What Is Yoga?

Up until now, yoga was a series of poses I did once or twice per week in a studio with a teacher. Sometimes it involved energetic music or hard-determined focus or bouts of misbalance or crescendoing violins moving me to tears in savasana. It was a mix of physical challenge and physical heaven. But no matter how my practice went, I always left feeling a level of emotional fulfillment I can rarely drum up during a mountain bike ride or a grueling run.

Photo by d. norwood

We've only been studying the philosophy behind yoga for a week now, but it's already changed my understanding of the term immensely. It's no longer just a fitness class at a gym. It's a lifestyle. A lifestyle rooted deeply in ancient texts, words, routines, and beliefs. Yoga, or "yoking," is the act of aligning oneself with the ideals that make up this ancient tradition. Those ideals include not only physical practice, but mindfulness of others, ourselves, and the planet; honesty, compassion, peacefulness, and acceptance of equality among living beings; quieting the mind during meditation; breathing prana, the vital life force that moves on the breath, into the body; finding the contentment in times of challenge; and becoming attuned to the natural world in a way that roots us, as humans, deeply in it in the same way that are ancestors were, regardless of modern society outside the door. The beautiful thing is that all of the above does live within each of us, we just have to call it forth.

The goal is to yoke, like an ox, to the above ideals until one is so centered within them that he or she is aligned with the eternal, or the greater power of the universe. I envision that enlightenment as returning to our natural state—a state that we, as mostly misaligned human beings, have trouble tapping into because it's buried so deeply in our subconscious. Living within the yogic tradition gives us the ability to reach within ourselves and unspool the threads of eternal bliss until, perhaps one day, we reach the actual spool.

"Yoking," while referring to the harness that keeps two working animals in line, also reminds me of the golden center of an egg. If the goal is to get back to the most natural state through alignment, than wouldn't an egg yolk be synonymous? It's pure, perfect as nature intended it to be, unable to get sidetracked as humans can be, nourishes, ignites growth, and is a natural center for life.

In class, a good yoga teacher has the ability to make his or her students recognize the eternal light that lives within each of us. And that's why we often leave feeling a little bit lighter, purer, more joyful. Yoga, for me, will continue to be a physical practice. I'll still waver in balance,  go deeper, bounce a little when Jay-Z's Empire State comes on and tear up after camel pose, but now I understand why. Because yoga is grounded in spirituality. Now I have the knowledge to embrace that side of it too. And, while a full yogic practice may not be for everyone, I'm grateful that it can continue to touch the hearts of students with pangs of fulfillment like crescendoing violins.

Well, hello there.

Hi there. It's me. Ali. It's been a few years since I've posted. After I launched my wedding planning business, Barnwood + Birch, I started a wedding-specific blog here. I coordinated a couple of gorgeous weddings, and then I got promoted at my full-time job (I'm an editor at a national magazine), and voila, all extra time went out the window.

But, now, I'm back. It's funny how, even when you don't blog, life moves full steam ahead.

The blogging bug has been creeping up inside me for a while and I finally found a good excuse to let it wriggle it's way out. I'm taking a 200-hour Vinyasa yoga teacher training at Body in Santa Fe, NM, and am feeling completely inspired to create, feel joy, savor each moment, and harness these feelings into a richer life.

In honor of keeping a regular blog, I decided Almost Crunchy needed a facelift. I hope you like it.

So, throughout my training I'll be blogging. Probably too much about yoga. But, I'll be blogging. And hopefully that will put me back into a regular routine of writing.

And seeing all of you more often. XOXO.

My secret double-life needs a logo

A secret: I'm launching a wedding planning business. Yes, I'm still an editor at the magazine I work for, but the land of prettiness and creativity and organizational bliss got the better of me. After my wedding, I couldn't let it all go. I wanted to fill my free time with it, but with a purpose (not just mindlessly sifting through wedding blogs as eye candy). So, now I'm helping other brides (and grooms) find their own mason jars full of chamomile and and pie bars littered with vintage cake stands.

But first: a logo. My company's name is Barnwood + Birch. I chose that name for several reasons: a) I like the alliteration, the way it sounds and looks; b) it evokes a kind of homey warmth, an intimacy that I hope to find at weddings; c) I love both of these woods: they're beautiful and create gorgeous details; and d) they're unique and make me think of one-of-a-kind, hand-crafted objects, nothing mass produced.

Keeping all of that in mind, which logo best suits my company or, simply, which is your fave and which color?

1)

2)


3)
4)
5)

This logo will be featured on my business cards, website (still to come) and contracts as well as any other stationary I end up needing. These designs were created by my dear friend Paper Jules.

So, which is your favorite and why?

Just Over a Year Later

Hi again. It's been too long. I'm embarrassed to admit I had to let this blog go when I got caught up in the whirlwind of wedding planning--and blogging about it. Almost Crunchy was never supposed to become wedding-centric which is why I skipped on over to Weddingbee.com (my thread), where I wrote three to five times per week for the entire past year. My favorite picture from our wedding?

Many more by the talented Tec Petaja here.

So, what have I come back to say? I'm not sure. But I do know that I want to find my voice here again. To write about things other than colors and dresses and whimsical decor items. I'm determined to find the deeper meaning in every day's interaction or adventure, even if it means mulling over simple matters until I find an underlying truth. I don't predict I'll find it always--I want it to be organic, not forced--but it's worth a try.

