Spring Break!

Ok, I have to take a break from moving, talking about moving, and trying to get all the great pictures The Mitch is taking on the camera and figuring which computer is where, is hooked up to what, and where the correct wires are to be able to share with my readers! I think moving home and Vermont public relations firm, Rachel Carter PR, is reason enough to break from blogging, but now that I have a readership and have started creating the Vermont Vibes buzz, I simply cannot stop!

First, thanks to all letting me make the transition from Vibing around Vermont to Vibing around the farm and community of Charlotte. (I don't think Charlotters know what they're in for letting me move to the country.) But with the stupidly horrible prices of gas and everything else, even my fuel efficient Vibe cannot afford to Vibe around Vermont right now. While this is bad news for small Vermont towns who benefit from Vibing escapades, this is excellent news for hardware stores and Vermonters looking to sell stuff.

While the farmhouse pictures lately have been gorgeous, the work plentiful, and my fabulous Vermont hippie farmer outfits sensational (last weekend I went to Ace Hardware dressed as a pirate farmer and got skilled in cementing and brick work), these stories must wait for the photos! So, here are some of the latest tips from the Vermont Viber!

1.) Stay home this summer and work on your house - save money from traveling to find ways to make your home more cost effective in the winter, create a garden to grow your own veggies and corn of course so you can fuel your electric razor while causing food prices to soar because the corn is now too expensive for the farmers. Jeesh.

2.) Stalk Craigs List like a tweeny bopper stalks pimply boys at the mall (EW! - whatever, you know you all did it). I have so far found and bought dry wall, a wooden microwave cart, an office chair, a bamboo cabinet and continue to scour for a futon mattress, a dresser, and an entertainment center.

3.) Wear funny costumes to Ace Hardware and ask lots of questions.

4.) Make sweater sleeves into leg warmers like the Healthy Hippie!

5.) Create a music room or area in your house, collect old instruments, and have friends over for local food, drink, and merriment.

6.) Fix up your older wood furniture. Sanding and staining is one of my best secret house skills! Tips to come soon!

7.) Join your local Front Porch Forum, say hi to your neighbors, and get neighborly! Make some sun tea (tea bags in a growler bottle sitting in the sun all day, add some maple sugar, brown sugar, or raw sugar to sweeten) and invite folks to hang out - you'll be surprised at the positive vibes you spread!! (I plan to do this in the coming weeks, once the wasps nests are gone.)

For everyone's spring enjoyment, here are some of my favorites from over the past few years - love and light!

Sneaky post by the Mitch

Ooooo! It is a rare chance that Rachel is away from her computer, so I am taking this opportunity to speak about my moving experience! As you all know, we have scored a great place in Charlotte. It is definately a change and I am sure it will bring many adventures. I am so excited to move out there with Rachel and start creating some awesome memories. Let me tell ya though, that Rachel, she sure runs her own moving gamet!!! Its been awesome and fun, and has had its share of stresses. I recently discovered that renting a moving truck in the middle of the week is not such a great idea after all. Have any of you out there ever tried that one? Moving tip # 1: Don't rent moving truck for a weekday! Even though this may seem easier than on the weekend, nobody is around. I know, I know, this may be a no brainer, but hey, I learn through the school of hard knocks. Moving tip # 2: When moving with signifigant others, keep in mind that moving is stessful. Attitudes may flare, tempers may soar, and some good old fashion expletives may be thrown your way. But in the end, you are moving with the one person who loves you most and the hot red attitude has nothing to do with you. Alright, one more tip before Rachel gets back: Always appreciate the amount of work that is being done when moving. It is a daunting task and we can be overwhelmed easily. Take it day by day, enjoy the progress, and love your new dwelling! Peace, the Mitch

Weekend Life in the New Hood

The past two weekends Mitch and I have been, MitchaRachia - Housecleaner Extraordinaries. With the help of part time Viber, The Face, we have done the following (I feel in regards to nasty cleaning and repair activities people are allowed to brag without being accused of hubris):
- Moved all nasty old crap that wasn't ours out of the house
- Swept floor, walls, and ceiling of basement (luckily all spiders were still dead from the winter- Organized all tools and supplies and moved in lots of our basement stuff
- Investigated the property and attic spaces and discovered many things to give us permanent heebie jeebies
- Decided The Face needs to move next door

