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Pink Lady

April 6, 2016 By Paola Leave a Comment

Last October I taught a food photography workshop with my dear friend Danielle Acken in Fowey, Cornwall (of which more in another post) and there was a lot of talk of entering the Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year Competition, a specialist food photography competition sponsored by Pink Lady Apples in the UK, but with global reach and prestige. I’d never entered a competition before, but I’ve been wanting to get my work out there, so it seemed like I had nothing to lose.

But you still could have knocked me down with a feather when my images were shortlisted in four different categories. What’s even more gratifying is that the images chosen represent three different facets of my work, so I couldn’t be more pleased. The shortlisted images are chosen anonymously by an international panel of incredible judges, who also choose the finalists. However, there’s also a People’s Choice finalist in each category, which is where you guys come in.

The image above, which I took at Robert Ramsay Cellars, is a pure portrait. I do love shooting at wineries – the barrels curve and bend the light like nobody’s business and when you add in a good-looking winemaker, magic happens. It’s been shortlisted in the Wine Photographer of the Year – People section, sponsored by Errazuriz and I would love you forever if you could vote for it here.

I thought I’d make an effort for the Pink Lady – Apple a Day category. I’d been seeing apple roses all over the Internet, and though it would be fun to make some with Pink Lady apples (I’ll post the recipe up later). Cue me burning a couple of attempts and then desperately trying to conjure light out of a dull January afternoon in Seattle. But in the end I got the shot I was aiming for.

The final two images are street photography/culinary travel photography pure and simple. The first one was taken in the Marais last year. I was first struck by the beautiful green of the doors and then noticed that they framed an incredibly French scene of joy in food and friendship. This one is shortlisted in the Food for Celebration category.

And finally were in this little restaurant in Tuscany, when, as we were leaving, the ‘chef’ emerged from her tiny kitchen at the back. It had obviously been hard work preparing all our meals, and at the moment she clearly couldn’t wait to see the back of us. She is in the Food For Sale category, and I love how she encapsulates the harsh realities of getting food onto our tables. She is me when I’ve been catering for a big party.

If you’d like to vote for any of the three images above, they are shortlisted in the Food section and you can vote for them here (you get one vote for Food and one for Wine) and again I promise to love you for ever and a day.

Thank you dear friends! I’ll let you know how things pan out.

If you’re remotely interested in food photography, I urge you to check out all the galleries. There is some astonishing work in there. And contributions from good friends Ilva Beretta, Danielle Acken, Sofia Plana, Sandrine Fauconnet and Melissa Love.

Back

March 4, 2016 By Paola 2 Comments

Oh how I have missed blogging.

I’ve had all sorts of beautiful (to me at least) posts lined up in my head over the last few months, but life always got in the way and they never quite made it onto the screen.

It’s partly because I’ve been lucky enough to have a ton of work. Somehow I’ve managed to parlay this food photography, recipe development, writing and content development gig of mine into an actual job, with several regular clients, including Edible Seattle, Seattle Refined and Zagat’s and a bunch of one-off gigs that have been hugely enjoyable and very rewarding (if not always financially).

I’ve also been travelling like crazy. Over the last year and a bit I’ve averaged over a trip a month, which has been total madness, but has left me with a bunch of photos and impressions I’d still love to share with you.

And other stuff has been happening behind the scenes. In October I went back to England, this time to teach a food photography workshop with my dear friend Danielle Acken in the glorious surroundings of Fowey in Cornwall. I love teaching and we’re planning more workshops together throughout the year, so stay tuned for news of those.

I’ve also been working on building my photography portfolio, rebranding my sites, including this blog, and bringing everything together under one big umbrella. I had an update meeting with my web designer this morning and I’ve been grinning with crazy excitement ever since. It’s going to be so pretty!

And I am bursting with ideas for a newsletter, a podcast, a couple of online workshops, and maybe even a quarterly magazine, that I really want to share with you.

In short, it’s time I got back to regular blogging. I hope you’ll join me back here next Wednesday.

I’ve started contributing a regular monthly recipe and photos to lifestyle blog Coco + Kelley . So click here for my recipe for Roasted Romanesco Soup with a Pistachio Pesto and Crispy Prosciutto – it’s warm and comforting enough for the tail end of winter, and pastel pretty enough for the beginning of spring.

