2015 in Review (and Favorite Books)
It's time to sum up the year on Packing Lust! This is my fourth year doing this, and it's one of my favorite ways to get the big picture and remember the year as a whole. In 2015, we didn't travel outside of the U.S., however we certainly did some significant traveling and moving within the states. It was a family-focused year as we learned to parent and watch Bump thrive over the course of his first year of life. Our doggie, Jelly Bean, spent a few months living with my parents and then reunited with us in Washington, D.C. in October. At the end of the year we moved again (yes, just a couple days ago) and we're having fun in our new city.
Favorite Books
Of the dozens of books I read this year, my top three favorites were:
- Dying to Be Me -- A kind of spiritual-health memoir by Anita Moorjani about her near death experience and subsequent speedy healing from cancer. She shares her unusual experience in vivid and convincing detail and what she learned about the importance of living fearlessly and as true to her self as possible.
2. Me Before You: a Novel -- I've read two Jojo Moyes books and both placed one of their main characters in the type of ethical quandary that most of us will never have to experience. This one is about the relationship between a paralyzed man with a death wish and one of his caretakers. I loved the masterful storytelling and the way it helped me see the central question from several perspectives.
3. Life in Motion: an Unlikely Ballerina -- Misty Copeland's memoir reveals her journey to become the first African-American principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre. I loved the window into the life of an elite dancer driven by the pursuit of excellence. Most of us will never experience being a prodigy in anything; this books lets you share the excitement of being 14 and discovering that you are one of the world's most naturally talented ballerinas. I was also impressed with the storytelling; it manages to be a page-turner even though we already know the happy ending to the story. I laughed; I cried. At one point I had to put the book down and dance alone in the room just to express the triumph I shared with her. This book is for anyone who ever worked hard on a dream and had to overcome unexpected obstacles to achieve excellence.
By Month
January
Having had baby boy Bump in late November 2014, I was two things: A) tired and B) excited to maintain my writing habit and keep the creative juices flowing.
To help out with A) I featured a guest post on creating a digital vision board to inspire your travel dreams and B) I did a 7-day blogging challenge.
February
My only post for February was a 2014 year in review piece. I guess I was still sleep-deprived from those early months as a new parent.
March
This month I launched SimpleLivingToolkit.com where I help people to declutter and join the simple living movement. I kept getting advice to narrow down/focus what I do to help people with my business (it's so hard when I do a variety of things, both to help people and just to express my creativity) so this new website was my answer. Join other simple living enthusiasts by signing up here.
April
This month I felt that it was time to share what I'd learned about about two things. One: self-publishing. Two: keeping things simple (stuff-wise) when you have a baby. Check out the very shareable "Minimalist Baby" list.
May
This month we took a romantic-foodie trip to Myrtle Beach while my parents took care of Bump. Fun and yummy. 
Another fun outing was the Dance of the Spring Moon powwow.
Also this month I launched my "Start a Daily Writing Habit" email coaching series. It's awesome and a great way to kick start yourself if you want to write more in 2016.
June
I posted my first and only packing related piece this year in June. It's about how you pack differently when you become a mommy and how certain things are less glamorous than... I thought they would be. I also blogged about a couple trips I took to Charleston, South Carolina.
July
We moved from Lumberton, NC, to Arlington, VA and I wrote about the ups and downs of big city life with a baby.
I reflected on how simple living lets me enjoy textures and details.
August
Though my book on habits to help you make money from your creativity is very behind schedule, I did work on it this year with additional research. I posted this month and later in the year when I found articles about creativity and about the changing landscape of making money as a creative.
Don't worry ; I didn't let the year go by without publishing. Prince Charming and I co-wrote a book called Simple Kitchen and published it this month to Amazon Kindle and Audible. It's a quick read you'll want to check out if you like keeping things simple in the kitchen without sacrificing the cooking experience.
After moving to the Washington, D.C. area last month, we enjoyed exploring our new city including a trip to Teddy Island.
At the end of the month, Bump (his nickname on the blog) turned 9 months old and we took photos in a park in our Rosslyn neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia. I shot more people too.
September
We explored the Washington, D.C. area. You know us; it was all about the food.
Creative types may enjoy my notes on an interview that Elizabeth Gilbert gave in which she talked about fear and creativity and being a grown-up.
