Saturday, January 22, 2011

wintering

I have come to really like winter and look forward now to the quiet months of January and February. I always have big plans for what I will do with those months. Somehow, with the holidays over and it being winter it seems I have more time to do these things. However, I'm still working full time, so I'm not sure how much "extra" time I really have.


I love this collage by catwalk

So far this month I have been able to do some decluttering and reorganizing, but it has not been nearly as much as I need or want. Meanwhile, here it is Saturday and I'm doing a blog post. I'm hopeless!

I've been wanting to do a zine about winter for some time and what I like about it. Every year I do some writing, but I have yet to get it out. I need to declutter my to-do list!

Laura from the Welcome to Bend zine just made a zine about winter and her favorite things about it. It was a lovely read this morning over my Earl Grey tea. You can find it here.

Hope you are enjoying the winter. There's lots of great things about it. Someday I'll tell you more about about that. <3

Monday, January 10, 2011

Christmas in the Old West

Christmas is over and New Years has come and gone and I still have not taken down the Christmas decorations or even put away some of my gifts.

I am longing for newness, organization and redoing almost everything, but almost all I seem to be able to do is think about it. I've done a bit of cleaning out, but more of playing with my new wii (!), keeping warm by being under blankets while watching Netflix and catching up with friends - all of these include lots of tea drinking.


My holidays were great. My niece came from Brooklyn and my sister from Southern California. We have a small family and no little kids. About 15 years ago we started a tradition of having a theme for Christmas. We don't always do it for different reasons - but we mostly do.

Some of our favorites were Medieval Christmas, Dutch Christmas, Hungarian Christmas, 1960's Christmas and and last year's 1930's Christmas. We use the theme to determine the menu, activities and music. If it's a time travel Christmas we try and dress up.

This year we did Old West Christmas. This was not nearly as glamorous as last years!


My mother decorated one of the trees all in gold for the gold rush and the other tree in fancy Victorian style ornaments (like you would see in a fancy hotel at the time). We all dressed western - mostly cowboy or prairie style. We had amazing food including pan friend trout, buffalo stew and turkey (I heard the latter two were good. I myself am a pescatarian).


The dog does not eat at the table, but like those folks at the Academy Awards, she fills in the empty seats when someone gets up. She does, however, enjoy getting in costume - just like the rest of us.

Our Christmas themes are lots of fun. We all seem to share the love of a theme, which makes me very happy. It's always neat to see what each other comes up with. We don't have a theme in mind for next year, so let me know if you have any suggestions.

I hope you are enjoying the new year so far. Happy 2011!

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