Welcome back to my blog. Spring has arrived at long last and with it, came focaccia bread and inspiring sparks of joy. A few weeks ago, our children were off school for their two week, “spring break.” Boy, did we need a time out from our usual routine. During those two weeks, we accomplished a tremendous amount, but when I look back, the highlight was when our sixteen year old daughter, Grace, made focaccia bread. “Focaccia,” comes from the Latin word, focus meaning “hearth, or place for baking. Those two weeks ended up being a time of focus, when we grounded ourselves around the hearth and created an atmosphere where sparks of joy flew.
We started the holiday by resting first, which like bread dough, after an intense kneading session, was something we needed in order to rise to become our best selves.
Don’t you find rest can do wonders for a body? I feel as if rest is viewed negatively in our society. We seem to need to fill each and every moment and day. Even our holidays are jam packed with activities. In the week before the break, I had many people ask if we were going anywhere or doing anything over spring break. I would respond by saying, “we don’t have any great plans,” and then I would ask what they were doing, only to hear that Hawaii or Mexico were on the agenda. For our family, I knew what we needed most was to rest and gain strength. I knew we needed that in order to clear our house, clear our minds, so we could focus on what we really wanted in our lives.
In the weeks leading up to spring break, I had been watching Marie Kondo’s latest Netflix series on tidying up and decluttering. Have you seen it yet? If not, click on the link above and get a glimpse of her program. She has developed an interesting method of gathering all like objects together and then letting the things that spark joy be your guide in deciding what remains in our homes. While I thought I was rather a master at decluttering, using “this” concept, allowed me to tune in more accurately towards inner feelings of elation.
To hone this approach to a greater degree, I also read her latest book, “Spark Joy: An Illustrated Master Class on the Art of Organizing and Tidying Up (The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up).” After that, I was hooked on getting down and dirty, touching everything I owned and asking myself one question, as I held the item close to my chest, “does it spark joy?”
At first this wasn’t easy for me. I would hold the item close to my chest and often feel something, but it had more to do with, “but I may need it in the future,” rather than a zing of joy. I believe this is the residual effects of being raised by a mother who was a child during the depression and then a young woman during the World War II years. If you come from a history of lack, then the tendency is to hold on to things, just in case. As I touched each item, sometimes I would hear a tiny voice saying, “you may need that one day.” But then there was another inner dialogue occurring debating whether it was worth holding onto, maintaining and having to house the item and worst of all, using my energy again next spring picking up the same item! Disregarding both voices, I would simply ask, “does it spark joy?” If not, I thanked the item and put it in the donation box.
I know this may sound weird but this was the part that gave me the greatest joy. I absolutely loved thanking the item and then letting it go. It created this marvellous space in my life and everything around me seemed to sparkle and was suddenly very special. While I decluttered, I also took time to clean or organize what I was choosing to keep which made me feel immensely grateful for everything in our house.
Can you tell what sparks joy for me most in our home from the pictures below?
Did you guess, “books?” Well you were right. I love them….they spark joy and I love surrounding myself with them and I think our children do as well. I have let go of many, and I’m not one to hoard them, but having books around me makes me happy. What makes you happiest in your home?
In the second week of spring break, my family and I started the meditation challenge together that I wrote about a few posts back. The topic was on Manifesting Grace through Gratitude. Have you been meditating with us? Today is day 21 and the title is, “Seeing with the Eyes of the Soul.” Now I won’t say everyone was enthusiastic over sitting together in a guided meditation, ahem, but I have to give our daughter Grace my thanks, for she hung in there with us throughout the week. I knew the experience was powerful for our younger children, as our daughter Victoria drew a picture during that week, of us sitting in a circle around a candle and she wrote, “I feel way better after doing medating, it also helps me to keep cam and follow my brething.”
Then when the break was over, on our drive to school when everyone was feeling anxious about getting back to the routine and seeing classmates, Will remembered one of the mantras, “Namaste,” he said to me as he kissed me goodbye.
When we weren’t omming together, and while I was tidying and decluttering, David, my husband was painting the interior walls of our house a “graceful grey.” After ten years living in a home with varying shades of beige, it was time for a change. Last year, when we were on Vancouver Island, I picked up my future decorator’s palette, while walking on the beach; a piece of creamy driftwood, a grey rock, a dark blue one, a black one and a white one. Those were the colours that spoke to my heart and I knew that even though we may not be able to live at the coast right now, we could recreate those nature colours around us.
Also, with us living on the hillside above the glacial formed, “Kalamalka Lake,” that has earned a moniker of, ” the lake of many colours,” due to all the minerals in the water, I felt that the grey’s and blue’s on our walls would echo what is often outside our windows. I want our house to feel like it’s part of the landscape. Our home and garden, are all works in progress and keep me grounded to this earth. Often as a society, we turn to what is trendy and wonder why we aren’t happy in our homes. If we started to look inside and ask ourselves what makes us happy; what do WE love, then and only then, will we discover authentic joy. What colours make you happy, make you feel good? Are you surrounding yourself with those?
As David and I were busy inside our home, our three youngest enjoyed the warm spring weather. They rode their bikes, jumped on the trampoline, ran in the yard, played board games, read books, played music, and helped me find what sparked joy for them.