- Cleared away yard crap cluttering our space (I am so anti lawn clutter, it isn't even funny - I think it screams white trash and the wasp in me cannot handle it.)
- Swept all porch floors, walls, and ceilings (note: an entire trash bag could have been filled with the dead wasp, hornet, and yellow jackets nests) and while we only encountered two yellow jackets (probably scouting for places to be gross this summer) the heebie jeebies continued
- Brought cats out to explore new home, saw one mouse, cats ignored- Cleaned all windows which are double sided doors
- Moved rest of basement and porch stuff
- Cleaned entire inside of house from floorboards to behind toilet to inside drawers to under stove. I do not mess around. Mitch was exceptionally good natured about the business and has earned himself a free year of never having to clean the toilet and a lifetime guarantee of never having the position of the toilet seat cover mentioned in his presence.
- Oh, yes, and we used wood filler on all wood counters, sanded them, and stained them with a top coat oil based gloss
- And....we shop vacced flies daily, left a bomb for them, and have en entire shelf dedicated to our arsenal of bug killing supplies and mechanisms.


I was going to then talk about our neighbors and town and whatnot, but I think that will wait for another post. Just re-reading this has exhausted me once again. I also hope my black boogers are gone. Ew.

Goodbye Queen City

I have been wishing upon stars my entire life. For as many that haven't come true, I must say that many have. It ebbs and flows. I think wishing is like many think of talking to a religious figure or speaking to the universal life force in the woods. And it wasn't until I combined the wishing with the universal life force that I was really able to start to manifest my life. While not a religious person, I am deeply spiritual. Forrest Gump sums it up best for me:

"I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floating around accidental-like on a breeze, but I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happening at the same time."

While I may have wished for things, it wasn't until I was able to connect my wishes with the greater universe and how my wishes affect others when I was really able to begin manifesting my destiny. It's sort of like praying for others - you cannot just wish on behalf of yourself.

I have been making the preparations all along - being studious and like a sponge as a child, being humbled and humiliated as a tween (before they were called tweens), being motivated in my teens, balancing study with party in college, being wild and crazy and free in my 20's while also slowly pushing through the beginning steps of making a career - with much of the time being angry that I couldn't get to the next step...the step of having a partner and making a home and having a fulfilling career. When the wishing got past myself and started involving others, when I was able to look more and more at the larger picture than the right now, and when I had successfully made it through my Saturn Return, it started to happen.

My Vermont public relations agency, Rachel Carter PR, is a fascinating and evolving business lifestyle I created with my wit, perseverance, and all experiences that came before it. The love of my life, Mitch, is a miraculous being who blessed my life at the perfect time and truly made it all worth waiting for. My friends - while many simmering in their own lives on the back burner - are always there with their sweet aromas and like wishes, ebb and flow when our times for each other are manifested. My family, a rock solid backbone of consistent, fair, and unyielding love and support, are the stuff of a fantastic movie. My cats, well, they are the little beasts for which my heart purrs. And my growing crop of business associates - wow! - am I thankful for how much I am learning and the friendships I am making!

With all of this said, I would like to announce that an insurmountable event has occurred! After just about 8 years living in Burlington, I am finally leaving and moving to the country, where my roots are firmly planted in the ground and have been waiting for me to rejoin them for the manifestation of the rest of my life. Mitch, Fee, Tela and myself are moving to Charlotte in the cow pastured and farm dotted countryside neighborhood of Prindle Corners. We are moving into a three story, farmhouse "condo." (if you want further explanation of what this means, you will only learn by coming to visit)

For those outside of Vermont reading this lengthy, yet deeply heartfelt and necessary post, this is only a half hour south of Burlington, so you can still easily drive and fly here, although I am on a dead end dirt road. It is also on 500 acres of farmland with porches, decks, views, the right wind angle to keep the cow poo smell away, and within a 5 minute drive to river canoeing, fishing, hiking, boating, swimming, and all things fun on the southern part of Lake Champlain. There is even a ferry.

