On Tenderness

Tenderness--that timid little beast full of its own kind of ferocity.  It dares what no one else will: to reach beyond the safety of its armor and the armor of others to stop the world with a soft caress, a squeeze of a hand, or a gentle whisper of things half-said.

It is enough to acknowledge and be acknowledged it says.  Enough to cast aside the temptation to perpetually coat your words in irony, your face in schooled ennui.  Tenderness does not just wear its heart on its sleeve but carves it upon its skin, a reminder that there are blood and bones beneath our shells, and --tucked behind a living cage--a full beating heart. 

It might feel like a bruise at times, that carving, or a pulsing scar, but that is only because it must feel, always feel everything around it so as never to be fossilized by urbane manners or cool posturing.  Those things do not touch it, will not touch it.  Must not touch it.

This little beast knows that to cast aside its armor, so shoddily made of unfounded fears, is to become stronger--to offer itself up to the world as a song of muscle and memory so as to see whose soul beats in time with its own.

There, there lies the naked power of tenderness.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Aphrodite's Sugar Scrub

Valentine's Day is a celebration of the love in your life--and not just romantic kind.  It's about sharing your gratitude for the people who make your day a little brighter and a little sweeter.  What better way to honor this love than by giving them this sugar body scrub to shake off the winter blahs?

Full of cinnamon and roses--long considered natural love potions--this scrub inspires us to invoke the divine Aphrodite and to relish the simple hedonism of a long bubble bath (maybe with a buddy!), pampered skin, and a rosy outlook on life.  Pair it with my Aphrodite's Bath Salts, and you've got a match made in heaven!

Ingredients:

1 cup organic sugar

1 cup olive oil or coconut oil

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/4 cup rose petals

30 drops cinnamon essential oil

30 drops rose oil or rose water

10 drops clove oil

Mix all ingredients in a bowl and store in a mason jar or other airtight container.  Makes about 1 cup.  Enjoy!

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Aphrodite's Bath Salts

With Valentine's Day around the corner, you might be thinking about what to get for those special someones in your life beyond a glitter coated heart-shaped card, a box of chocolates, or a bouquet of roses--all wonderful, natch, but sometimes it doesn't hurt to shake things up.   And let's be honest, they've probably already used the treats you made them for the holidays! I like to think of Valentine's Day as a time when we can try a little tenderness, as the song goes.  That includes pampering the people that fill your corner of the world with love, light, and happiness. 

And who knows? If you want to treat an extra special someone to some TLC, the aphrodisiacs mixed into these bath salts might just make things a little more interesting.  The clove and cinnamon oil are antibacterial and add a warming energy to your bath, while the rose petals bring a touch of romantic glamor as well as skin-softening and toning qualities.  Adding rose oil and powdered cinnamon just takes this delectable soak over the top!

Ingredients:

1 cup Epsom salts

1/4 cup olive oil or coconut oil

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1/4 cup rose petals

30 drops cinnamon essential oil

30 drops rose oil or rose water

10 drops clove oil

Combine ingredients in a bowl until thoroughly mixed.  Store in an airtight container indefinitely.  Makes about 1 cup.  Enjoy!

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

On Turning Thirty

Thank sweet baby Jesus. 

You're thirty.  Or better put, your twenties--that hellish brutal decade--is over.  No longer living hand to mouth.  No longer surviving off of hope and credit or talking yourself into stupid or dangerous or stupidly dangerous situations because "that's what people your age do."  Maybe they do--and maybe they shouldn't--you really don't care anymore.  Just like you don't care about trying to prove you have nothing to prove.

You don't want to save the world anymore either.  Or give yourself over to A Cause.  You have learned that your happiness stems from tending your own little corner of the world and nourishing the relationships within it.  Let others find their own path because the only one who can save them is them--just as only you were the one who could pull yourself up from the muck of your twenties into the bliss of the here and now.

At thirty, you simply do not have the energy to be anything other than who you are.  And now that you know the delicious power of self-respect, you can't talk yourself into trying on those other identities like so many cheap, ill-fitting dresses.  So you now wear your loud colors and your wild hair and too many rings stacked upon your fingers--and polka dot dresses because why not? You dance and you read books indiscriminately (what's a canon except for a collection of books that at one time or another were considered trash?).  And you celebrate the fact that your life is made up of listening to your jazz records and cooking marvelous family dinners and star gazing and writing things people read and always, always being open to the unexpected. 

