Joey built two huge cedar tables and benches to seat 20 folks and we collected some local talent to play along.The Rich Hippies House was the venue of course, and we got our tried and true photographer, Shelby to snap pics of the event. My friends Amanda and Gaby cohosted and everyone pitched in!

Jules Aron made fresh and healthy cocktails and they were truly amazing. I am a big fan of her Vegan Cheese book, and now her mixing skills too. Linda from Lila Life made an incredible vegetarian feast that was almost too pretty to eat! I was so excited to finally meet Jenny from Living Pattern who co-designed the menu’s with her husband with perfect leafy paintings. Stacy from Sweet Stacy made the most insane cake! Our friends at Non-Prophet supplied our favorite kombucha and our wildly talented friends Yerbamala provided the most beautiful macrame back drop. It was a beautiful night under the stars and the first time in two years Joey and I both felt like part of a community down here. I can’t wait to keep the tradition going!

Check out The Rich Hippies House

I don’t view it as time lost, but more time gained with my dad. I am so grateful we carved time out of our lives to spend with him and to have him and Atlas grow a bond that was sweet and kind. Our lives were put on hold, but their lives were made better. Now it’s time to move on and pick up where we left when we sold our Nashville homes.

We are traveling full time, and we have no plan to stop.

We leave for Portugal this week in hopes of finding a home to eventually go back to, but also we changed things completely from the plan two years ago. We are traveling full time, and we have no plan to stop. We have a one way ticket and huge plan to document it all. We leave for full time travel this summer and are almost completely set. Here is how it’s going to go down:

• We each get a suitcase and a carry on, and that’s it!
• We will be homeschooling with support of our current co-op.
• Some stuff is super planned, some stuff is not.
• We are now doing videos and will be posing a new one every Wednesday!
• The Rich Hippies House will remain with our awesome team and our management.

I am freaking out every day as I research which elephant rehab camps we plan to visit, or cooking classes we will take, which immersion programs exist, and new languages we will learn. For the first time in a very long time I feel like there is nothing holding me back from turning the “I wish” into “I will”.

We certainly face challenges. Especially Atlas’s needs. We are still careful daily with overstimulation, sensory processing, low muscle tone, and communication barriers. We had to agree early on, we may run home and get right back into the routine of OT and speech therapy 4X a week. But we need to try. We need to see if we can do things the way we have been planning for years. We need to know if we can see the world as a family and show our kid the diversity of it all.

I can’t believe we leave in just a few months. On an unrelated note, we finally got some new family pics from! Last time we did this Atlas had a man bun. I can’t believe how fast time goes, and how much he has grown from then. He’s so excited about all the airplane rides in his future!

Have a good one friends!

PS New here? Check out our about us!

Looking for home stuff? Check this out.

Found me because or Rich Hippies? Here is the main page for the compound, yoga deck, and kid’s stuff.

Length of stay: Three Nights

Accommodations: House Rental, Fairgrounds, New Orleans

Travel Time: via Houston to Fairgrounds, New Orleans  5:10

I can’t count the amount of times I have meant to go to New Orleans. I have been itching to go forever and a day because of nothing else but to explore it’s beautiful architecture. I can’t believe we didn’t take a single photo of the million and one amazing homes that make up this place! We were on a three week road trip this past summer, and this was the last leg, so I think we were a bit burnt out and ready to relax. We had just embarked on a 10 day trip not too long before this one, so I am going to forgive myself and move along and promise we will go back specifically to take photos of the homes. Sounds fair.

We loved the town, the way it makes you feel like you aren’t in America. Lots of the food and coffee were great too!

I loved how beautiful everything was – the same kind of mystery and awe as Savannah. There is certainly more grit to NOLA and I think it has more of an “adult” vibe than Savannah for sure. You can’t beat walking around and absorbing it’s beauty though. Also, the park and botanical garden was such an awesome treat. They were both done so well and it was incredibly affordable for the park – I believe $2/pp and then tickets for the rides. The botanical garden was free the day we went.

Our Favorite Vegan Spots (in order of deliciousness)

• Seed
• 1000 Figs
• Bearcat Cafe

My favorite place, which we went to twice, was Seed.

Cafe/Dessert/Snacks

• HiVolt
• Tea Witch Cafe

Where we Explored

• Market
• Botanical Garden + attached park
• Driving around looking at all the awesome architecture

xo,

p.s. check out the stop before NOLA in this post from Texas!