My Vermont Vibes will now take a turn. As I will not be traveling all over Vermont as much this summer, I will be fulfilling my destiny as a true Vermonter and will be sharing my humorous tales of bug killing, Fee and Tela mouse adventures, gardening, composting, weeding, canoeing, fishing, old house fixing up tips, being a localvore, and becoming a bustling little member of a community, oh, and hopefully becoming friends with people with boats so I can tell the tales of searching for Champ (he's the Lake Champlain lake monster and I am pretty sure he lives in this part of Lake Champlain.) Oh, and don't forget about the ghost stories - those have already begun!

There will be much more on our new home which has been named: MitchaRachia where "in the farmhouse things will be alright." (Thanks Trey.) But, for now, please enjoy the first set of pictures (taken on measuring day)! And for those who want to keep updated, please subscribe - posts are weekly!!!










Love and Light!!!

Sunday Vibing

I took my own advice from my last post and did indeed make my way to Cafe Provence in Brandon for Easter brunch. What a cool place! I first noticed was how much light there was and how amicably decorated it was to take advantage of all the light. And the brunch was just as I envisioned. No eggs benedict - my favorite - but no complaining because I tried new items to tantalize my tastebuds - shrimp puffs, seafood salad, and delicate ham and salmon bits. I enjoyed old friends as well such as scalloped potatoes and pate!!! Mitch was quite grossed out by my liking pate, but even more distressed by the seafood salad - there were octopus bits in it! For fun, I rested one on the side of my plate to stare at him most of the meal. I think the waitress thought we were strange, but she was super nice anyway!

After brunch we decided to take a walk in downtown Brandon and enjoy some of the third installment of Art in the Snow, a creative way to get folks to enjoy this artsy town when cabin fever strikes. A little too artsy for us hippies, but we enjoyed getting cultured in a small Vermont town. We browsed in 4 Conant Interiors - talk about uberly swanky!!! Great interior art/furniture pieces for you Vermont second home owners. Great ideas for us Gen Xers to recreate while second hand shopping. Then we headed into the Brandon Artists Guild and greatly enjoyed the varied paintings and wall art by Vermont artists. I was psyched to see pal Kimberlee Forney's work being highlighted and got really interested in Mike Mayone's paintings - I think I need some!

While the sun was glorious this Easter Sunday, it was windy and cold, so we parted ways with Brandon and vibed back north on backroads of course through the Green Mountain National Forest. We couldn't see any signs of spring yet, but for some reason our skiing vibes are diminishing and our spring life vibes are clawing to get out from under our itchy skin (well, Mitch's skin is itchier than mine because he doesn't lavish in spa time as much as I). This is due to the big surprise that I said I would unveil, and I lied! No, I didn't lie, I just wanted to get this post in first. But, stay tuned - next one is a biggie!!!!!!

And in the meantime, go do some maple surgarin' while the sap flows - you want to go when it gets below freezing the night before, but up in the 40's when you vibe around. Check out www.vtmaple.org for more info. (Tip: You can still go vibing without a Vibe, it's all about the energy!)

Vermont Vibing, Carter Roots

My awesomely fantastic cousin, Rebecca, came to visit last weekend for a 24 hour stint in Vermont Vibing. Arriving at the Burlington International Airport in the early evening hours last Friday, I vibed over to get her and her lack of airport lost luggage - figures. An art professor down in the gas guzzling nation of Texas, my definitely heady-yet-more-indy cuz is in Vermont doing an artist residency at Johnson State College. We snatched up The Mitch at my place and headed where you take out-of-towners for Vermont goodness (but I never eat at otherwise), American Flatbread, followed by a lack-of-live-music Radio Bean (har-humph). But none of this mattered, because this was a night of conversation and yummy beer!

The next morning I made Rebecca Eggs-A-Vibe (see recipe in earlier post please) and we made our way out on a most authentic of Vermont Vibes adventures. Our first stop is top-secret and while Rebecca was the very first to visit, this secret will not be unveiled until the next post! From the top-secret Vibes locale, we cruised through Waterbury and stopped for a brief visit at the Green Mountain Coffee Roasters Waterbury Station - a little pit stop I have never been to before and highly recommend for those traversing through the Waterbury area. From there we viberized (ooo, a new one!) into Montpelier for a water bottle and outdoor gear drooling at Onion River Sports.