Weekend Link Love–Apptastic

October 4, 2015 By Paola Leave a Comment

I’m hoping to revive Weekend Link Love, as a place to share interesting and useful stuff I’ve come across over the week.

Here’s a bunch of apps that have been making my world a brighter place recently (together with my brand new iPhone 6s+).

First up is 365 Days of Flow a little app I found that has been giving me a ton of pleasure. Several people have recommended Flow Magazine to me, which apparently celebrates creativity, imperfection and life’s little pleasures. I’ve ordered the magazine and will report back on that shortly. In the meantime, they have a very cute little app which imparts a little word of wisdom and a sweet watercolour illustration every day.

They’re also hosting an Instagram hashtag in October #flow30daysnature which I’m joining in with this month (images in this post are my contributions so far).

Next up is the Cozi family organizer app. This app allows the family to run one shared online calendar to which you can upload existing online calendars – we’ve input the Minx’s school calendar and ballet calendar – which can then be synced with your personal online calendar. Every member of the family can contribute, it’s all colour coded so you can see at a glance what everyone is doing, and it can be accessed on everyone’s different devices. It also includes a shared shopping list, family messaging, important contact information etc. I’ve been wanting something like this for YEARS.

Have you heard of the Pomodoro Technique? It’s a productivity tool whereby you work in a focused way for twenty-five minutes and then take 5 minutes break – each work + break period is called a ‘pomodoro’ after the original inventor Francesco Cirillo’s tomato-shaped kitchen timer. After four pomodoros you take a longer break. It’s as simple as that. I can’t begin to tell you how much more productive this has made me. My work days are all so different that it’s difficult to put together a structured daily routine, but if instead I aim to fit in a certain number of pomodoros, I can be more flexible. There are many, many pomodoro apps on the market, but I’ve been using Pomodoro Timer and love it.

I’ve just finished reading 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works – A True Story by ABC news journalist Dan Harris. I started getting interested in Buddhist teachings when I was in Thailand but hadn’t done much about it until now. The book is part memoir and part beginner’s guide to Buddhist meditation and mindfulness. I loved its totally no bullshit approach – chapters entitled ‘the Power of Negative Thinking’ and ‘The Self-Interested Case for Not Being a Dick’ spoke deeply to me – and I’m now about half way through the accompanying 10% Happier: Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics app. It’s a bit pricey at $20 but it’s well put together and I think I might be well on the way to starting a daily meditation practice, which is quite astonishing to contemplate.

This week the sun’s been shining, we’re all settling finally into our new routine, I’m getting over a cold, I blogged about our summer holiday on Whidbey Island and a great friend came to visit from London. But then it ended with terrible news about one of the fabulous women I was with in Thailand last year. Carmen’s tragic story is not mine to tell, but the world is a poorer place without her beauty of spirit and she could have given a masterclass in random acts of kindness. I know I am a kinder person because of her.

Summer’s End

September 27, 2015 By Paola Leave a Comment

It was the best of summers here in Seattle. Day after sultry golden sun-filled day, followed by night after velvety warm summer night spent drinking pistachio sours with friends up on our roof deck. (One day I’ll blog the recipe for these).

I’m always conflicted about summer. On the one hand there’s the obvious glorious summeriness of it all (see above), which I love and adore, but on the other school is out (for thirteen weeks no less), so sometimes it seems I spend more time driving the Minx to various camps and desperately trying to cram all my assignments into a few hours than lying on a lounger working on my Vitamin D levels.

This year though, I was determined that things would be different. We’d already been to Europe in the Spring, so we decided instead to rent a house out on Whidbey Island, and just hang out as a family. I had in mind the sort of place I wanted – near Coupeville, my favourite town on Whidbey, close to the beach, and just as comfortable and relaxing as being at home

But soon, after spending long hours poring over vacation rental sites with a fine toothcomb, we were starting to despair. Everything was either too big, or too small; too booked or too expensive; frankly rather shabby or decorated in various distressing shades of shit brown (all too common unfortunately in the Pacific Northwest).

Until, out of nowhere, the most perfect little house popped up. Close to Coupeville, right on a point with beaches to the front and side, and newly decorated in soothing shades of grey and blue.