My dad wound up having something called COPD, which is generally something you get from smoking. He hadn’t smoked in 30 years, but the effects were lasting. He had an unusual, rapid decline and was on oxygen for less than a year before he ultimately passed this month. Every piece of our lives had struggled in some way to stay above water – it’s hard thing to do, try and keep someone alive. Especially without any help. Especially with a young child who has his own needs. We tucked ourselves away for a while because it was a very painful thing to see someone you love hurt so bad and need so much, so we focused ourselves on him. We really wanted him to know he wasn’t alone and we weren’t going anywhere without him.

This is the reason for the pause. Every time we tried to “bring it back” something new would happen, but now there is nothing “new” to happen. We plan to focus our energy back here again with all the bits we accomplished in the “in-between” these years and fill in some blanks and roll out fresh content weekly.

xo,

Length of stay: Six Nights

Accommodations: Airbnb in the Lower East Side

Travel Time: via Palm Beach International Airport to JFK 2:30

October is a tricky month. As a family, we dedicate the whole entire thing to Halloween the moment the clock strikes 12:00am on October 1st. Our son, Atlas, is wildly obsessed with it all. The feeling of being slightly scared, the dressing up, the decorating, the spooky songs and movies, haunted houses (though he got totally freaked this year!), learning the steps to the Thriller video, the pageantry of it all. October is also the “middle” for my marriage. He is an August baby, and I am a November baby and it’s been hard to celebrate our day of birth equally when we are focusing so heavily on Halloween.

So we made a pact this year: a birthday mashup celebration in New York, just us. In October. In the in-between.

We have been homesick for New York since about 6 months after moving to Nashville. If the stars aligned, I think we would be back. We almost moved back to Brooklyn instead of Florida. The universe is funny though, things need done, so we are here doing them. I know we will move back at some point, I just don’t know exactly when. For now, we visit as much as we can and love on our people while we are there and pretend for just a moment we are part of the buzz of the city.

The grandparents came in from Texas to tend to Atlas and all his Halloween needs for a week, and we went off to New York with one simple rule: Do all the things we can’t do with a kid. Admittedly, we felt a little guilt, having all this fun without Atlas. Seeing things he would have enjoyed, passing by epic fire houses, going on the sea glass carousel, eating vegan doughnuts. Then, it dawned on us, we can just got back with him. All Atlas expressed interest in for Christmas is to go to New York and check out all the Home Alone and Ghostbuster locations. Specifically the firestation from Ghostbusters and the Plaza Hotel from Home Alone 2. He also requested some ice skating and to go see his cousins in St. Paul. Done and done.  This means, we get to go to New York as adults sans kid, and Atlas gets all his New York wishlist for Christmas. No guilt.

We ate a lot, and we walked even more. During our time there, despite the rain on some of the days, we clocked over 55 miles. No wonder I was so  much more fit when we lived there. Here is a video highlighting what we did, resources below if anything strikes you as fun, interesting, or delicious.

Our Favorite Vegan Spots (in order of deliciousness)

• Modern Love (the piccata was amazing. mozzarella appetizer as well!)
• Champs Vegan Diner (asada frieds and sag are my faves)
• Superior Burger (amazing, all of it)
• At Chelsea Market: Very Fresh Noodles (in the video where you see them making noodles, that’s it and the only vegan option is so insanely good, I have been craving it like a maniac).
• Red Bamboo (forever and ever amen. the roti, the nuggets, everything but the dumplings, unless you like the doughy).
• Orchard Grocer we went twice, and both sandwiches were awesome. I decided this would be my plane dinner on the way home and I grabbed snacks too to bring home.
• Delice & Sarin (it’s a full French menu! the French onion and escargot were my faves)
• Jajaja Plantas Mexicana (bad coffee, amazing food, open super late!)
• Cinnamon Snail (the thanksgiving sandwich!)
• Peacefood
• By Chloe

Cafe/Dessert/Snacks

• Ludlow Coffee (we went every day! latte with oat milk was tops)
• Cinnamon Snail is also great for dessert
• Sweets By Chloe
• Lagustas

Where we Explored

• Chelsea Market
• Sea Glass Carousel
• ABC Carpet + Home
• Union Square Farmers Market
• New York Ayurveda Wellness Center
• Williamsburg, Brooklyn
• Williamsburg Bridge
• New Museum
• Alphabet City

xo,

Length of stay: Eight Nights

Accommodations: At the In-Law’s

Hello friends. We have just returned from a three week road trip adventure, and boy did we learn some lessons! This was way more difficult than our Portugal/Zurich/London adventure a few months back – simply because so many unplanned events happened. That’s another post for another time though. This post I am excited to share because I have been to Houston more times the I can count, and this is the first time we actually decided to write about it! Joey was born and raised right outside Houston and still has a good amount of friends there. Just by coincidence, I have a childhood friend who lives down the street from his parents. Small world after all.

