homemade

Valentine's Day is looking quite homemade around here.  Just how I like it best.

Little hands have been busy decorating mailboxes for school parties, making Valentines for classmates, creating some heart-y decorations.

Sweet treats were counted and bagged.  (Pal even helped, but alas can't count, so he stuffed the bags to overflowing.  Which was fine since it kept his always busy hands occupied.)  A flurry of note-cards and stickers and Sharpie markers.  It seemingly isn't much - kids making Valentine cards - but feels so big to me.  Simply some folded note-cards with treat bags, small hands mastering the stapler.  Yet the creating, by hand, is so good.  A significance they don't realize now, but may one day.

Then there is heart doilies and red yarn and a young girl desperate to decorate for Valentine's Day.  Perfectly simple, and she is quite smitten.  So am I.

I hung kid-painted hearts on my front door.  (Then realized I better take down the pine wreath next to it.  Ahem.)  I figure before Friday I will whip up a card for Honey.  Homemade of course.  Luckily how he likes it best too.

this moment {on Christmas Eve}

Joining Soulemama, and many others, in this moment. 

In Amanda's words: "A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember."

Please link to your moment too -- I love to see what you are enjoying this week!

Wishing you a weekend full of goodness!

little by little

Something I didn't think about when buying a new house was where I could hide Christmas presents.  It never crossed my mind.  Even if it had, it likely wouldn't have been a consideration in buying this house.  But it seems important now.  Mostly because I don't have a good hiding spot for Christmas presents.  Our old house had a basement with perfect nooks and crannies, an attic that the kids didn't venture into.  My gift-hiding was almost an art, down to the tubs I sorted and stored them in once wrapped, for easy and quiet (oh so important with growing littles!) transfer to the stockings and tree on Christmas Eve night.

But this new house?  No nooks or crannies.  No tubs.  No gift-hiding art.

So I'm trying to scheme a new way.  Just one of many things I didn't think of.  Until now.  Where should we place the Christmas tree?  Did we toss the wreath when we moved?  Where oh where did I pack the Santa bags?  Can we unpack all of the boxes stacked in front of the fireplace in time for Santa to make his entrance?

So much new.  I've come to realize that this move -- that began in earnest in February -- really is not yet done.  That each season, each holiday, each transition brings a re-imagining of what to do, how to do it, with whom to do it.  Where to hid the darn presents.  No wonder I'm tired.

But little by little I am unpacking how this season, how this holiday, will be.  At least for this year.  I am letting the new of our lives make it okay for it be new, and different, not holding it up to what came before, but instead making it the holiday for now.

Each day, little by little, a bit more decorates our space.  The familiar Christmas books, Santa bags on bedroom doorknobs, and small tree, brought out for St. Nicholas Day, to light the hallway. 

The new too.  A snowflake tree in the kitchen -- a tree in the kitchen, well I never!  A vintage embroidered table runner for a tree skirt in the sun-room.  And, easily my favorite, winter prints by the amazing Phoeble Wahl in a spot I get to see and enjoy them dozens of times a day.

And enjoy them I will. 

As I will all of the new, and the comfortable familiar, in this season.

this moment

Joining Soulemama, and many others, in this moment. 

In Amanda's words: "A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember."

Please link to your moment too -- I love to see what you are enjoying this week!

Wishing you a weekend full of goodness!

ushering

Each year we usher in the New Year quietly.  We like it that way.

Right now, snow is falling.  The big kids are outside building a fort, warm in their boots.

The rich delicious smell of a roast fills the house.

A dear friend, basically the seventh member of our family, has come by with her knitting.

Lovey is snuggled up, watching Charlie Brown Christmas.

Pal is asleep in his car seat.

Quiet.  Good.

I am thinking about all that has been 2012.  All of the growth, change, discovery.  Pal joining the fun.

We have a movie planned for later, letting the kids stay up past their bedtime.  Buttery popcorn and once-yearly French onion dip.

New Year's kisses, and a good night's sleep.

Yes, quiet, and quite quite good.

Wishing you all a peaceful end of 2012 and beginning of 2013.

weekending {sponsored by the letter s}

The 12 Days of Christmas linger here with Snow accumulating more each day.  I love snow.  This year I love it even more as we regularly venture out into its cold loveliness.

It is hard to distinguish the weekend from the week, as the days have all held much Sledding, Snuggling, Sweets.  Spirited rounds of Wig Out and Batik and a healthy dose of thrown Snowballs.  I've even squeezed in a couple Sofa dates to watch movies and episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm  with Honey, albiet with one (or two!) sleeping babes on our laps.

Coming up still this weekend is Sharing a meal with good friends and planning Special activities to mark the beginning of the New Year.  And I've started thinking about which word to Select for 2013.

So, what about you?

this {holiday} moment

This last week has held the best kinds of holidaying.  Moments of joy, happiness, celebration.  Moments of stillness, sweetness, tenderness.  Moments held close to my heart, them all.

Thankfully the moments of tiredness and grumpy stirrings have been few.  And this funny, loud family of six has spent time together, and with extended family, in ordinary and extraordinary ways, making our Christmas week magical.  All with a good dash of snow that has quieted our neighborhood and drawn us outside for hours on end.

I want to share with you, my blogging friends, the same well-wishes we mailed out to family and friends.  Because, dear readers, I certainly count you among my friends!

Thinking of you this Christmas.

Honey and Claudine

Buddy, Munchkin, Lovey and Pal

welcome winter

Mother Nature must have received the message, and agreed.  A first snow on the first day of winter would be delightful.

So we are easing into our winter solstice with snow on the ground and fluffy flakes joining all the while.  This makes perfect the presents we have for the kiddos to open later.  (Shhhh: warm boots!)

This will be our second year celebrating Solstice.  We stayed in last year, but have special plans for those boots tonight.  We will be taking a night hike at a favorite spot.  It feels right to me that we should do that this year, one marked by an exponentially growing desire for being outside. 

It also feels right to embrace solstice as a marker for the final days of preparation before Christmas.  The kind of preparations that feel more like celebrating in and of themselves because we are home and together.  Making the Peppermint Bark that makes many a blog post this time of year.  Cookie baking.  Christmas book reading.  Sending Christmas greetings. Family Movie Night. 

Oh, and breaking in those new boots.

Thank you Mother Nature, thank you.

a bit of wonky

Our tree  has some peculiarities this year.  At first glance, anyone could see.

Ornaments piled on the top branches. 

Unadorned bottom branches, on account of Pal. 

Lights askew on the bottom branches.  Pal again.

But a much closer look gets a bit more interesting.

If you look closely you will see lots of extra ornaments.  Little wooden blocks, toy cars, baby toys, Duplos.  Socks.  This, this is all Lovey.  For many days following our putting up of the Christmas tree she hovered near, rearranging ornaments and adding items she thought fitting.

This is not the first time the tree has held some fascination.  The year he was 3, Munchkin repeatedly threw his shoes at the tree.  Twelve ornaments met their demise that Christmas.

In the spirit of celebrating wonky, I've not let Lovey know that the traditional saying is "Merry Christmas," not "Very Christmas."  I am enjoying too much her playing Santa, and saying wholeheartedly, in her deepest voice no less, "Ho, Ho, Ho, Veeeery Christmas!!" 

And maybe that is more fitting, really.  Christmas, in all of its beautiful complexities, is much more than simply Merry.  Its peaceful intentions, shows of love, food, family, traditions, gifts gifted, expectations, goodness, memories.  In its fullest emotional and physical landscape, Christmas is so much, much more.   Very I would say.  

So Very Christmas, dear friends.