When it comes to china, mix-and-match is my favorite look. Why? Because it's casually glamorous, adaptable (just switch out key pieces to take your tabletop into different seasons or to dress it up or down), and, most of all, fun.
A smudging ceremony, in a nutshell, is a way to cleanse a space of negativity; it traditionally symbolizes new beginnings and is done when a house is in need of a "spiritual cleansing".
My brand-new iPhone (the old one broke and was replaced by Apple with zero fanfare, yay and yay), adorned with a completely awesome personalized case...
So this is what a massage is supposed to feel like.
I've had a handful of massages in my life - a couples thingy on our honeymoon (a sort of confusing mish-mash of not-very-relaxing and not-very-romantic), a prenatal massage (nice; hard to get comfortable despite presence of funny donut pillow for stomach), and a couple others here and there - but I've always felt very weird spending upwards of eighty dollars for an hour of what amounts to lavender-scented naptime.
This was worth eighty dollars. The difference between a therapeutic massage and a spa massage is basically that a spa massage focuses on relaxation, while a therapeutic massage focuses on getting to the root of your problem. The bells and whistles are gone - no robes, candles, or pretty little extras - but what you get is a massage that targets exactly what's wrong (as an example, the pre-massage questionnaire is fairly extensive). I went in with no specific problems other than the fact that I tote around a very large seven-month-old all day and have the aches and pains that come along with that - and I left feeling not just chilled-out...but better.
If you go to Eastside Massage Therapy, ask for Sarah. She is amazing, and she is the only massage therapist I have ever found who is capable of getting around my very annoying tickle reflex (as she said, "even ticklish people deserve massages").
Yesterday was full of finds.
Like locally-made, small-batch, delicious-smelling things (I love the Hudson fragrance and the Lavender Room & Linen Spray) from Cold Spring Apothecary.