We then joined our waspism forces of the Carter variety and vibed towards a place so dear to our hearts. Unfortunately we did not take any pictures, but this one of Caspian Lake pretty much sums it up.


We took Route 12 to get there and enjoyed views of Lake Elmore where people are still hanging out on the ice (this scares the crap out of me). We took some time to hang out in Hardwick and poke around the Buffalo Mountain Co-op followed by a yummy localvore meal at The Village Restaurant across from the co-op (couldn't find a good weblink for them, but it was good - and open in the mid-afternoon!).

Then we got to visit my aunt and uncle's cottage in Greensboro for Rebecca to gear up on cross country skis and yoga mats for her late winter jaunt in Vermont. And the marvelous day ended with me getting to pretend to be an art student at Rebecca's orientation meal at Johnson State - even in my hippie/VT flannel get-up, they thought I belonged.

What a truly remarkable day to reconnect with family, bond over many similarities, and chuckle at the simple things in life. Rebecca - I look forward to more positive vibes and here is a picture to maybe use in your artwork!!!

Where to Go for Easter Brunch

I think going to a Vermont restaurant for an Easter brunch buffet is one of the best ways to spend Easter Sunday. Of course, it's nicer when Easter is in April and the Sunday drive can actually include seeing a few buds popping out of the Earth, but regardless, the glorious arrays of Easter brunch displays around Vermont are worth an excursion in their own right. And who cares if you don't celebrate Easter or not - to me it's a feast to encourage spring and the delight that comes with the rebirth of the Earth.

I don't think it's a buffet, but Mary's Restaurant at the Inn at Baldwin Creek in the sweet village of Bristol, offers an Easter Brunch with all the classic delicious dishes that make Easter Brunch so decadent - Crab Cakes and Eggs, Maple Glazed Ham, Stuffed French Toast - mmmm. Brunch is from 11:00 am - 2:00 pm and ranges from $16-$30.

If you really want to step it up a notch and don your best Easter attire (which in Vermont doesn't mean a floral dress and sandles), head over to Stoweflake for a whopping $45 brunch buffet in the glamor capital of Vermont - Stowe. But, seriously, when the display includes Smoked Fish Display with Appropriate Garniture and Fresh Sliced Fruit Presentation with Fruit Salad Watermelon Ship, can you really complain about the price? I think not, especially when the display also includes Grilled Chicken Tournedo with Sweet Pea Puree and Caramelized Vidalia Onions and Crab-Stuffed Sole with a Fire-Roasted Red Pepper Sauce. If there was ever a time to eat like a tourist, Easter is it! The Stoweflake Brunch is served from 11:30 am - 2:30 pm.

In the unspoiled village of Brandon, Cafe Provence is calling my name to switch Easter brunch traditions this year - and I just might. The menu selection for the brunch buffet is uberly extensive and has all the items I love for my Easter pallet - there's a Cold Salad Buffet (with pate!!), a Carving Station, an Omelet Station, a Hot Buffet, and a Dessert Station. The price is $26.95 and there are three sittings - at 10:00 am, 12:00 noon, and 2:00 pm.

For those looking to head into the historic town of Middlebury, the Waybury Inn offers perhaps the most traditional brunch buffet of the bunch. For $26.75, the Waybury Inn's Easter Brunch Buffet features various Tea Sandwiches, Oysters in a Half Shell, Atlantic Salmon, and one of the desserts is even a Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup with Cadbury Eggs! Easter Brunch is served from 11:00 am - 3:00 pm.

Of course, the brunch I would really like to go to is the farthest away. The Arlington Inn, down in Southeastern Vermont near Bennington and Manchester, offers a vast display for Easter Brunch featuring pate and smoked meat plates, rainbow trout, crepes. While the brunch certainly seems as delicious as the others, it is the stately Greek Revival mansion that is home to the Arlington Inn on historic Route 7A that really calls my name. Brunch at the Arlington Inn is $23.95 and is served from 10:30 am - 2:30 pm.

Enjoy the brunch you choose and don't forget to check other other cool Vermont Vibes in the area - a great way to search can be found at www.vermontvacation.com.