I spent the whole summer wondering what on earth would be wrong with this place but when we arrived in August it was immediately clear that it was absolutely, utterly, perfect.

We met the charming owner and it turns out the property was being remodeled over the spring, only became available in May, and had been immediately booked solid.

See, manifesting WORKS people! Soon I will be a skinny blonde millionaire with a three-masted yacht, a Brazilian toyboy and lavender farm in Provence.

I was deeply, fabulously content here.

We watched the sun rise over Mount Baker through the huge glass windows, as herons tiptoed daintily over the sand dollars left at low tide.

We paddleboarded out in the tranquil bay – thankfully avoiding the orca that hung out near the point – kayaked round the mussel beds and rented a yacht from a local skipper.

The Minx (on the right) and her friend who stayed with us

We ate wonderful foods crafted by local artisans, produce which had woken up that morning on a nearby farm and pretty blue eggs that our neighbours were selling on an honour system. A local roaster crafted a coffee blend just for us and dropped it round personally.

We found the best places for lunch, dinner and wine and ate vast quantities of fresh mussels and clams, plucked out of Penn Cove that very morning. We instigated a ‘no electronics’ rule – and did bizarre things like read books, play board games, do jigsaws, and make art. I joined a nearby yoga studio for morning sessions and watched the sun go down over the point every night.

We laughed. A lot. And I felt all the knots in my shoulders and in my mind slowly unwind.

I even got through a ton of work, though it didn’t really feel like work. Instead they were fun day trips with writing attached. Here are some ideas for things to do in Coupeville, in Port Townsend and on San Juan Island, which I wrote and photographed for Seattle Refined. And here are some ideas for restaurants on the island which appeared in Zagat’s.

Since we’ve been back, it’s been one thing after another – the Minx is off to middle school, our beloved Flora was hit and killed by a car and I’m just coming to the other side of a snotty cold, but through it all memories of my happy place keep peeking through.

And I’m only able to tell you about it now, because we’ve already booked it again for next year.

Hello Autumn.

Inspiration

August 7, 2015 By Paola 13 Comments

It’s been too long once again. Not because I haven’t wanted to write, but because there are only so many hours in the day.

Summer is always a double-edged sword for me – on the one hand it’s great to spend more time with my girl, more time entertaining friends on our roof deck (the cocktail of the summer is the pistachio sour) and more time just lazing on a lounger reading beneath the stars on a warm summer night.

On the other hand it’s always a time of enormous creative frustration. The light is so amazing, the markets are groaning with the most glorious produce and the temptation to spend time time playing in the kitchen and photographing the results is so very, very strong.

But it’s been punishingly hot here – too hot to turn the oven on – camps finish early, it’s a struggle just to complete my regular work (astonishingly I seem to have pulled together a portfolio of regular clients – Edible Seattle, Seattle Refined and Zagat’s, and have been doing a lot more commercial work) and a house full of tween girls making videos to Taylor Swift songs is not very conducive to creativity.

This year that tug of inspiration, that craving to follow the muse’s siren song to the exclusion of everything and everybody else has been overwhelming thanks to two amazing workshops I’ve attended in recent months.

You already know Ilva and Jamie of Plated Stories fame. When I heard that Jamie and her husband Jean-Pierre had acquired a small hotel in Chinon in the Loire Valley I of course had to invite myself over for a visit while I was in Europe. Before very long a whole workshop was being arranged, with Ilva too, under the title ‘Finding Inspiration’.

Because obviously inspiration is hard to come by when you’re visiting the world’s most charming hotel (of which more another day) in the world’s most charming small French town (also of which more another day), under the tutelage of two incredibly patient, generous and supremely talented women and while sharing the whole experience with a bunch of other immensely talented, smart and funny photographers and writers. We ate delicious meals in Jamie’s kitchen, critiqued each other’s work, bounced ideas off each other and chatted long into the night, while our eyes and minds drank in more beauty than any eyes and minds should reasonably have the right to expect.

Was that my camera clicking from early morning until nightfall? Perhaps finding inspiration wasn’t such as struggle after all.

