In These Hills: January 2011

January

>> Monday, January 31, 2011 – winter

I'm not quite sure what happened to January....this lovely month brought.....

Baking with the snowy village cake pan....

Getting the New Year's cards in the mail....

Snowy days....

Chinese Brush Painting...

Refuge in the greenhouses....

I hope February brings more of the same (without all the midterm stress!)

The Final Gift

>> Wednesday, January 5, 2011 – Christmas

We said farewell to Christmas today. In the morning, Liz and I took down the tree, washed the linens, and swept up the needles. I made gift tags out of the Christmas cards, re-reading notes and thinking about old friends. After getting home from school, Helen made a Three Kings Cake while I wrapped the final gift in gold tissue paper bound by stars. Here is Liz opening it. Both girls were very curious.

Inside was a selection of silver and gold origami paper, silver and gold glitter pens, and a bag of fun scrap paper from the local art store.

There were instructions as well.... first we were to make origami boxes shaped like stars...

Then we were to fill the boxes with little stars on which we wrote suggestions for fun things to do. These had to be things that slowed us down, de-stressed us, and made us happy. The girls immediately got to work filling their boxes with ideas such as "take a bubble bath", read a poetry book, take a walk in the woods, make a pot of tea and read a book, make a collage, spend the afternoon altering books, paint for an hour, make tea and "meet" a new composer, etc.

We then had dinner--a warm stew, star biscuits, and the Three Kings Cake decorated with pears cut in the shape of stars. Here's our cake with a candle in the middle and the star boxes around the edge. The girls were really proud of their boxes.

My hope for these little stars is that they will guide us and remind in the coming weeks as we get caught up in school, work, rehearsals, midterms, and all the other bits of life that seem to be sweeping us away that we should stop, feed our inner-selves, and just be. This final gift was really a gift we each gave to ourselves.

Happy Twelfth Night.

Keeping Christmas

>> Tuesday, January 4, 2011 – Christmas

I love these final quiet days of Christmas. The time between New Years and Twelfth Night is when I really dig into holy night thoughts and consciously try to "keep Christmas" for my family. After all the celebrations, all the visiting and all the presents, these days can be the most special of all if we can let the moments in.

While the rest of us wrote thank you notes and puttered about, Helen had school yesterday. This was new for our family. Last night we listened to a quiet Christmas CD and had turkey soup in the living room in front of the fire, by the Christmas Tree. We lit some candles and just enjoyed one of the final nights. Liz is home through Twelfth Night, so she and I will spend time saying Farewell to Christmas today and tomorrow.