I am lucky. I won one of Julia’s Advent Calendar gifts!
She sent me fragrant soaps, and postcards and stickers with her illustrations. My Advent gift arrived on Epiphany, understandable because it came all the way from Berlin.
Many thanks, Julia! Your gift brightened my day.
Ta da! Our holiday card for 2009.
It says Happy Holidays on the outside and on the inside. But not because we’re too cool for Christmas.
In fact, we celebrate the hell out of Christmas at our house. We fix lutefisk and roll lefsa up with butter and brown sugar while playing Christmas music and saying many graces, acknowledging the blessings in our lives. We also attend Christian services to mark the birth of the lovely infant Jesus.
We have numerous albums of Christmas music, both sacred and secular, which we play with pleasure as we eat cookies (this Carla Bley CD is my Christmas CD of the year, discovered by my darling husband Dave, who knows his music). We tear into gifts. We drink champagne with family and tell each other “Merry Christmas” a lot of times.
Our annual card, however, says Happy Holidays. Because if I get behind sending out cards as I prepare for the birth of the lovely infant Jesus, I can mail a few after the 25th of December and still be ok.
I meant to post this yesterday, but got a bit off track with our celebration. It’s still the holidays, though, so Happy Holidays! Hope you’re having a great celebration yourself.
Julia at Lineanongrata invites everyone to visit!
Julia is an online friend in Germany. First France, now Germany. She just moved. She illustrates and blogs and makes quilts, and has dogs as big as cows. During the holiday season, she hosts an online Advent calendar.
Each day of Advent she posts on her blog, Lineanongrata, about some wonderful thing she’s doing. If you leave a comment on the post, you’re liable to win that day’s Advent gift. The gifts include handmade things and illustrations. Julia’s illustration portfolio shows why it is worth your while to go see.
The above photo is an Advent calendar she made for a young friend. Cool, huh?
tags:intelligent design
We had a very small Thanksgiving celebration at 227 on Thursday – only four people. But there were three pies (as well as a raft of other deliciousness), so I’d say we had a completely complete party!
One funny thing – I bought the wrong kind of chargers for my whippet machine (whipped cream charger). I bought the chargers for seltzer, rather than whipped cream. They worked, but the whipped cream was actually carbonated. My guests (Dave’s mom and daughter) were very kind about it.
“No, it’s okay!” they said, “it’s really fine.” Even though it had a really weird mouth feel, like pineapple that’s been in the frig a couple weeks too long and you eat a bite by mistake. Native midwesterners would – out of sheer inbred politeness – eat drywall if you served it to them, and tell you it’s delicious. And ask for the recipe.
But I threw it out and we had hand-whipped cream for dessert leftovers for the rest of the weekend. Back to Williams-Sonoma with me! I’ll trade the seltzer chargers for whipped cream ones.
I had a fun holiday, but not overly fun. I spent about 20 hours cooking and cleaning. Not so awesome. Maybe we’ll have Stouffer’s Lasagna for Christmas dinner.
Today, Monday, I climbed out a funk I have felt coming on for a while.
I called my vendors and billed my clients. I cleaned bathrooms and walked dogs and ate healthy food. I made chicken soup because David is coming down with a cold. I did thumbnails. I corrected mistakes that have been bugging me.
The past month has been crazy. Having my work life shunted from room to room while carpenters knock holes in the walls has sucked. I had a flu thing for a month. I had tough professional issues to work through.
By the end of last week, I could feel my anxiety mounting, mounting, mounting and I was starting to have trouble sleeping.
But then! I met with a couple of friends for a healthy living discussion on Saturday morning. I decided to do better with eating and exercise. On Sunday, I met with a dear designer friend for coffee and she patted my hand — literally! — while I keened about my professional woes. She told me that my woes, too, would pass. She’s right. I’ll survive and prevail.
So today I did a bunch of grown-up things and climbed significantly out of my funk. But the climb was made possible by gentle pushes from good friends.
The above is a sneak preview of a quilt I’m making. More about it in a few days.
tags:projects
