Under a Red Roof

Before the Reset

January 11, 2023 in Celebrating, Cooking + Baking, Exploring by Colleen | Permalink

Happy Wednesday dear reader! How are you? Are you feeling refreshed this new year? Greg and I are knee-deep in our diet reset and feeling quite good.

The first three photos are evidence of our year-end dietary wonders. First is a seafood lasagna, recipe from Inspired by Charm (Hello Pittsburgh!), which served as our fabulous Christmas dinner. We swapped the noodles with thin sliced butternut squash, and it still felt quite indulgent. It also made for spectacular leftovers! I hadn’t made pumpkin bread for ages and did a fine job of it. Pizza on a very cold day when the indoor oven would not stifle the house was the tops. Absolutely!

The weather is winter-still, icy cold. Dog walks are bundled in the thin warmth of afternoon or not at all, poor Juniper. Though she minds less when we are prompt with morning and afternoon snacks. Our girl remains food motivated.

The dazzle of moonlight was New Year’s Eve. 100 years of AdAmAn meant our sleepy souls didn’t have to wait until midnight for Pike’s Peak fireworks, but got a little preview at nine p.m. Yay! It was a bit too cloudy for much of a show, but we enjoyed a neighborly chat with a woman and her grandchildren in the church lot while we watched and waited. Hooray for childhood and human connection.

Twenty Twenty Three

January 2, 2023 in Exploring by Colleen | Permalink

Good Monday to you, dear reader, and Happy 2023! What plans have you for the year ahead? We are, as is our usual, doing a little eating reset for the month of January, which means NO: sugar, dairy, alcohol, or wheat, and limited grains. It is so easy to go bananas with fun foods at the end of the year, and by the time January arrives, I am quite ready to change it up.

The winter geese have arrived from Canada! Why is it, when there is sun and much greater warmth elsewhere, do they circle and honk in our neck of the woods?

We had our second snow in a week, delight of delights. Juniper Beulah, no surprise, has been reveling in the cold-soft wonder.

We are forging ahead with our Taos build, now in the process of choosing an architect to bring my design to life. Out of a strong desire to minimize the environmental footprint, we have already decided on a passive style, pre-fab house for a couple reasons. First, to keep building waste to a minimum, as pre-fab construction generally creates 80% less waste. Astonishing. Second, passive style houses also use minimal inputs for heating and cooling since the walls are super substantial and densely insulated. For us, this will probably mean 16″ thick. Imagine the bonus quiet, too!! We’ll have a wood burning stove for winter heat and fans for summer cooling. The best description I ever read is you pay for the majority of your needs for comfort in advance, by creating a tight envelope and orienting structures toward the sun. Speaking of sun, we will have solar panels and residential sized wind turbines, as we work to be as off-grid as possible. We will also collect all of our rooftop water and hope to use our well only in emergencies. It’s a plan, peeps, most definitely.

As you can imagine, I am often kept up at night, adrift in a sea of ideas: grey water irrigation, flooring, color, furniture, tile, light fixtures, counter tops, plumbing, plants, trees, oh my!

Kestrel

December 29, 2022 in Quoting by Colleen | Permalink

How absurd these words are, such as beast and beast of prey. One should not speak of animals in that way. They may be terrible sometimes, but they’re much more right than men…They’re never in any embarrassment. They always know what to do and how to behave themselves. They don’t flatter and they don’t intrude. They don’t pretend. They are as they are, like stones or flowers or stars in the sky.

Herman Hesse

Tags: Quoting

It’s Christmas Eve

December 24, 2022 in Celebrating, Loving by Colleen | Permalink

Happy Christmas Eve! Here is hoping you are safe and warm and surrounded by those you love. What a literal shit storm of a week it has been across these United States. I am grateful for electricity and heated spaces, boy howdy.

This cute tree is the invention of Michael and Mary. We enjoyed a most wonderful time of the year sleepover at their house last Friday, complete with epic meals made by Michael and cookies made by Mary, as well as cider sipping, coffee guzzling, puzzling, and gaming. All of our usual with a nice surprise, too.

Dear Jesus the dog dearly departed this past summer after fourteen magical years. This is the newest addition, Leo. He is a 100% sweet and 1000% energetic puppers. Seriously. So much energy! He and Juniper ran around the yard for literally hours, which was wonderful for us humans as the temperatures were not terribly walk-friendly. They exercised themselves good and proper!

In advance of our visit, Michael and Mary said they had a surprise for us, one requiring sturdy shoes and warm garments. Greg guessed a snowball fight, while I came up mostly blank. This Chatfield branch of the Denver Botanic Garden stroll was it, and boy was it delightful! At 19 degrees, we walked swiftly through the magical affair. It took ages to heat up afterward, with mulled wine and hot beverages and the warmest of conversation. Worth it!

Michael’s not world famous but probably ought to be canelé for breakfast. So good!!

A moment of stillness…

After our Michael and Mary sleepover, it was time for another with my parents! Daddy is the best napper I know, even beating out the hubster.

Game time! Greg and I reigned supreme at Sequence this time round, but there were no hard feelings. We also did some binge watching – Nine Perfect Strangers, continued to eat like kings, more delicious homemade treats along with a whole host of store bought. The best.