October
We moved within the D.C. metro area from Arlington, Virginia to the Columbia Heights area of Washington.
I traveled to Black Mountain, North Carolina, reuniting with a bunch of family on my mom's side to celebrate my grandmother's 80th's birthday.
November
We enjoyed exploring our neighborhood of Washington (Columbia Heights) on foot and living car-free. On the blog, I wrote about a memory of a snow ball fight I had back in Palestine in 2013. Bump turned one this month and started walking just before he hit that milestone birthday.
December
We moved to Los Angeles on the eve of Christmas Eve. Now, rather unexpectedly, but very happily, we're back in the city where Prince Charming and I met over five and a half years ago. I'm looking forward to what life in this city over the next year brings.
"Make a Plan to do Something that You'll Enjoy"
On October 3rd, my maternal grandmother, Peggy Paparella, celebrated her 80th birthday. As you can see from these photos, she's vibrant and beautiful (with remarkably great legs) at this age and seems ready to take on a new decade. She has filled her life with love, creativity, service, and travel, and plans to keep doing what she's doing. (It's working, after all.) She seems to really enjoy her life and the love she shares with my grandpa, who she's been married to for fifty-five years.
Grandma has figured out how to wed her creativity with her desire to be of service. She does this in several ways. She gave birth to six children, which any parent will tell you, demands a great many acts of service. Nowadays her creativity takes the form of cooking, baking, sewing, crocheting, knitting, and crafting. She donates many of her hand-made items to be sold at auction to benefit the local Hospice. Other items she gives away to one of her thirty-one descendants.
So how is it possible to be so prolific while maintaining her energy and joy? Grandma hasn't always had an easy life, and her childhood and adolescence was difficult at times. Yet she rarely complains. She practices kindness and forgiveness and has a soft, tender heart. Grandma also has a very active spiritual life, praying many times a day and starting each day with a written back-and-forth conversation with Jesus. In my family we say "if Grandma's praying for you, watch out." God seems to listen to her more than the rest of us, so if I have a tough situation, I call up Grandma and Grandpa and I don't even have to ask; I know they are praying for me. For years they were praying for my future husband, so you know I'm not kidding around when I discuss the efficacy of their prayers and the special place Grandma has in God's heart.
Grandma credits her physical health to "living with a man who likes to eat well and eat healthily," which makes her want to eat healthily too. She said this with the barest hint of chagrin; grandma's love for bread, pasta, and sweets is well known and has been passed along to many of her progeny.
She keeps things low stress, and says she doesn't have much anxiety in her life, except, she adds with a twinkle in her eye, when Grandpa is driving their big RV, which is one of their favorite ways to travel.
She also keeps her mind active by reading a lot. She recently told me she'd just gotten back from the library with a huge stack of books, which she'll consume quickly. When her supply of unread books starts to dwindle, she starts getting nervous about running out of reading material. She wrote me that, "Time to read a good book is one pleasure that I reward myself after I get my work done on some days. Other days it could be a craft project or baking cookies or knitting something special for the great grand babies."
She says "A wise woman once told me, wake up in the morning and make a plan to do something that you'll enjoy." This idea of having something planned each day that you can look forward to, a way to get back the sparkle when life seems dull, exhausting, or depressing, has stuck with Grandma and helped her stay happy.
Union Market DC, a Foodie Oasis in a Forlorn Area
Obviously, someone has a plan.
The renewed Union Market in DC is the beginning of a plan to revitalize the surrounding historic area, a thriving market for most of the 1900's, fallen since the 1980's into a state of sad dilapidation.
It's the sparkling, almost-trying-too-hard-to be-cool center of an area filled with falling down warehouses, their alleys perfumed with urine. The site, UnionMarketDC.com says the plan is that the area "surrounding the market will be a vibrant mix of retail, restaurants, hotel, entertainment, incubator space for new food concepts as well as retail and wholesale space."
It hasn't happened yet, though that didn't stop us from pushing the baby stroller through rather pedestrian-unfriendly streets to enjoy the delicious offerings of the restaurants and shops inside on two occasions - once in August and once in September.
All the beautiful food inspired a brief but shining period that had me baking bread daily for almost a week and enjoying it like this:
That looks good. Maybe I'll bake bread today. It's been a while.