In the case of their clothes that was fairly easy. It it fit, it stayed and if it didn’t it went into the donation box after a blessing of appreciation. After learning, from raising our older children that kids grow fast, we try not to over buy clothes for them, making decluttering each season fairly easy. But with regards to stuffed toys, well, as I discovered, that was a totally different animal.
One afternoon, I had our twin girls bring all their stuffed animals and pile them on the floor of my bedroom. I had them hold each animal close to their chest and had them ask themselves if it sparked joy. In most cases, they only had to pick it up and you could tell from the light on their faces that it wildly sparked joy. As we moved through the pile, to my dismay, almost every single stuffed animal sparked joy. There was little culling going to occur. Is that the right word for stuffed animals; culling?
Whatever is the right word, letting go was not something they were prepared to do. It’s funny, but they did let go easily of their “FurReal,” stuffed animals. These were the ones that actually barked or meowed, or moved in some mechanical way. Interestingly enough, these were also the ones that were the most expensive toys. I choked thinking of the money we had spent, as they hugged these stuffies one last time, thanking it before dropping it into the donation box. I had to accept that this was a part of the process and lessons for all of us. The animals that sparked the most joy were the ones that were in the worst shape. They looked well loved!
I’d like to think at the end of my days, this is how I will look.
Oh, and you may be wondering how our older daughter Grace spent her spring break? She went to the gym a lot, she worked on her piano pieces as she is hoping to complete her Royal Conservatory grade 10 next year and she spent a bit of time also tidying and decluttering her room, as she has caught the bug and understands the concept of surrounding herself with only things she loves.
She also spent a bit of time helping us cook in the kitchen, making Focaccia bread with a lovely pasta dinner one night, bagels another day and she and her siblings treated us to a pizza dinner one night, a group effort I was proud of. It was so lovely after a day of painting and intense tidying and decluttering, to light a candle, and sit down as a family, enjoying dinner together.
Grace’s Focaccia Bread Recipe (to pronounce, the first C is hard and the second make a cha sound)
Ingredients
2- 3/4 cups of flour
1 tbsp active dry yeast
1 tsp white sugar
1 tsp salt
1 cup warm water
4 tbsp virgin olive oil (3 tbsp for the recipe and 1 tbsp to brush on top before baking)
2 garlic cloves…but I like more and would use 4!
1 tsp of rosemary/ 1 tsp of thyme/ 1 tsp dried oregano/ 1 tsp basil
Opt: 1 tbsp Parmesan cheese and 1/2 cup Mozzarella cheese
Directions
In a large bowl, stir together flour, salt, sugar, yeast, thyme, oregano, and basil. Mix well and slowly add the warm water and 3 tbsp’s olive oil.
Mix well and when dough has formed a ball, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface ad knead it until it’s smooth and has an elastic feel. Lightly oil a large bowl, placing the dough inside, turning it over to coat it. Cover it with a damp, cotton cloth and place it in a warm place for 20 minutes.
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Punch the down down and place it onto a greased baking sheet. Grace used a round cake pan. Pat down the dough to 1/2 inch high and brush with 1 tbsp olive oil and sprinkle it rosemary and optional cheese.
Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
Serve warm with a pasta dinner…or as a appetizer with a dipping sauce of
Dipping Sauce Ingredients
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
5 minced garlic cloves
1/4 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp each of rosemary and thyme
Mix all together and place on a plate for dipping
When spring break finally came to an end, our house was almost fully painted, almost every category had been thoroughly vetted. Only a few boxes of sentimental items and years of pictures are still on the to do list. We were all feeling healthy and strong, ready to focus on what is truly important to us as we head back out into the world. It’s amazing what a rest, some meditation, some tidying, some updating, and some hanging out by the hearth, eating healthy meals with your family can do for a person. I highly recommend it! So on your next break, I hope you take some time to make some homemade focaccia bread, dip it in olive oil and rosemary, and look around your house elated at things that spark joy.
I think Grace’s Focaccia bread recipe will become a family favourite, like our son Mitchell’s crazy bread recipe that he brought home from his Foods course years ago. Before I close though, I have one other thing I want to leave with you. Over spring break I watched a heart warming Hallmark movie. It reminded me yet again, that we don’t have to go far, we don’t have to travel the world, we don’t have to visit expensive restaurants, or spend our time being consumers at the mall. To find real joy, is to be present in the moment.
It’s when we are present, grateful, surrounded by people and things we love, that real sparks of joy occur At least for me. I like to talk about ways where we can live sustainably on this blog and to be moving in that direction, where we are living a lifestyle reducing our carbon footprint, and our need on Earth’s resources, well, it all comes down to living more simply. Resting our bodies, meditating, being grateful for everything in our lives, cooking and baking from scratch and spending time with our families; eating, talking, laughing.
When I watched the following Hallmark movie on You tube, called, “The Magic of Ordinary Days,” I was reminded of another time in history, just before our society took a big jump towards “modern living.” I think something was lost along the way and like an archaeologist, excavating artifacts from past societies, I think we can learn something about living more sustainably and joy filled from past generations. Just like Marie Kondo’s greatest wish, to help the whole world tidy their space and find sparks of joy, my fervent wish is for the world to find the magic in ordinary days. One evening, make a big bowl of popcorn and sit down to watch this movie ,……I will be right there with you, sparking joy!
Until we meet again, may you be well, happy and peaceful.
Blessings from Hope