Sometimes I wish the sharpening would occur a bit more quickly for me. I could use some magical things coming into my life. 🙂
Has anyone out there experienced any magical moments lately?
Gratitude
Un-decorating…And Fresh Starts
Yesterday was one of my least favorite days of the year for one reason: On January 1st, I un-decorate from the holidays.
It’s good to clear out after the holidays, but in my house, it’s a huge job that, like all things having to do with household décor, I get to do 99% by myself.
It’s my own fault. I love to create a homey, warm atmosphere, especially at the holidays, and I have a plethora of items with which to do that (remember my post about the bathroom tree? LOL. Yeah, as one of my friends mentioned, I might need a decorating intervention). 🙂
But the result is that on un-decorating day, my dining room (where I gather all the stuff to put it away into specified containers, boxes, bags etc and haul them back down to the basement) looks for a while like a holiday yard sale. 
As you can see from these two pics.
It’s an all-day process to remove everything from the rooms where I’ve decorated (which is basically the downstairs…I don’t do the upstairs), not to mention un-decorating the big tree (which is real and therefore I need to vacuum once I’ve gotten it out of the house).
At the end I have a strangely empty-looking house. 
My dining room looks kind of sterile and 
my mantel looks bare.
Overall, I’m glad when it’s done. It IS a fresh start, and it’s nice to have everything de-cluttered. Now if only I can keep it that way!
This will be a new year for me in that, as of February 3, 2015, I will have published a book for the very first time entirely through my own choices and arrangements of hiring independent contractors, rather than working with my traditional publisher (HarperCollins) or my former independent publisher (Cool Gus Publishing). 
Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven marks a new phase in my life. After a long time away from the book scene, I hope to provide some enjoyment, provoke thought, and entertain anyone who decides to give the novel a try. Anyone here who wants to know more about the book in general can click the highlighted title above. To read an excerpt you can click on cover to the left, here.
So, Happy New Year to all of you. May this year hold many good things, times spent with people you enjoy, health, and success. Onward and upward, 2015! 🙂
Winter Morning Memories
This is a picture of a sight I saw most late winter mornings at the Homestead when I was growing up: the sun rising through the woods out back behind the red shed, casting a pink glow over everything.
We lived on what was called a “rural route” and so the school bus had to come and get us an hour before school actually started, in order to get all the kids necessary and get us all to school in time. So I was usually sitting at the kitchen table at around 6:30am, looking out the windows – which overlooked this back yard – and eating the breakfast Ma insisted I have to “get a good start on the day” before the bus came just before 7:00am.
My mother used to even sing the song of the old-time commercial posted below, to get us to eat our Cream of Wheat with a side of buttered toast and some milk or orange juice. It was from an old radio commercial she heard as a girl in the 1930’s, and it stuck with her; she could always make us smile and eat up when she danced around the kitchen singing it. When the mood strikes, she’ll still sing it for me now, with a twinkle in her eyes, and usually with both of us dissolving into giggles before she’s done. My kids think it’s hysterical. 🙂
It was a peaceful and happy time. I learned some of my love of colors, textures, and the gorgeous trappings of nature as well by watching the changes in the vista I saw each morning in the back yard. Everything was snug, safe, and warm inside the house, the beautiful world outside was just waking up, and it was time to start a new day.
I still enjoy sunrises, though the view around me is sadly far more suburban than country anymore. The sky looks the same, though, wherever I am. ❤
How about you – are you a sunrise kind of person?
A Peaceful Scene
This illustration makes me happy, so I thought I’d share it with you.
I think it’s beautiful on so many levels: the natural setting, the red barn, the deer, the stream, the tree with a few ruddy leaves clinging to its branches, and the cozy home with fireplace smoke spiraling up, and the windows lit so warmly from within.
But I think my favorite part of this is the way the light from the windows and the setting sun spills out onto the trail of footprints through the snow, gilding the whole area with a rosy glow.
It’s peaceful and lovely…and somewhere I wish I could be right about now! So I will visit there in my imagination. ❤
Seasonal Images From My Home To Yours
The tree and decorated mantel in my living room. My chair is the one closest to the shelves; my husband’s is nearest to the camera
Now that my grades are in for the five weeks (even though I just got in another eight inch stack to grade over the holidays) I have a little time to breathe and enjoy the sights and sounds of the season. I thought I’d share a few images from around my house, since I’m a home body and I love to decorate for whatever occasion I can. 🙂
A little glass of eggnog with nutmeg gets things going.
This “mistletoe crystal” was a gift from a friend last year. I think it looks really pretty hanging from the chandelier in our dining room.
For me, Christmas-time wouldn’t be complete without some old-fashioned, “clove” oranges. The tradition of using cloves stems back further than medieval times, but the use of clove-studded oranges for scent and sight became very popular in the Victorian era. I made these last weekend (it doesn’t take long) and used the old iridescent fruit bowl my parents bought for me at an old antique/second-hand shop a couple of decades ago, perched on the silver case my sister-in-law bought for my husband and me when we got married 24+ years ago.
A close-up of the some of the lights and decorations on the mantel. I think this looks a little like a Christmas card design, don’t you?
And a shot of our sweet English shepherd, Cassie, snoozing under the Christmas tree. So cozy!
I hope you’re getting some opportunities, whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Christmas, Kwanza, or nothing at all, to enjoy the different pace of the season.
A Bittersweet Gift: The Dickens’ Village
A photo of my mother-in-law and her late husband is perched right above the village she created
The village all lit up
Last year I inherited my mother-in-law’s rather extensive “Dickens’ Village”. She built it over several decades, and some pieces need repair (like the gorgeous church, which isn’t pictured here because the steeple is broken). But it’s a beautiful collection, and my girls, when they were little, always used to love to go to grandma’s to look at it all lit up during the holidays.
