February Listening

photo of Joni Mitchell via Rolling Stone

Here are the sounds that I've been loving on lately to start your week.

Albums:
Joy Williams - Venus
Sufjan Stevens - Carrie & Lowell
Joni Mitchell - Turbulent Indigo (Also, Joni Mitchell's Pandora station is top notch.)
The Staves - If I Was
Aoife O'Donovan - Fossils
The Middle East - I Want That You Are Always Happy
Peter Doran - Outlines
Mountain Man - Made the Harbor
Crooked Still - Still Crooked

Podcasts:
The Minimalists Podcast
Serial - I'm on Season Two now, but I definitely preferred Season 1. I'm glad that we're getting updates on that case as it progresses!
TED Radio Hour

Also, if you haven't watched Beyoncé's new video, Formation, go go go do it!

xoxo Erin

Corners

I thought a good start would be to highlight some corners of our apartment that I'm really happy with! This place is so small, with our only storage being two tiny closets, so pretty much everything we own is out on display. There are a couple pretty cluttered spaces in here, which I'm slowly working on. I feel like I've pared down so much already, the next step may be to just get some more appropriate storage for the remaining chunks. I'll keep you posted on any progress with those! Another aspect though, is that I would prefer to not bring in more stuff to organize the stuff we have, so I'm hoping to come up with a better solution. Also beautiful storage costs money! Generally, when you don't have craftsman skills.



I would also like to incorporate more plants into our space, but these cats like to devour any living thing they can. I recently got a hanging plant, to ease into it. So far, it's sill alive! Small victories.



A few things featured in these photos that I particularly love:
1. Our bed. When we moved up to Maine we left all of our old crappy furniture behind, and decided to invest in a nice mattress. We ended up getting a yogabed, which you've probably seen similar things around. It's a memory foam mattress that came rolled up in a box, which then just unrolled and inflated on our bed, and no need for a boxspring! It's been great. We also invested in a down comforter for the chilly Maine winters. That, and the pile of pillows make for such lovely sleep.
2. This ceramic jar is one of the few things from my college ceramics class that I actually liked enough to hold onto. I'm still proud of it!
3. I recently found this nightstand at a consignment store in South Portland. They had so much great furniture! I can't wait to come up with an excuse to go back. I love it's shelves, along with a little drawer at the bottom perfect for storing some pajamas.



If anyone has tips for living in small spaces with little storage, I'll take them all!

xoxo Erin

Hello again, and GOALS.

If you follow me on Instagram, these pictures are old news, but I thought they were a good synopsis of what my life has been since I was last blogging. Cats.

Anyways, I'm back. Or trying to be. Let's back up a bit -

I've been wanting to get back into blogging lately, but just feel like I have nothing spectacular to contribute to the already beautifully saturated blogosphere. My life is more or less mundane. Landon and I sitting around, playing with the cats and tending to the Inn. The other day though, I was listening to The Minimalists' Podcast, which reminded me how much I love what these guys have to say. I realize that if I want to have a "more interesting" life I need to just do something about it! Read more books, beautify the space we live in, curate my own interests. I'm going to get off the couch, turn off the Food Network, and feed my soul a bit. So, we'll see where this leads. A few specific things that I want to focus on:

1 - Read more! Since buying a Kindle, I have honestly been reading much more than ever before, which is still not very much (I've recently been enjoying Gloria Steinem's latest, My Life on the Road). On their podcast they had this excellent tip of reorganizing the home screen of your phone, and putting the Kindle app front and center, where you would normally go to just browse Facebook, or whatever. I combined that with Marie Kondo's (the author of The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up) tip of putting all of your apps into one folder, and then you have to actively search for the particular app you're wanting. It makes your phone use much more intentional, and I love the simplicity of my home screen now! This is what I have now:



I'm loving it! Also, that cute little face gets me every time. I also turned off so many notifications, which means less aimless browsing with each Instagram like. Okay, back on track. This one has morphed into my number 2- Break the addiction to my iPhone. These little tricks are intended to get me to use it with more intention. It is a powerful tool that I love having in my pocket, and the ability to reach anyone instantly is incredible. But really, I don't need to have it within a foot of me anywhere I am. I can hear a text notification from the other side of our little apartment. To further the weaning process, I'm going to try and leave it on it's dock more often while I'm home, to curb the obsessive checking. I need the thing for work, which is the glory of a pretty much 24/7 on call job, so I can't just give it up completely for periods of time, but I'm working towards that direction.

3 - Pursue minimalism. I am in a constant state of purging my belongings. I mean, I'm really good at getting rid of things. But, I'm also really good at buying stuff, and justifying it. Continually refining and curating things is something I really enjoy, but can also get pretty pricey and ridiculous. We also have a very tiny living space, so the less clutter, the happier we can be in our home.

4 - Explore hobbies. HTML/CSS is something I've wanted to learn since my days of Java in college. I really enjoyed it, and was learning more and more when Leah and I were blogging together, but it has definitely fallen by the wayside since then. It's such a useful tool, and I have the computer science base to make sense of it, I just need a kick in the pants! Speaking of, if anyone has some awesome resources for someone getting started in the HTML/CSS world - send them my way! Ideas and advice are greatly appreciated!

These are just a few of the things I want to start focusing more of my energy on. Baby steps, but I'm trying.
Let's just relax and enjoy the ride.

xoxo Erin