So you will light your birthday candles (all 30 of them) and make your birthday wish and eat your birthday cake and with each bite, relish that you have found it: that ephemeral thing called Happiness. Day in, day out--that's where the magic is at.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

On Bravery

Bravery. 

The act of planting a small seed in soil you aren't sure is fertile enough--but hope, desperately hope--that it is. And the seed, a small husk holding only a new possibility, that fragile little flicker of promise--of what, you might not even know.  Yet you still dare to image another way of being.

Bravery, vulnerability's bold lover.  Not in donning armor but consciously, when the moment is right, casting off that thick chainmail and exposing the tender skin underneath to wonder, to the simple chance that there is life beyond the mundane.  It is in that tentative first step into a new way of living.  Pushing past the fear, the little whispers that try to keep you tethered to the safety of the un-evolving. 

It's in taking the risk to believe that you are on your path even as you wonder if it is a path at all (you only see a faint ribbon of dirt half-buried in bramble).  No matter.  You will make it one.  You have made it one.  Your feet moving forward--first one, then the other--do so in response to the prompting of the loose earth beneath your feet--it calls to your soles--soul--as your soul calls to it.  And that is enough.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Things that Make Me a Burquena

Soy de Burque.  Me.  I am of these streets and this sky.

It's in my love of big earrings and cruising down Central--though my car, much as I love her, will never be pimped out quite like those classic trucks, ragtops, and other vintage rides lovingly restored and paraded up and down that old main street on Sundays like a row of chrome peacocks. 

I can feel the magical and mystical permeating these streets as if the land were infused with an otherworldly essence completely at home in this off the map desert town.  The people, too, are a little off the map--valuing good food as much as good karma, chakra-opening yoga, and mind-opening microbrews.

Yes, my favorite big small town where the best places to eat are usually in some old adobe or restored historical building and you can pretty much find someplace to salsa dance every night of the week.  It is because I cannot live without freshly baked bread from the panaderia on Mountain Road (yes, the panaderia, because really there is only one worthy of the name).  Or because I could never stay long in a place that doesn't understand that I go both ways--red and green--and never in a city, never with a person that doesn't know what that means.

I need to feel the beating heart of this city as I wake every morning and go to sleep at night, feel the raw power of Mother Nature--the river, the mountains, the cottonwoods--just as part of this town as our adobes and streets, keeping us rooted to our desert land.  I take pride in the fact that my freeway can touch the heavens as it bends and curves over the city in a blaze of turquoise and concrete.

It is in my love of the people warm as the sun that bronzes our skin.  We live with an unapologetic ferocity, wearing our passions--those messy, violent things--like badges of honor, refusing to be silenced, refusing to be anything other than loud, open, dancing, breathing bundles of humanity.

Me.  This city is me.  Soy, soy de Burque.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Things that Make Me a New Mexican

Your bones seem to be made up of sun and clay, formed out of days curing in the desert heat.  The landscape is made up of infinite colors--ochre, mica, taupe, sienna, layered together to form hills, plateaus, and muddy river beds.  The colors are never still, never just brown, never just layers of settled dust (regardless of what those outsiders say).

It is the smell of pinto beans cooking on the stove and the necessity of homemade tortillas (are those store-bought discs really worthy of the name?).  It is knowing the difference between "chile" and "chili"--the former in your blood, the latter, a sacrilege. It is knowing that tequila and tamales are the best medicine, though you know your way around the herbs in your garden, a gift from the curandera magic running through your veins. 

And then there's the turquoise. It has taken over the sky, filling up the city corner to corner like the dry desert air fills up your lungs, chasing out the soul sickness that settled between your ribs when you lived--briefly, the desert always called you back--in a damp, dark place.  Plus the sun.  Always the sun.  Always the sky that goes on forever making it impossible for you to hide from yourself. 

It is your collection of rocks and crystals, each stone a link in your connection to the land, and the faint smell of burning sage in the air to cleanse your home of stale energies.  In the bright colors you scatter across your home and the big earrings that will always call to you.  In the different colors that make up you--brown, red, white--never quite at ease with each other and yet part of the same soil that birthed you.

Yes, it is the sun you must have, and the wide open sky above you, and the desert earth beneath your feet.  Only then are you whole.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

On Everyday Enchantment

Enchantment.  A spell wrapped in a noun.  Three syllables.  One state of being.