The summer’s second workshop blew my mind too, but in a totally different way. After reading my friend and mentor Jackie Donnelly’s write up of Seattle portrait photographer John Keatley’s Survival Guide workshop, I knew I had to attend. Even if it meant heading to St. Louis (which, as it turns out, is charming and fun, with killer ice cream and barbecue).

This time I didn’t even turn my camera on. Instead I listened as John, his wife Nichelle and his assistant Taylor told us everything they had learned about running a successful photography business. And by everything, I mean EVERYTHING. How to market yourself, how to pitch, how to bid on a project, how to invoice and even what thank you presents to send afterwards. We talked branding and direction, target markets and dream clients, got right into the weeds with finances and had our portfolios constructively and comprehensively critiqued by both John and our peers. The workshop was held in food photographer Rob Grimm’s awe-inspiring studio – it was worth the price of admission alone just to spend time in that space – and the creative energy sparked and fizzed all weekend.

This time the only pictures I came away with were a few grainy phone pics (I’m hating on my iPhone 5s with fire of a thousand suns currently) but instead tucked into my suitcase was something infinitely more precious, a small notebook with the text of every one of John’s slides, covered with all my own hastily-scribbled notes – the blueprint for growing my own business to the next level and beyond. Let’s all hope that my scribbles are actually legible.

It’s funny how inspiration strikes – a scrap of an idea here, a fleeting picture there, a story or a conversation that will lead you off in a whole new direction, changing your life in big ways and small. Chinon’s incredible fleamarket inspired me to visit the antique shops of Snohomish, where I ended up buying a set of vintage weighing scales like the ones Jamie had in her kitchen. Walking through the chateau de Chinon chatting with Ilva led me to reread a couple of biographies of Eleanor of Aquitaine (who spent part of her life in Chinon) and then to watch the supremely fabulous Empire (which is based on her story – Eleanor’s not Ilva’s). My late night conversations with Stacey have inspired me to search for a studio and my portfolio reviews with John Keatley and Rob Grimm have made me want to focus more on my still-life food photography. I want to blog more and market myself more, grow my Instagram following and rebrand my website and collaborate with more people and start teaching workshops. But above all else I just want to make images and write stories. My head is currently bursting with them.

On Sunday we’re off to spend a few weeks on Whidbey Island, so I can relax and recharge and make the most of the final weeks of what has been an incredible summer here in the PNW. But come September 9th when school finally goes back, I’m SO ready to put all this pent-up inspiration to good use.

The images in this post were made in Jamie’s apartment under Ilva’s watchful eye. Through their blog posts and Facebook updates those two inspire me every single day. (Here is their take on the subject of Inspiration).

Karneval in Germany –Part 1

April 2, 2015 By Paola 4 Comments

When I was living in London, I resolutely avoided Germany. Even though I studied German at school and at one point even at university, the idea of Germany was very much less appealing than the sunshine, beaches and olive oil of the south of France and Italy.

I travelled every opportunity I could as a student but the cheap train fares and summer jobs always took me south, and I never once set foot in the land of bier, wurst and Beethoven. And in the end, when I realised that I could read the works of Goethe and Schiller, but could order neither a bier nor a wurst in their native language I gave up studying German too.

Aside from an unplanned trip to a rebuilding Berlin when I was first going out with the Husband, I had no real desire to travel to Germany, and when the lovely Veronika Miller invited me to go on BlogTour to the Ambiente gift and tabletop show in Frankfurt I must confess that I wasn’t entirely convinced.

We spent most of our five days there gliding along the moving walkways and wandering the gigantic hangar-sized halls of the Messe Frankfurt (of which much more in other posts), but for one day of our trip we were taken to visit Oppenheim and Mainz along the banks of the Rhine and I realised quite how foolish I had been all these years. These German towns were really rather lovely and the cobbled streets, half-timbered houses and gothic churches spoke tenderly to that part of my soul that requires extravagant doses of ancient buildings to keep it fully alive.

My Italian mother would hang a little sprig of mistletoe over our back door to ward off evil spirits.

We are supposed to tour the catacombs in the little town of Oppenheim, but I decide not to join the group and instead spend time wandering through the antique streets in a sort of photographic daze, bedazzled by the extraordinary creamy light. Everything is beautiful.

Would YOU go underground with this bunch?

