.

Pouring our freshly-made lotion into recycled glass containers.
Photo by Dallas Graham (c) Beehive Braintree

I took home one citrus (happy), one lavender (balance), and one eucalyptus (spiritual openness).

I've used lavender lotion on my feet before, usually before slipping on a pair of socks and going to bed. I can say without a doubt that this lavender lotion is actively doing something to my body. I've put it on my feet before bed every night since this workshop and I can feel the difference in how well I'm sleeping. The lotion is so pure and the oil is so essential and direct, it's like nothing I've ever used (and I'm known for buying artisan hippie products). I swear by this recipe.

FYI: Dallas had a real camera on hand and captured gorgeous moments throughout the night. Check out his full album on the Beehive Braintree Facebook page. For those of you who live in Salt Lake City, check out their calendar of classes and perhaps I'll meet you soon.

Bibliogasm.

Yes. Yes. Yes. This. 

Such a savvy company, to align themselves with artists and artisans both globally and hyper-locally.

I'm obsessed with books and everything within six degrees of all things books. That's no secret. I just can't believe it took me over 30 years of life to get around to making my own book, like binding it and designing a cover and everything. Well, thanks to Craft Lake City and West Elm, that's done and done. Last month I attended a jewelry making workshop with dreamcatcher artist Malinda Fisher. This month's artist was Shirley Jackson, a printmaking student at Weber State University.

Artist Shirley Jackson shows us her work and orients us to our task for the evening. 

Come early and you have your pick of paper patterns. My nerdy little heart just sings. 

The bookmaker's crafty mise en place, as it were. 

Shirley was very organized. To save time, she had pre-cut and pre-punched the paper. We took over at the point of stitching the clusters of pages ("signatures") together. A signature is two pieces of paper that have been folded together and will be stitched into the book as one element. A single page marks the center of the book.

To prepare the binding thread you first coat it in beeswax.

Sew the pages together from left to right, then right to left,
in an alternating pattern with "the big thread line" inside then outside then inside...

Once the binding is stitched, and you ignore any weird loopy mistake things (ahem), you clamp the pages
together and coat the binding with glue. Using the end of your paintbrush, rub the glued binding until it lays flat. 

The photo I didn't take was the step in which you cover your binding with fabric.That fabric folds over and helps provide something other than paper onto which the cover can be glued. I actually think if I had crafted a more appealing binding stitch, I may have left it exposed. As it were, the brown fabric saved the day on this rookie bookmaking attempt.

Glue your decorative "fly pages" to the sewn "text block" pages, then glue your cover to the fly pages. Shirley wrapped all of our chipboard covers in canvas so we could paint our own design on them. 

The colors selected for my cover art are unintentionally the colors of my master bedroom
(peacock blue walls and yellow linen accents). Well, you like what you like. 

Thank you, West Elm, for letting me snag my inspiration off your shelves.

Ta-da! I made a book!

This DIY workshop series is already starting to build a micro-community. Malinda Fisher was there, as was Trina, who I met at Malinda's dreamcatcher workshop. We laughed our way through the experience and discussed our dreamcatcher PTSD. This bookmaking craft was definitely easier than the jewelry, but still just as fun. I have stacks and stacks of journals that it will take a lifetime to fill; but now, on top of that stack, is one that means more to me than all the rest. That's the beauty of getting your hands dirty.

Craft Lake City hasn't announced their next workshop yet, but when they do, I'm all over it.

Whimsical tunes for your weekend

If you're anything like me, you take yourself too seriously far too often. I get obnoxious about it too, particularly musically. I get all self-righteous and preachy about pop music, lament the fact that top 40 tunes are destroying the creative potential of the human race, and love/hate when I realize (while a passenger in a friend's vehicle because I haven't listened to commercial radio in over a decade, re self-righteous) one of my fav bands has become common knowledge.

Whatever. It happens.

This also happens...




Between the band's affirming message and the whimsical feeling you get when listening to them, it's like Glee and her life partner recruited the It Gets Better campaign as their donor and the baby is a barefoot summer music festival at which I'm dancing with the hottest man ever. Who is very dark and tall with unruly curly hair, btw. Oh, and we're making out in a muddy rainstorm. That. That's what this album is like. Pure fun. Pure positivity. Pure in-the-moment. Pure pop.

Have a joyful weekend.