My Blog has a new Home!

Greetings lovely people!
I am proud to announce that after many, many years using blogspot I have finally upgraded!

My blog has a new home ----> http://www.mandolynm.com/blog/

Come visit! I'll feed you delicious tidbits of information & share with you beautiful photies and we can commiserate about life & love over a hot piping cup of coffee. :)  Oh and please ignore the construction work that is going on under some of the tabs, we're working night & day to get everything updated on this new beautiful site!

Rooted

Oh my, I have been a bad baaad blogger, something that was brought to my attention during a wonderful conversation with my older and very pregnant sister. So I slid into my comfy slippers on this wonderfully sunny morning, and put my hair in a lets-get-shit-done hairdo and flipped on the old Macbook Pro. I have decided to re-emerge into the bloggersphere and on what better day than December, 27th...my birthday. How time has flown, this year has literally run by me, I was only just starting to savor the last year in my 20s and now look whats crept upon me, the big 3zero! Eeks. I'm practically old.

As I look back over the year, I am struck by how blessed I feel. I have officially found a place to be, to rest my whirlwind globetrotter ways and become rooted. A feeling that finally began to sink in as I watched the seasons come back around, one cycle of life in the desert come full circle. The long summer days shortened, the roaring summer heat reduced to a meow and that crispy tingly feeling you get in your nose on an chilly morning run, that's between a sniffle and a sneeze, is back.  I haven't had the chance to watch the seasons go full circle from one spot on the globe for quite a few years now and for the first time I actually felt comfortable. Comfortable with being rooted. (Although don't get me wrong, those itchy travelin' feet come visiting every now and again)  

This year has been a special kind of awesome. I'm thankful for:

• My awesome man - I'll save all the sappiness for his ears alone *wink*
• For the  job promotion to Director of the School Aged Department! Don't even get me started on how much I love being my own boss, molding my department, working with interns (and soon i get to hire my first staff member!), making things fair, efficient and transparent! I feel to excited to have the chance to learn to be a good leader! 
• Bella, my wonderful nearly full grown puppy who greets me in the mornings with excited kisses and snuggles. 
• My wee house that is finally starting to look like a home.
• Mini Cooper love! 
• And this old body that's still hiking and running and is on the road to kicking my little brothers butt in a mud run/obstacle course!

I've been struggling a wee bit with the fact that my career path has led me away from photography. I truly love this new challenge, but I miss the creative outlet that photography and storytelling played in my life. So to fill this void, I have decided to start themed weekly/biweekly posts, just to get the old photo juices boiling again.

Here are a few images from the last couple months. Enjoy!

Christmas 2014 on the beach!

My love is cooking a surprise birthday cake!

Sunday Morning Ramblings

I'm sitting here at my kitchen table overlooking the backyard, the blinding morning light is streaming through the window highlighting the clutter around me. A pile of pebbles sit beside me on the table and my 6 month old puppy sits tense with anticipation her eyes tracking from me to the pebbles and back, willing me to toss one out into the yard. Of all the toys I've bought for her from Petmart, she prefers these coveted (or so she likes to believe) pieces of gravel that shes carefully selected from the yard.  She will spend hours looking for and sniffing out the pebble I tossed and then run back to set it on my lap to start all over again. It's adorable the first 100 times, however she is inexhaustible and I'm already exhausted just waking up this morning.

I'm learning to compartmentalize my life. I have to learn to protect the little oasis in the desert I call home. Home is my refuge, I go home for snuggles and cuddles from my beautiful, supportive husband-to-be and I'm greeting at the door my the wiggling excited puppy who would like nothing more than to spend oodles of hours with her two favorite people presenting them repeatedly with pebbles.  I am so blessed and lucky on this front. My little family and our small house are things of a dream. The world we make is beautiful in its simplicity. Here I can shed the skin of self-protection, the worries of the world, the responsibilities and confusions of the job. I can control who I let in, I can express myself without judgement, I can make mistakes and be less than perfect and know I will be loved.

  I take pleasure in the sound of our feet grazing over loose gravel, the crunch of dry leaves under our shoe tread, the pitter-patter Bella's paws on the trail beside us. I love watching the clean movements of his legs, so sure and strong eating up the ground. We walk among giants, the great sequoias and redwoods loom above us, their massive trunks scarred by fire and time. Thousands of years of time, rooted in one spot, growing, twisting, enduring. They've seen the world go through massive transformations, what would a thousand year time laps from their perspective look like? How many different pairs of feet have they watched scuffle past from their lofty height?

Bella's Many Sleeping Positions:

Just a little update for this quiet weekend!

 
For the past month I've been teaching gardening lessons at the local elementary school and helping 2nd, 3rd and 5th grades start their first school garden. We've been seed starting and did a photo project where the class takes a photo of the seed each day and tracks the growth in images which we will then stitch together in a stop action movie project and present to the whole school body (more fun lesson ideas to come!). I've taken over the classes in place of our Master Gardener who is currently traveling Europe, jealous! But the beauty of it is that it has forced me to use my gardening brain (which has been turned off and stored away for years, except for maybe that time i tried to start a rooftop garden at my high rise apartment in S. Korea...) thinking about all things gardening and starting my own little herb and veggie garden at my new wee house! Gardens are definition one thing you cannot pack up and take with you around the world and I intend to thoroughly take advantage of my new rooted state. 

These are Korean Perilla 들깨 seedlings, or as it was called in S. Korea, Wild Sesame that is used for its oil (sesame oil yum!) and leaves which are used in Korean cuisine to make kimchi as well as a wrap for Korean BBQ. I fell in love with its flavor in Korean and haven't been able to find them here in the US, not even in LA's Korea Town! So I decided to grow the little boogers and make my own Perilla kimchi! I saw an article where egg shells were used in place of plastic potting containers or plug trays and can be plunked in the ground, shell and all because the shell will biodegrade as the plant grows and provide it with nutrients, saving you the trouble of transplanting!  And it's quite cost effective, if you eat as many eggs as I do!

Guess who's now a 10lbs fur ball of teething energy?! This one ↑