Month: September 2016

A place to lay your head

~ emmaakoch ~ Leave a comment

The night we moved into our very first home, we slept on a mattress on the floor in the middle of our new bedroom. We had no lamps, just a flashlight, and a suitcase of clothes. It was perfect. We were giddy (and slightly terrified – wait we OWN this building??).

My sister (in-law) and her fiancé  just bought their very first home and it makes us nostalgic for that time. It is a lot of work, exhausting (both physically and mentally) but also magical in a way that maybe you can’t fully appreciate until after you are through it. 

There is so much to do! What to do first!? 

Well…how about your master bedroom?

We started by pulling together some looks that Gilly liked. 

Both are airy and bright with clean lines, natural fabrics, a mix of modern and vintage, with a pop of color. 

We already had a few pieces to work with.  (bed, rug ordered, bureau).

I put together a few mood boards to choose from. Which would you pick?

Shop this room:

1. Green lamps/2.Oil Painting/3.Pickstitch Sham/4.Lumbar Pillow/5.Minimalist Mirror/6.Tripod Floor Lamp/7.Dresser/8.Duvet Cover

Shop this room:

1.Alarm clock/ 2.Lamp/ 3.Bed/ 4.Painting/ 5.Mudcloth Pillow/ 6.Sham/ 8.Bedside table


Shop this room (PS this was their favorite!):

1.Table lamp /2. Art/ 3.Accent pillow/ 4.Chair/ 5.Mirror/ 6.Dresser/ 7.Lamp/ 8.Sham and Duvet/ 9.Lumbar pillow/ 10.Side table

Mama, will you miss this?

~ emmaakoch ~ 1 Comment

On the eve of her 4th birthday, Viv asked: “Mama, will you miss 3yrs old?”

I said yes, but I’m also excited for 4!

She replied:  “Well don’t worry, because one day Celia will be 3!”

Is she reading my mind? I will desperately miss these days, these months, these years. Is it cliché to say I want to bottle them up for future consumption? 

Goodnight my 3yr old deep-thinking-toddler. One last hug for mama please, the last while you are still three.

Good morning my 4yr old girl. A big hug for mama please, the first since turning four.

What’s on your plate? 

~ emmaakoch ~ Leave a comment

As a last farewell to summer, we ate perfectly tart strawberry rhubarb pie this Labor Day weekend. 

Rhubarb is typically a spring crop vegetable, but the fresh stalks displayed at Stop & Shop made me literally stop, and shop – they begged to be combined with strawberries and sugar. 

So we did just that.

Recipe:

1 cup of sugar

5 cups chopped rhubarb 

5 cups chopped strawberries

That’s it. Nothing more.

I cheated a bit and used a frozen pre-made crust. No, it’s not quite as good as the real thing, but if I had to make it by hand it simply wouldn’t have been made.

Voila.

And yes, I did it again. I forgot to snap a photo of the end result. Too busy eating!

Perspective

~ emmaakoch ~ 1 Comment

How great is this?

A perfect reminder that perspective matters. 

Our daughter turns 4 this month, the age at which children are generally first capable of seeing a situation from another person’s perspective. This is the basic building block from which we can learn to empathize. 

But empathy requires not only the ability to see another perspective, but also valuing that perspective.

How do you nurture this tendency? How do you teach a person to not only see, but more importantly to value another persons perspective?

I thought this short piece from the graduate school in education at Harvard had some good suggestions for cultivating empathy in children.
My favorite suggestion was to support “doing with” as opposed to “doing for”:

“Encourage children not just to do community service, to ‘do for’ others, but to ‘do with’ others, working with diverse groups of students to respond to community problems.”

Such a subtle but important shift, don’t you think?