The layers, textures and shapes are almost overwhelming – rough wood, bumpy stones, pointed spires and gables and arches, the wacky tartans of the half-timbered houses and the hard, intricate curlicues of stone, wrought iron and gothic-fonted street signs. In Seattle buildings are new and smooth, modern towers of granite, metal and glass and the wooden houses are carefully painted. I’ve missed the worn and weatherbeaten so much.

And to cap it all it is karneval time. Kids and adults, monks and jesters, clowns and executioners, even – displaying a less PC sensibility – lady cannibals in Ugg boots, are gathering in the streets, their very costumes reflecting a sense of history that is missing nowadays from Halloween in the US and UK.

An old woman approaches me and talks to me in German – I think my fur collared jacket makes me look like I belong. Her speech is fast and guttural and I reach deep into the dusty, cobwebbed German library that’s tucked somewhere in my brain to understand her. Using that same library I tell her how charming I find her town to be. She beams with pride and we nod and smile, and I realise sadly that we’re actually mostly communicating through facial expressions.

But yet, in this country I’ve hardly visited, surrounded by people I can hardly understand, I feel a sense of belonging and connection that I rarely feel in the US. The history of this little town is MY history, these cobbles and cathedrals, monks and jesters are MY heritage. I’m back in Europe and in a very real, very visceral way, this European girl is back home.

Nuns and Sea Gypsies

January 30, 2015 By Paola 2 Comments

I’m not a particularly spiritual person, but like so much else in Thailand the unassuming, yet sincere, spirituality of the Thai people really got to me and provided much food for thought.

The Thais we met were so courteous and friendly, their smiles so wide and genuine and their kindness to each other and to the animals with whom they shared their streets so apparent, that it was difficult not to think that somehow our materialistic, hyper stressed, hyper angry Western society has got things very, very wrong.

I’m not so naïve as to imagine that life in Thailand is all rainbows and unicorns, but people in general did seem more relaxed, more satisfied and more genuinely happy than in any other place I’ve ever been. It’s had me thinking ever since.

One of our most remarkable days there was spent with Chaya NaTakuathung who leads ‘Meet the Locals’ tours in Old Phuket. I started the tour thinking that we were going on some nonsensical fake tourist-y bullshit thingy and finished several hours later feeling like I’d had a profound spiritual experience. If you ever find yourselves in Phuket, don’t hesitate even for one second before taking a tour yourselves.

Chaya is a fiercely intelligent, immensely knowledgeable, super friendly guide who speaks perfect English and is driven by a genuine desire to show tourists a side of Phuket that only the locals get to see.

She squealed with delight when she discovered that our group was just women, as that way she could take us to visit a local Buddhist nunnery, where no men are permitted to enter.

The nunnery is an oasis of tranquillity in the middle of the noise, chaos and bustle of Old Phuket. As we walked through the carefully tended gardens, the traffic noise seemed to melt away, together with our Western preconceptions and anxieties. The rhythmic chanting of the nuns at prayer was immensely moving and contemplation seemed easy in this simple, serene environment. I understood nothing, but didn’t need to, the energy in the room was enough.

The nuns there were a mixture of permanent nuns and women on longer term retreats – as signified by their shaven heads – and other women and girls who were just attending on a short term basis, for short retreats or for counselling, who can keep their hair as it is. Chaya herself had spent many retreats at the nunnery and you could see that there she was surrounded by friends and mentors.

And I started to realise how smart it is, to have a place where you can just go for a few days when you need to regroup and recharge your batteries; where teenage girls can receive advice from wise older women or where you can just spend some time thinking and relaxing and contemplating and praying. I had ended up paying thousands of $$$ for that retreat experience and it still felt like a wacky and self-indulgent thing to do. Instead in Thailand it is an ordinary part of everyday life. They understand that sometimes we all need a bit of down time, simplicity and space for contemplation.

Time just to sit, hang out and finally smell the flowers.

After a visit to a temple and an excellent meal, Chaya then took us to visit the village of the sea gypsies, or chao le (people of the sea) in Thai.

The chao le are a nomadic people of Polynesian heritage and strikingly different in build – much taller and sturdier – than the diminuitive Thai people. They used to live out to sea and come to land only rarely but in recent times they have created one or two settlements along the coast of the Andaman Sea, though they still make their living by deep sea fishing, diving deep without scuba equipment.