We were able to pack a lot of friend and family time in as well as tourist-y things. Our first stop was the Houston Museum of Natural Science. We had been here before when Atlas was quite a bit younger and wildly obsessed with dinosaurs and it was a hit. This time he was a bit disappointed because he thought it was a video arcade, only to find out it was not. There is not a lot of interactive things to do in all fairness, and he wanted something to do. We paid an extra $5 for him to ride the dinosaur in the middle of the museum which lasted about thirty seconds, and then we were on our way.

We had more of an exciting day at Schlitterbahn, which wasn’t exactly Houston, but close enough. It’s located Galveston, only about an hour away from Houston. We were able to spend the day with friends, which was so fun for Atlas to have someone to pal around with. We started on the lazy river and went again, and again, and again. It was pretty fun and I tried my best to ignore all the germs and just go with the flow. Catch my pun? Hanging out with Joey 24/7 has gotten me hitting back with the bad-dad-jokes. Trust me, I am not paranoid. These places are dirty, even when they seem clean. We weren’t there five minutes before the lifeguard blew his whistle and demanded everyone leave the pool immediately.

We liked that parking was free, you could bring your own lunch/cooler, there were tons of covered picnic tables to perch, and there was a lot to do.

The third tourist-y thing we did was go to the Space Center, which Joey and his dad were really excited about. We explored the center and took the tram tour and saw mission control, which was awesome. Atlas loved how big the rockets were, touched a piece of mars, and did some fun interactive activities. It was a hundred degrees out, so it was nice they had a large indoor area with good exhibits.

The fourth, and final tourist attraction we hit was the Water Wall. It was pretty, it made nice photos. There was nothing else to do or see in walking distance we could gather. Basically it reminded me of the “I believe in Nashville” mural people line up for.

Honestly thought, I think Atlas had the most fun hanging out with Joey’s friends’ kids, my friends’ kids and walking the dogs at Grammie and Grandpa’s house. We had some fun water balloon fights, slip and slide, and days of unplanned exploring – and they were great.

A cool place we found ourselves eating and drinking we have never been to before was Tout Suite. I got the tofu place, which I loved and may have been my best meal while we were there. The coffee was great too. They also had a vegan cheesecake-in-a-jar option both nights we were there. We left with one of their juice jugs as well, and it was very good.

We have been to Green Seed many many times. I got my usual taco plate and side of cauliflower and they were both delicious and awesome.

Because we were in an adventuring mood, we tried another new place, AHH, Coffee. They had vegan kolache’s and treats as well and all their stuff was good. The vegan Twinkie was OK, not my fave thing there.

An easy everyone-can-eat-happily place we went to was Baba Yega. I got the vegan Ruban and it was great.

We tried out the True Food in Houston, which we have been to a few times in Boca, and they had a new menu and it was very good. Joey and I shared a vegan pizza that was delicious.

Niko Niko was a pleasant surprise Joey shared with me. I had never been, but I loved my falafel sandwich and hummus.

One of my favorite places to eat is a place I always get “to-go”. Pepper Tree. It’s no frills, it’s all vegan, it’s a buffet. I always feel panicked when I load up my to-go container because it’s something like $18 and you have one shot to make all the right choices. Do I skip the soup? Do I add more dessert? Three things look the same, but are they different? All while people behind the counter are staring at you debate your decisions. Whatever the case, I always wind up with 10 pounds of amazing vegan Chinese food, which I miss a ton  after leaving New York.

So there you have almost a thousand words, and way-too-many pictures about Houston with a five-ish year old and how to feed a vegan there.

If you are doing Houston with a five year old:

Houston Museum of Natural Science

Schlitterbahn Houston

Space Center Houston

Water Wall

If you are a vegetarian going to Houston:

Green Seed

Tout Suite

AHH Coffee

Baba Yega

True Food Houston

Niko Niko 

Pepper Tree

xo,

PS Do you like to travel? Check out our trip to Atlanta, Legoland Florida, Tampa Bay Area and Savannah.

We have had our first “emergency” at The Rich Hippies House. While the cleaning crew was in the upstairs duplex they noticed a guest had the AC unit on 61 degrees, and the AC was leaking into the downstairs duplex closet. We had guests coming the very next day and had to rush to solve the problem. Florida is not a place to be without temperature control. Even when it rains, it never really cools down once summer is here. Basically, we hop from air conditioned car to air conditioned building, so much so that we now have a UV light on our air conditioner, and we recommend that you get one too. You may be thinking ‘do i need a uv light for my air conditioner?’ And while you probably don’t NEED one, we think it’s a great idea! At our house, if you are outside for more than a few moments the humidity gets to your hair and your clothes cling to you and 80 degrees magically turned to 95 in a flash.