Bump is 9 Months Old Today
On the eve of his 9-month-iversary, we went to this odd little manicured, AstroTurfed mini-park; it's part of a sky walk in Arlington:
I snapped a bunch of photos. These are my favorites.
Teddy Island
I love that we can be in a city that feels so urban with high rise buildings and a constant hum of activity, and then just a few minutes down the road feel like we are deep in the forest, complete with swamp bugs and a green canopy high above. The green space I'm thinking of is Theodore Roosevelt Island, or Teddy Island as I now think of it, a memorial to our 26th president.
We visited on Saturday. A kind stranger took the top shot of our family gathered at the feet of the impressive statue of Teddy in an energetic pose, almost like he's dunking a basketball. Or preparing to kick a tourist.
The memorial area around the statue has these stone structures with quotes from Teddy on topics like MANHOOD, NATURE, and YOUTH.
Crossing the Potomac via a pedestrian bridge on the way off the island, we paused to take more family photos.
New Mama and Sleepy Baby
Summer Family Portraits
- couples
- engagements
- families
- mamas and babies
- birthdays
- anniversaries
I love taking pictures to mark special moments, milestones, and celebrations. I love how an image can capture a fleeting expression, a laugh, a moment of delight, thoughtfulness, or mischief. Also, my mom always quotes my grammy as saying, "You'll always look back at photos and think you looked good." Or something like that. The idea being that even if the mirror isn't kind to you today, the passage of time will give you a new outlook on your past attractiveness.
There's also the fun and creativity of doing "just for fun," photo shoots, which I have done with many of my friends since college. It's the grown up equivalent of playing dress up. It is playing dress up, with the addition of photos to remember the fun. I did one of these shoots with my friend Leena, where we did dramatic makeup and tattoo shots. You can see those photos here.
Also, I personally believe there is a bit of magical power in these fun photo shoots. I think seeing beautiful photos of yourself and your family can help us remember and appreciate what is important.
I do love to imagine, whimsical though it may be, that the photos I take of friends, where we play and enjoy and act and pose and dress up, do have some life changing magical power. I think portrait photography can help you see yourself in a new way. You can see your soul when you look at your eyes in a photo in a way you can't when you look into the mirror.
Baby in the City: Our New Life in Arlington, Virginia
We moved to Arlington, Virginia on July 15th. This could be temporary, a three month visit to the D.C. area, or we could stay longer. We are here because Prince Charming is doing some consulting for a nonprofit in this area, and of course, because we have wanderlust.
Exploring a new city with a baby (now 8 months old) is a whole new world, a world troubled by fear of poop seeping out of a diaper and onto the varnished oak table of a trendy brunch restaurant. And other concerns, like is it okay if my son licks the glass window of the metro train, and is it better to deal with the sweat and back strain involved in baby wearing or the hassle of maneuvering a stroller into and out of elevators, metros, and through the narrow hallways of a trendy brunch restaurant.
We embraced wanderlust, we embraced packing lust, and now we are embracing the result of all that lust, which is a baby. Primary upside: he's adorable.
Deeply adorable. The world -- when I can sweep away the sheer weight of responsibility, thoughts of the strongly worded letters I may write to all installers and maintainers of baby-changing stations in bathrooms, and concerns about poop, germs, and poop, and poop -- is a different place when I am out with Bump.
When we are outside (and inside, and pretty much all the time except when he is extremely hungry or sleepy), Bump acts as a representative of the office of spreading glorious happiness. I watch the faces of people approaching us on the street, the stressed students, the tired tourists, the careworn business people. Those faces transform when they get a glimpse of Bump's slow sunrise smile. They slow down. They smile. Their shoulders relax just a little bit. They sigh. They say things like,
"He smiles from his heart."
"He adorable. He is like, a model baby. He is the model adorable baby."
"Does he always smile like that?"
"Is he always like this?"
Usually I say, "yes, pretty much" in response to the last two questions, but after giving it some thought, I realize that people are hoping they are special, that Bump is smiling at them, really seeing them, seeing their uniqueness and giving them a smiles that recognizes the best in them. And he is. So I may begin to answer differently, perhaps.
Perhaps sometimes I will say, "No, he's not always like this. It's you. You've got a special soul and he recognizes that and wants to give you the gift of his smile as a way to say thank you for sharing that which is good in you with the world."
Or, maybe I'll keep letting Bump's sweet smile do the talking.