Their village was destroyed by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, but they didn’t lose a single member of their tribe. When their elders saw the sea draw out dangerously far from the coast, their deep understanding of the sea meant that they recognised the warning signs and urged their people to move to higher ground.

Their rebuilt village is nothing but a shanty town, and the people are obviously heartbreakingly poor, but after a while you stopped noticing the shabbiness. What I shall remember more is how clean the kids’ clothes were, how litter was bagged up neatly for disposal, how everyone was smiling and laughing. Soccer balls were being kicked, kids of all ages were playing together and whole families lounging on their verandahs waved and smiled and invited us into their homes to share their evening meal.

And as I watched, I started to understand that these people were rich. Rich in wisdom, in generosity, in friendships and fun, and that maybe it is we who are the poor ones.

At the nunnery my soul had been touched, with the sea gypsies it was my heart. In both places, and very in different ways, I had been shown the wisdom of simplicity, of community, of sharing, of smiling, and that maybe our relentless chase after the material has left us Westerners greatly impoverished as a result.

I’m still not sure quite where all these thoughts will end up, and certainly they were displaced for a bit by the materialistic orgy of Christmas, but boy, were many chords struck.

Roasting, or Searching for a Food Writing Style

January 23, 2015 By Paola 10 Comments

‘”I’m thoughtful when I come to class. My aim this weekend is to bring more personality and feeling to my writing and photography, to transform the sterile and soulless and help it resonate with a wider audience.

Telling stories like this doesn’t come easily to me – I’m not an emotional person – but I know that the proof of the pudding is in the story; that it’s the tale that turns the ordinary into the extraordinary, that illuminates the subject and makes it come alive.

The gilded smoky scent of roasted vegetables emanates from the oven. Aran has made lunch. I fix myself a plate of roasted squash, beets and carrots, perfumed with oil and herbs and speckled with spices. The tender squash is velvet smooth, the flavours nutty, complex and cosily sweet, the subtle colours running the gamut from gold to caramel by way of saffron, ochre and honey. In contrast, an uncooked squash sits on the counter with dishes of fresh raw carrots and beets. The raw vegetables are hard, knobbly – their colours almost aggressively vibrant – subtlety is clearly not their thing.

I chew thoughtfully on the warm soft velvety squash. I know now what I need to do. Roast my stories to bring out their flavour and sweetness. Texture them with salt and herbs and fragrant oils to reveal their hidden subtleties and complexity. Knock off their hard edges and soften their crunch to make them palatable and sweet.

I take another bite. Food for thought indeed.”

Ugh. The above is a writing exercise I did at the second workshop I took last October at Aran Goyoaga’s studio with the very lovely and inimitable Tara O’Brady (check out Luisa Brimble’s fab workshop here). All I can say is that I most definitely haven’t found my ‘voice’ yet. To me something like the above still sounds pretentious and inauthentic and I have to fight the urge to be snarky even when I’m writing about feelings and emotions that are actually genuine and real. Maybe snark is my authentic voice. I dunno. The only thing I know is that this food writing malarkey is hard, people.

Tara on the other hand makes it all look easy. The author of the wonderful Seven Spoons blog, she writes with a genuine depth of emotion that I can only dream of achieving; develops all her own distinctive and tempting recipes and does all her own food styling and photography. In her house. In between looking after her kids.

She’s also an amazing teacher. We focused during the workshop on writing and photographing with intention and purpose; developing and building a connection with your audience and how to evoke atmosphere and emotions with both words and photography.

It was heady stuff and brought to us by an accomplished wordsmith, who, unlike some purely visual people, could actually explain her thought processes and ideas. If you get the chance to be taught by Tara, jump at it.

The above is a quick iPhone shot of the soup that Tara is styling and photographing above. Girl is a genius AND she’s bringing out her first cookbook later this year. Jump at that too. We saw galleys and it looks FABULOUS.