To live with Enchantment is to see beyond the brick and mortar that make up your home and into the magic infused within its frame.  It is to peel back the layers of your day-to-day and search for that elusive energy that winds its way up your spine and outward into your life.

To learn from Enchantment is to listen to Coyote's call when he plays his tricks.   He is a messenger really--there to make you listen.  To trust in the power that is you, that is the earth; the power that is the beating of your heart, a rhythmic tattoo that forever pounds out your path regardless of how many times you try to stray from it.  It is to absorb the wisdom of the moon and the stars, and the prophesying of the seeds burrowed deep in the dirt.

It is to conjure.  To create.  To believe that the bulk of your day--the most important parts--occurs in the moments and spaces others can too easily overlook.  Because when you are looking for everyday enchantment, it finds you.  Always.  It nourishes you.  It makes its home inside your skin and feeds your soul. 

Yes.  That's Enchantment.  A spell wrapped in a noun, planted in the earth and nourished with moonlight, roots stretching to the underworld and leaves unfurling towards the heavens, creating a waking dream in the here and now if only you are open to it.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

On Wings

You felt them growing underneath your skin right along your shoulder blades.

At first, your thought it was only tight shoulders, muscles that needed to be loosened.  But at the pain grew and little bumps began to form on either side of your spine, you knew.  And when the skin broke revealing bits of blood and bone and feathers you could no longer deny your wings.

They grew out of hope and lessons learned the hard way, out of holding on and letting go.  They are nourished by the warm caress of the sun and a growing sense of self.  Delicate, yes. Ephemeral spans of imagination and bone.  But strong, unbreakable as they unfurl from your back and stretch wide, parts of them still coated with the blood and skin they took as they pushed their way out of your back. 

They are an almost weightless pressure now against your shoulder blades, a whisper of feathers and tendons behind you that will only grow stronger, bigger each time you dare to be just a little more you.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

On Living Soulfully in the New Year

This time of year is always full to bursting with new year's resolutions--most of them overwhelming and along the lines of do more, be more, work harder, push harder in order to feel like we are Living Well or Growing.

This is probably why most of these resolutions get tossed out the window by the end of January.  They're too much pressure!  I can't just eat mung beans and green smoothies morning, noon, and night or pump iron two hours a day to prove my commitment to my health, nor can I glue myself to my writing desk or force myself fill every bit of free time I have in an effort to nourish my intellectual growth. 

In fact, I'm convinced that these goals are as detrimental to us as eating fast food, never exercising, and giving up on learning new things in our day to day lives.  Why? Because they don't allow us to truly find the fullest expression of ourselves but merely perform our desire for change to others.  And in performance lies pressure--we want to show the world that we can be the best of the best, whatever that means to each of us individually.

As I've been mulling this over the past few weeks, I've decided to shape my own new year's resolution on this simple concept: Living Soulfully.  This ephemeral idea cannot be measured in terms of how many hours spent at the gym nor how many words I commit to a page, but in how I feel when I wake up in the morning.  Am I full?  Do I feel like I am living authentically?  Do I feel like my soul is nourished or am I, as Bilbo Baggins once stated, "like butter scraped over too much bread"? 

In essence, this resolution deviates from its do more, be more cousin and insists on the value of doing less, listening more.  And so I will.  I will tune out the white noise that says I must be this or that in order to be considered a successful, healthy woman and instead listen to what brings me joy each moment of each day.

That is a resolution worth keeping.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Join Me for Another Year of Blogging Adventures!

Well, I'm back in the saddle after a few days off of writing--which, to be honest, felt a little strange since I was so used to writing every. Single. Day.  Yep, I did it!  Last year I committed to writing a blog a day--that's 365 inspirational posts!--on the little things in life that give us pleasure like an afternoon cup of tea or reading in bed.  I even sprinkled my posts with healthy recipes (Chickpea & Mushroom Salad anyone?) and DIY beauty treats (hello Easy Peasy Baking Soda Face Scrub!) to celebrate the small acts of self-care we can fold into our everyday life which makes it all the more enjoyable.

Whew!  What a year it was!  If you want to look back on that journey we took together or read some of the posts that you didn't get to the first time around, you check out my Blog and Recipe Indexes.  