We had heard good things about the Direct Energy family of brands and found One Hour Air Conditioning & Heating® late Thursday night, and first thing Friday morning they were at the house running a diagnostic. We needed a solution that we could trust, someone who can solve the problem (no matter how complex or easy it was), and someone who could do it quickly before the guests showed up.

Enter Steve. Steve made everything A-OK again. We were so stressed because we didn’t even have an emergency AC plan. It wound up needing a recharge of refrigerant. Steve said that even if it was 1am, to give him a ring if something went funky. In about an hour Steve diagnosed it, fixed it, and was leaving right as our guests were showing up. It’s been a long time since someone showed up and fixed a problem without a big to-do. It feels almost retro.

We wound up passing along his info to our management company, being we have four separate AC units, and there is certainly a chance we will have another emergency. If you need someone like this for your emergency and not-so-emergency HVAC situations, they may even have a solution near you, you can find out by visiting their website or calling 855-One-Hour.

Thank you, Steve!

Sponsored by One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning®. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I really hope you enjoy our very first official collection and keep and eye out as we continue to roll out the pieces for late summer.

Check out Yoga Pants 

Check out Box Crops

model: Stella Strul

photo: Joseph Katsaros

It was a typical warm summer Florida day, and we were lucky enough to escape the rain during this seven hour workshop.

The morning started with a shibori class. Everyone got to design their own napkin set and tea towel and take their creations home.

After lunch we gathered inside for the Macrame workshop with Yerbamala. Each student had intimate instruction and the lovely duo made everyone Cuban coffee after. It was such the perfect day to gather and meet new friends while learning these lovely crafts.

Thanks for hanging out! If you want to know what events are happening at The Nashville Kids Shop and the West Palm Beach Rich Hippies House you can check out our calendar and/or sign up for our very non-annoying newsletter.

xo,

PS The Rich Hippies House has it’s own Instagram now if you are into that sort of thing, lots of peeks inside the property. We also made a before and after post of the studio and the downstairs duplex.

PPS You can also rent it in part of whole for your own event or vacation. The Studio. The House. The Upstairs Duplex. The Downstairs Duplex.

Hi, I am Lana. Right now my family is planning a trip around the world (for at least a year!), and we have a pretty tight deadline to meet. Let me show you what me and my family do on the daily.

This blog is the family blog behind the Rich Hippies brand, because life and work are one in the same these days.

In September 2017 we bought and renovated this Spanish compound and turned it into a vacation rental and workshop space.

photo @shelbysphoto

We have been having the most beautiful time each month cohosting events with local and far-away talent.

photo @shelbysphoto / teacher @garnerblue

photo @shelbysphoto / teacher @garnerblue

photo @shelbysphoto

I currently live with my Family  live in Florida, semi-full-time and am in  Nashville at my shop when I am not doing events south of the south or with our factory working on production of our brand, Rich Hippies® Little.

So primarily, I run this blog, design children’s clothing, have our flagship shop in Nashville I actively manage, run the Rich Hippies House events in West Palm Beach, and lastly, have a publication coming out for children in Spring ’19 (way too excited about this!). This is what going on in our daily lived when we aren’t planning trips and getting ready to travel full time. It’s why we changed our blog from Making a House a Home to Happily Curated Chaos – so much more travel is coming.

Atlas has embarked on full-time student life. He is part of a home school coop we begin this year. He’s decided to do another season of soccer, but asks to play golf more than you would think a five year old would. He’s constantly making us wonder how he got so cool and funny.

And Joey. Joey, Joey, Joey. He’s basically the entire foundation of this operation. He’s the one who’s ideas may be even bigger than mine. The compound was actually his idea and his find – he just let me decorate it. He renovated and contracted the whole thing, which isn’t bad for a professional composer. During the day Joey is usually working on music for a commercial or TV show and sometimes a movie. He’s also been working on a publishing deal, so he’s pretty busy musically. It’s easy to catch him looking up private islands, run down hotels, compounds, and other properties he finds interesting in search of the next project for us to work on together. He is also such a huge part of Rich Hippies Littles when it comes to fabric production.

We dip our toes in each other’s work often, it’s how we get to spend our days together. We are usually working from home, but both have mobil rigs to be able to work from anywhere. We even got a car with internet to help us in emergencies.

So that’s basically who we are – obviously way more complicated and intricate – but that’s what about 500 words will get ya. For everyone who’s asked “What is a Rich Hippie”, it’s someone who’s found there riches from life, love, and family.

Cheers friends! So so so so excited to share the collection of Rich Hippies Littles with you very soon.

xo,

PS Want to see some the renovations at the Rich Hippies House? Check out the studio before and after.