That Was the Year That Was–2014

January 9, 2015 By Paola 10 Comments

We’re back from a truly delightful break in Whistler for Christmas, staying again at the Chateau Whistler, in what is now becoming an unbreakable family tradition. This year the usual Christmas magic – gorgeous decorations, amazing food, log fires and Santa on tap – was enhanced by an abundance of crisp white snow right down in Whistler village, which made for wonderful winter walks round frozen Lost Lake (this urban girl has never walked on a frozen lake before), snowball fights and snowman building with the Minx and lots of opportunity to contemplate ‘stuff’.

2014 was my best year in ages, for all sorts of reasons.

I started getting paid to do what I love. I now not only write and photograph regularly for Edible Seattle, but I also write and photograph a regular weekly travel and lifestyle column in local online magazine Seattle Refined. I’ve also photographed on occasion for Zagat’s Seattle and completed various paid freelance gigs. The pay is not amazing, but it is approximately eighty four gazillion times more than I was earning this time last year, and these gigs have given me the credibility I need to take on additional clients and approach other publications. Here’s hoping for oodles more interesting work in 2015 (and if you’d like to work with me, my portfolio is here, drop me a line!)

On my big birthday in 2013 I decided to hire a life coach, and 2014 was the year I worked with the amazing Susan Hyatt. She helped set in motion all sorts of deep-seated changes which I’m still processing and working on, but which I think will bear fruit into 2015 and beyond. You know I’m not a particularly woo-woo person, but I can’t recommend life coaching highly enough if you want to squeeze the most juice out of life’s lemons and make the very, very best lemonade. One of the simple things I worked on with Susan was to try and incorporate as much JOY as possible into my everyday life and do more of the things I really love to do and which nourish my spirit. I’m still really bad at doing this – at the beginning of 2014 I found it difficult even to identify the things which bring me joy – but I’m trying hard and getting better. Sometimes we get so caught up in deferring gratification and playing on Facebook that we end up having no gratification at all.

Having a bit more money coming in allowed me to travel more in 2014 than I had since before the Minx was born. Travel brings me JOY like nothing else, and I missed it so much when the Minx was little. This year I was lucky enough to go to New York twice, once on an insanely wonderful BlogTour, which was a huge highlight of my year; to Tuscany for a life-changing (and I don’t use such terms lightly) workshop with Jamie Schler and Ilva Beretta of Plated Stories, where I decided I need to do more writing; to Rome and Sardinia for a lovely family holiday; and to Thailand, with Susan Hyatt, where I fell in love with a country, its people and its food.

I also spent a lot of time working on my photography, with is something else that brings me JOY. One of the things I love most about photography is how I learn something new every single time I pick up my camera, how every shoot brings a different set of challenges to overcome and puzzles to figure out. I’m still very, very far from where I want to be as a photographer, but having something to work towards is half the fun. Aside from the Plated Stories workshop, the two workshops I attended in October at Aran Goyoaga’s studio in Seattle were both spectacularly thought-provoking and useful and I hope to do more in 2015.

It seems I managed to pick up one or two good health habits along the way too. I received a free Barre3 class on my birthday in September (after half-heartedly attending one or two classes earlier in the year) and for some reason it struck a chord that time and I have since been going 4-5 times a week. It’s not exactly fun, and I haven’t lost much weight, but I feel immeasurably stronger, more toned and more flexible and my body feels so much better. I’ve just bought a year’s unlimited pass at vast expense, so I’m going to have to keep this up in 2015.

Over the last two years I’ve been battling adrenal fatigue and ever-worsening insomnia, which came to a head over the summer when I could hardly sleep at all. My health was depressing the hell out of me and we discussed it at length on the Thailand retreat, when one of my fellow retreaters mentioned that I might want to look at a therapy called TRE. It’s deeply weird, involving exercises that fatigue your core muscles and trigger off a natural instinctual shaking throughout the body, but it’s meant to bring deep relaxation and release deep-seated tension. I started doing the exercises and immediately started sleeping better and within two weeks I was sleeping through the night, something I have not done in years and I’ve been sleeping well ever since, with only a handful of bad nights. Not feeling tired during the day has been a revelation – I honestly couldn’t remember what that felt like – and recent bloodwork has shown that various hormonal imbalances I’ve had are starting to correct themselves. I’m working with a naturopath and a health coach to continue improving things through diet and am doing a Whole 30 for the duration of January.