Fear not, however--a new year does not mean I'm giving up on my blogging.  In fact, it means the opposite: I'm looking forward to more writing adventures!  Instead of daily posts, I'll be blogging bi-weekly, typically on Tuesday and Friday.  There will still be plenty of flash essays on everyday magic and new recipes to enjoy throughout this year, just a little more spread out.  Now is also a good time to subscribe to my blog (simply enter your email address in the box provided below or click here and enter your email address) to get each new post delivered to your inbox. 

As always, thank you for your support and for following me last year as I embarked on this wild journey of blogging and savoring the everyday magic that surrounds us if only we take the time to look for it.  Here's to another year of enchanted living and learning!

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Happy New Year!

Thanks to all my readers for following me on my wondrous year of daily blogging! I look forward to another blissful 365 days of writing about everyday magic and simple pleasures--more on that next week.  In the meantime, be well!

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Happy New Year's Eve!

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!  I hope your evening is full of bubbly, celebrations, and all the good things that help say goodbye to last year and ring in the new one!

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

On Looking Forward to the New Year

Although I love the winter holiday season and have thoroughly enjoyed my time resting and celebrating with my family, I find there is something equally delicious about looking forward to another new year--so much promise, so many new adventures on the horizon!

The new year is ripe with possibility, the perfect blank slate.  As you prepare for your own new year, your own blossoming adventures, I leave you with last year's musing on the glory of a clean slate.

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Best Hits: Kitchen Conjuring

As I wind down my year of daily blogging, I find myself reflecting on these moments of everyday magic and simple pleasures, of delicious experiences, feelings, or life lessons distilled through words into living memories.  Today, as I find myself once again tinkering in the kitchen, I realize how much I turn to the stove, the fridge, the pantry for inspiration. In honor of this, I am sharing some of the most memorable posts on the magic we conjure in the kitchen:

1. On Eggs & Ham

2.  Under the Influence of M. F. K. Fisher

3.  On Making Limoncello

4.  On Kitchen Sinking-It

5. On Grocery Shopping

6.  On Pasta Making

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Best Hits: Reading & Writing

I am a woman of words as well as flesh and blood; I write because I have to.  Too long away from the words and I turn as parched and fragile as old paper.  The same with stories.  I need novels and books to sooth me to sleep at night, to guide me during the day, to disappear into when I need a respite from this world--and when I need fresh eyes to look at my life and then dive in and enjoy it!

All that's missing is a fat mug of tea to drink as you read through these short essays on the divine power of reading, writing, and a good story:

1.  On Writing in the Second Person

2.  On Thunderstorms & Gothic Novels

3.  On Being the Heroine of Your Own Life

4.  On the Hunt for a New Read

5.  5 Things I've Learned from Miss Phryne Fisher, Lady Detective

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Best Hits: Self-Care

Self-care is an art form--something I've learned in this past year of daily blogging.  It requires your full devotion and attention as you listen to your body, your heart, your mind, your soul to understand what practices make you the happiest and healthiest person you can be.

These five posts honor the various ways we take care of ourselves, from an indulgent bubble bath to a much-needed yoga, to simply tuning into ourselves and how we are feeling at the moment:

1.  On the Breath

2.  On Healing as Art

3.  On Bubble Baths

4.  On Camel Pose

5.  On Things You Do to Unwind

6.  On Early Morning Yoga

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Best Hits: Everyday Magic

Over the course of my year of regular blogging, I have come to discover (or perhaps re-learn) that real magic--the kind that is felt deep in your bones, courses through your blood, and fills your soul--is in the everyday.  It's in the thoughts we nourish and the ones we don't; in the things we choose to enjoy and the things we choose to let go of; it's in the synchronous moments that cross our paths and the dreams that guide us.  Everyday magic is, ultimately, about learning to live and love as our most authentic selves.

Here are some of the most popular posts this year that highlight this--enjoy!

1.  On Belief

2.  On Burning Old Man Gloom

3.  On the Blood Moon Eclipse

4.  On Letting Go of Past Lives

5.   5 Things I've Learned About Everyday Magic from Blogging

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Have an Enchanting Holiday!

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!

Merry Christmas Eve!

Today finds me cooking a traditional New Mexican Christmas Eve dinner of tamales, posole, and biscochitos with my mom, sister, and baby niece while watching old movies--then on to feasting and celebrating with family tonight.  I hope your evening is just as wondrous!

Enchantment Learning & Living is an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you. If you enjoyed what you just read and believe that true magic is in the everyday, subscribe to my newsletter below for regular doses of enchantment. Want even more inspiration? Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Here’s to a magical life!