Before I get started, let's play catch-up: Ian and I got married in October of last year in a restore barn on a 5,000-acre ranch along the Continental Divide in Colorado with 60 or our nearest and dearest. From there, we set off for our honeymoon in New Zealand (not enough beach, nor cocktails). Now that we're back, we've moved into a place we're making our own. We're also training for a marathon this October (and I'm blogging about it here) and Ian's getting ready for a big show in Santa Fe with his paintings.

So, until I figure out something to say that has a purpose, let me point you to an insightful, sarcastic, and entertaining blogger, Caroline at The Half Truth of a Whole Life.

Tools for Choosing Your Colors

We went through quite a few color schemes before we came up with one that would work well with the barn that we are having our reception in. The first thing I was attracted to was a mixture of peach, coral, gold, pink, and dusty rose. The picture below, of a redhead, inspired me.


But as soon as I mentioned it to future-hubby, he immediately shied away from such feminine details. So, I started thinking about us (and what Mr. CB wouldn't say no to) and I started visualizing colors based on natural elements: slate from river rock, emerald like lake water, white like flowers, tan like sand, leafy green like trees.


But, when it came time to actually start picking colors, I was swayed in a completely different direction thanks to this cake picture:


It feels so sunny and warm--two things I associate with California, where I'm from. Also, fall in the mountains of Colorado is filled with brushed whites in Aspen's branches and golden yellows in their leaves. I decided yellow, cream, white, brown, and gold would suffice. Especially in a wooden barn surrounded by white tablecloths.

I found a couple of helpful tools online that break down your color scheme so you can carry it from vendor to vendor, detail to detail. First is DaGraeve.com's Color Palette Generator. You enter the URL of an image you are attracted to and it spits out the colors that are in that image. I put in this picture:

And it gave me this:


Not exactly what we're going with--we'll be using more whites, creams, and less khaki tones--but close.

The next tool I tried was Idee's Multicolor Search Lab Flickr Set. You put in your colors and it returns all of the images it finds on Flickr that include those colors. Here's what I put in:

And here's what it returned:


The last tool I tried was Color Hunter. I decided to use one of my original palettes with this by uploading this jpeg.


This was the custom palette it gave to me (too many reds):

We still haven't found an image that completely depicts our colors. But for now, these will do.

What tools/images did you use to find your color palette?

Image 1 from Style Me Pretty
Image 2 from Snippet & Ink
Image 3 from Jose Villa
Image 4 from Martha Stewart Weddings
Image 5 from DeGraeve.com
Image 6 from Idee Multicolr Search Lab
Image 7 from Flickr
Image 8 from Martha Stewart Weddings
Image 9 from Color Hunter

Mission Vintage Stamps

When I went on the US Post Office's website to look at postage options for our save-the-date postcards, I was let down. All they had in terms of 27-cent postage was a sheet of tropical fruit stamps. Now, we're getting married at a ranch in Colorado with a subdued color scheme. Tangerine orange, banana yellow, hibiscus pink, and honeydew green with cartoon-y pictures of star fruit and papaya on them doesn't exactly match the mood we're going for.

Originally, I wanted vintage stamps. But when I started doing research, they seemed to be quite a bit above and beyond the price of postage. I couldn't justify spending $4.00 on 4 22-cent stamps when they should cost 88 cents.

First I checked Champion Stamp, a vintage stamp dealer who comes recommended by Martha Stewart all of the time. As you can guess, they had every stamp imaginable and even had them sorted into a neat little PDF catalog, but they were out of our price range.

My stationer, Sarah Parrott, recommended I head to the Sea Jay Stamp and Coin eBay store. Again, his prices were out of budget, but Sarah also had a piece of advice for me: "Jot down the Scott number and then type it into the search. You'll find other sellers with the same stamps at different prices." It worked. I sifted through Sea Jay's collection, noting the stamps I found most relevant to our invitations: American Horse Breeds, Daniel Boone, Colorado State, National Parks, Sheep, Wooden Ducks, American Folk Art, the list goes on and on. Basically, I was looking for anything outdoorsy, mountainous, farm-like, or Western. Then I typed in their Scott numbers and came up with sellers offering them for face value to well-overpriced.

I placed four orders: One sheet of 40 22-cent American Horse Breed stamps, one sheet of 40 6-cent Wolf Trap Farm National Parks Centennial stamps, 15 5-cent red Air Mail stamps, and random assortment of 46 22-cent stamps.

This was more than we needed, but I found a great deal on the American Horse Breed stamps: face value while other sellers had them for as much as $22. And we needed about ten more 22-cent stamps on top of the random assortment anyway.

This morning, after my fiance penned the addresses, we started affixing them. Piece of advice #1: Stick the stamps on before you address them. Some of the stamps were too big and started to cover up the addresses. Piece of advice #2: Find out how big the stamps are before you order them. The horse stamps we got (which were our fave) are way too big. They cover up the word "Postcard" a little bit. So, we're going to use up the random assortment of 22-cent stamps and only use a few horse stamps which is the opposite of what we had planned. And the random assortment is definitely, well, random: US Constitution stamps, Christmas stamps, Social Security Act stamps. You get the idea.

In the end, some of them look phenomenal, while others look, well, interesting. We'll save most of our horses for our invitations.

Was anything you ordered different from what you expected when it arrived?

Image 1 courtesy of the United States Postal Service
Image 2 courtesy of Martha Stewart
Image 3 courtesy of Sarah Parrott
Image 4 courtesy of eBay

Swoon. Photography.

An photo-essay introduction (if you will) to our photographer, Nashville-based Tec Petaja.

I'll let the images speak for themselves.

All images courtesy of Tec Petaja