It’s a little bittersweet now, to have it in our home. Her home was sold about a year ago because she suffers from Alzheimer’s. She lived with us for a summer and spent time with each of my husband’s siblings, but as she got worse, we had no choice for her own safety and well being but to move her to a constant care facility about 30 minutes from us. As of now, her disease has progressed to the point that although she usually recognizes that she knows us, when we visit, she doesn’t always know why or how, or who we are.
The village is one of the tangible reminders of what once was in our little family and can never be again.
So we will keep the village safe and put it out with love each year, in memory of all the happy times we spent together. Someday, I will pass it down to my girls, and they can keep the memories – and the remembered love – of their Grandma McCall alive and well.
Winter Wonderland II
This is the same tree I posted last night, in the early daylight this morning. It’s all sort of artistically monochrome outside at the moment.
It kept snowing and snowing last night (we finally got the 8 or so inches the weather people had claimed we’d be getting beginning on Tuesday, when all we had was rain and a little icing).
I love trees in general, and I love seeing them in all their phases, including dressed in lovely robes of snow. The dark branches and trunks make such a pretty contrast with the white of the snow, before the wind blows it all bare again.
Hope everyone has a great Thursday!
Winter Wonderland
This is the view outside my kitchen window tonight.
I love winter snow; it’s so fresh and sparkling. I love to feel the flakes melt against my cheeks when I take our English Shepherd, Cassie, outside for a little walk around the house.
It definitely puts me in a December mood.
Sleigh bells ring….are you listening? 🙂
Vintage Christmas
It’s true that I enjoy vintage Halloween and Thanksgiving pictures…but I adore vintage Christmas images. Here are a couple for you to enjoy as a start (you know there will be more in coming days, LOL!)…
This one is a favorite for the atmosphere it evokes. It’s peaceful and warm, all at the same time. It reminds me of the Night Before Christmas book my father used to read to us…and it also kind of reminds me of this scene from Anne of Avonlea (another favorite film made from a book, this version featuring the irrepressible Megan Follows as Anne Shirley. You can see her performing now on the CW’s series
REIGN, where she plays Queen Catherine de’ Medici, pictured here on the left, just behind Adelaide Kane, who plays Mary Queen of Scots, and Toby Regbo, who plays King Francis). 
I always loved this second entry into the “Anne” trilogy, because she became a teacher in this film and experienced the freedoms of life on her own for the first time. I had my own VHS copy of the trilogy, and when I was a first year teacher (newly-armed with my undergraduate degrees in English and Russian, and a mere 22 years old), living away from home and not in college for the first time in my life, I would watch this video again and again, snuggled into my little studio apartment above the diner in Hancock, NY, where I had my first teaching position. Cozy and wonderful – the perfect situation at a perfect time in my life.
There are many more reasons why Christmas-time – the whole month of December, really – holds such a special place in my heart, as it does for so many others. But those will be subjects of other posts. Here is another lovely image for now, and I’ll save some of the other stories and pictures (and another sneak peek from Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven) for later!
We’re Not “Normal”
I don’t know why, but this little wall hanging has always tickled my funny bone. One of my older sisters (I have six of them, for those of you who haven’t been around here long enough to have seen other posts on it) purchased it for me up north around 10 years ago, during one of the years when several sisters, our families, and my parents would rent a great camp for a week up on Fourth Lake in the Adirondack chain of lakes.
We continued to show how “normal” we were as adults when we all were home for one of the reunions we used to have periodically, since several of us are spread around the country; Pa and Ma asked us all to participate in a commemorative family photo session, we shocked the photographer when Pa suggested we do one shot where we were all making crazy, funny faces. So there we all were, in dresses, stockings, and heels, with Pa in a suit and tie, sticking out tongues and making crazy expressions (except for the sisters who were laughing so hard they couldn’t do it). It’s one of my favorite pictures, and if I can scan a copy of it (and get permission from my other sisters to post it publicly, LOL) I’ll share it at some point. 🙂
So I guess that’s part of the reason why the little wooden plaque above just seems to capture the quirkiness and fun of life growing up as part of a pile of rambunctious kids. Being all females only added to the “color” of our lives (and having only one bathroom with the whole house on a well that would run dry periodically made things even more interesting. My father tried to institute really short “Marine”-style showers, but that didn’t fly).
I can still remember “counting off” when we got into the van (to be sure we weren’t leaving anyone behind). And I remember in the early 1970’s, watching my older sisters (I was second-to-youngest) in the back room, putting “dippety-do” on their hair and putting in big rollers.
The squabbling about who got the bathroom when was kept hushed and to a minimum, thanks to no one wanting to raise Pa’s wrath and have him institute a “schedule”. He did when necessary, but usually he tried to let us work it out, to learn how to work together. That was sometimes accomplished with talking, but other times it happened with a few well-placed pinches, body-blocks, pointed glares or raised eyebrows, LOL.
There was also an epic water fight, once, that happened when a group of us (all teenagers at the time) were supposed to be cleaning the kitchen but got into some kind of verbal conflict that escalated into physical battle with full-blown spraying of the water nozzle and thrown buckets of water. That particular incident is so amusing for me to remember that I memorialized it in the fiction of Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven. 🙂
I could write a book with all the hundreds of crazy, fun memories of those times to inspire me (oh, wait, I did, LOL). Maybe I’ll post that scene as the next “sneak peek” from the book.
So how about you – are you from a prim and proper family, or a bit of a rough and tumble one? Any fond memories from family lore? I love hearing them, so please share in the comments!
M. Reed McCall, Author 