Finally, and I know a ton of other bloggers have mentioned this, but at the tail end of last year I read a book entitled The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up which I think will actually be life-changing. It’s a charming book and an easy read and essentially encourages you to only keep the stuff around you that brings you JOY and let go of the stuff that doesn’t so it can bring joy to someone else. For some reason that really resonated with me – I now have ‘permission’ to keep that threadbare sweater which is so very comfortable and cosy and to let go of expensive stuff I bought online which just doesn’t suit me, even though I’ve hardly ever worn it. Already many bags of stuff have gone to Goodwill and I want to continue this process slowly but surely in 2015 . I’m sure that freeing up space and the time spent in ‘stuff management’ will make room for other, more joyful, stuff to come into my life.

So my resolutions for 2015 are really to keep doing more of the same:

– Keep going with the TRE and hopefully keep on sleeping (honestly, if I can just keep this resolution I will be happy).

– Attend barre class regularly for a whole year

– Eat nourishing food to rebalance my hormones

– Continue working on my photography (and writing) as much as I can

– Travel more (and to that end the year has already got off to a fabulous start with an invitation to go on another BlogTour to the Ambiente consumer goods fair in Frankfurt this February).

– Keep going with the magical tidying up

– Keep on using the fancy planner. It has hugely improved my productivity and focus.

– Refocus this blog as a living portfolio and blog at least once a week (as the lovely Luisa Brimble advised me to do during her workshop).

And my word of the year? Well, if you haven’t guessed already, it’s JOY – to continue focusing on activities which bring me joy; to squeeze as much JOY as I can out of the boring stuff that has to be done; and to surround myself with the people and objects which bring me JOY and let go of those that don’t.

Are you making resolutions this year? Or choosing to focus on a specific word? What are you doing and what word have you chosen?

Whitney English Day Designer

August 15, 2014 By Paola 1 Comment

Dashing in quickly just to tell you all how an item of stationery is in the process of changing my life. Yes, I am a very sad person. But a new edition goes on sale tomorrow and I think you ought to buy it.

The Whitney English Day Designer already has a bit of a cult following among creative entrepreneurs and rightly so. The first ever planner designed specifically for us, the thought and care which has gone into every page is evident and heartwarming.

Yes, that says “The Strategic Planner & Daily Agenda for living a WELL-DESIGNED LIFE”. See you’re inspired already. And yes, it is beautifully designed.

I know I’m already very late to this party, but I came across the planner on Instagram a couple of months back and was lucky enough to snag one of the very last available August 2014 – August 2015 planners. Tomorrow on August 15th planners for the calendar year January 2015- 2016 go on sale and I’d hate to see you miss out. Get in fast, these babies sell like hot cakes. Or like hot planners.

Anyway, here’s why I’m in love with this wonderful piece of technology.

The planner comes in a sturdy ring binder with a useful inside pocket, gold protected corners and comes packaged with a pink velveteen ribbon that also serves as a bookmark. My office manager Joan Holloway certainly approves.

The first page gives you space to picture your vision and dreams and think about your passions, powers, principles and purpose. The planner comes with a code for a free downloadable e-book to help you decide what to put here, which I found really helpful.

Then you use the work you’ve done in defining your ‘core’ to inform yearly goal setting, which then gets broken up into 3 month, 6 month, 9 month and 12 month goals for different areas of your life. If I get anywhere close to reaching these goals this year I will probably die of excitement. And yes, I have been colour-coding things using the official recommended pens (I do feel like I’ve joined some sort of cult).

Then you can set goals and big to dos for each month as well as viewing your month at glance. Aside from the colour-coded pens, I have also become the sort of person who washi tapes their planner. There really is no hope.

There’s a ‘year at a glance’ page too, in case you’re running out of places to put washi tape.

Once you have your month beautifully planned there’s a whole page for each day, including spaces to put your to dos for that day and daily schedule. There’s a ‘Download’ section for notes (I use it to write a brief summary of my day), a place for a daily gratitude which is rather lovely, and somewhere to write what’s for dinner, which is obviously critical. There’s space to write your top 3 to dos for the day and each day also has an inspirational quote.

In short, I shall henceforth be leading the mostly perfectly designed, organised and inspired life. Which really makes this planner very good value for money.

Get your January planner in the Whitney English Etsy shop this very morning.

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