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?
happiness
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! 🙂
Christmas at the Homestead…and A Stollen Recipe
Well, I suppose the stollen could be served anytime. But we always had it on Christmas.
It’s a little fussy to make and takes a few hours, between rising, baking and frosting, but the results are worth it and SO good with coffee. The pic above is of a later years Christmas morning at the Homestead…the entire living room used to be filled like this when all of us kids lived at home. My poor mother would be wrapping until 2:00am most Christmases. 🙂
Here’s the stollen recipe; it’s from a 1965 edition of Family Circle Magazine, and my mother has been making this every year for my entire life. Once I got married and started my own family, I began making it as well – though mine never turn out as nice as Ma’s do!
STOLLEN
BREADS — Yeast
Bake at 350° for 35 minutes…makes 2 large loaves
1 cup seedless raisins
1 cup (8-ounce jar) mixed chopped candied fruits
1/4 cup orange juice
3/4 cup milk
1/2 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter or margarine
2 envelopes active dry yeast
OR: 2 cakes compressed yeast
1/4 cup very warm water
2 eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
5 cups sifted regular flour
1 cup chopped blanched almonds (I use finely chopped walnuts instead)
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
2 tablespoons cinnamon-sugar (I use a lot more)
Combine raisins, candied fruits, and orange juice in a small bowl.
Scald milk with sugar, salt, and 1/2 cup (1 stick) of the butter or margarine; cool to lukewarm.
Sprinkle or crumble yeast into very warm water in a large bowl. (“Very warm” water should feel comfortably warm when dropped on wrist.) Stir until yeast dissolves, then stir in cooled milk mixture, eggs, and lemon rind.
Beat in 2 cups of the flour until smooth; stir in fruit mixture, almonds, and nutmeg, then beat in just enough of remaining 3 cups flour to make a stiff dough.
Knead until smooth and elastic on a lightly floured pastry cloth or board, adding only enough flour to keep dough from sticking (this is the part that’s always tough for me…figuring out how much to knead it, because there are ingredients in the dough that prevent it from being “smooth” and so difficult to tell if it’s “elastic” yet. If the dough springs back a little when you poke it, then it’s good). 🙂
Place in a greased large bowl; cover with a clean towel.
Let rise in a warm place, away from draft, 2 hours, or until double in bulk. I use my oven’s “proofing” setting, because it keeps it draft-free and just warm enough.
It should look like this on the left when ready for the next step.
Punch dough down; knead a few times; divide in half. 
Roll each into an oval, 15×9; place on a greased large cookie sheet. Melt remaining 1/2 cup (1 stick) butter or margarine in a small saucepan; brush part over each oval; sprinkle with cinnamon-sugar; 
fold in half lengthwise.
Cover; let rise again 1 hour, or until double in bulk. Brush again with part of the remaining melted butter or margarine.
Bake in moderate oven (350°) 35 minutes, or until golden and loaves give a hollow sound when tapped. While hot, brush with remaining melted butter or margarine; cool on wire racks.
When cool, frost and decorate. 
I use a basic white icing (butter, confectioner’s sugar, a little vanilla and a couple tablespoons of milk), decorated with cut red and green cherries.
It’s really great with coffee…and with just the white frosting, you could serve it anytime!
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.
The Reason I Write
This is what I repeat to myself with all of my fiction.
I don’t have any kind of agenda to “enlighten” anyone about anything (heaven forbid…no, I’m trying to entertain, provoke some thought, and perhaps provide some sense of connection or, on occasion, comfort).
My fiction is not for everyone (and I don’t expect it to be). But I do hope it will find those who need it, who want it, who might enjoy it, or who will gain something from it.
With Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven, I’m hoping to cross a bridge that couldn’t be crossed when I was writing medieval romances, because of the tight niche of that historical genre; let’s just say medieval readers are not a thronging horde (though I continue to appreciate every one of mine). 🙂
I hope to reach a broader audience with this more mainstream tale about real, poignant, humorous, and sometimes bittersweet life – my story about confronting loss and living through it, and about coming out stronger and with more understanding and peace on the other side of it.
Since it’s dressed up with some pretty funny material from real life, from having grown up as one of seven sisters living in a little house in the foothills of the Adirondacks in the ’60s, ’70s, and ’80s, I hope it will provide some chuckles and entertain as well.
But it will only reach those ‘with eyes to see and ears to hear’, and I know that, like I’ve known with all my other books.
If that happens to be many people, that will be wonderful, but it’s not the reason I write.
Bestseller lists are great, and I’d love to be on some with this book, once it’s published on February 3rd – but only because that will mean the tale encased in those covers “spoke” to enough people and was meaningful, entertaining, and memorable enough to get me there.
For me, it’s about the meaning in a story…the sharing, reaching out to connect with other people, their challenges, tragedies, hopes, and dreams in a way that resonates and has meaning to them.
That’s the reason I write.
The Juggling Act
This is how many of us feel on a regular basis (or maybe it’s just me, but I’m going to phrase it like that because it makes me feel better to pull you all into my circus, LOL).
Throw in some of this (because the holiday preparations are in full swing, with decorating, shopping, baking, cooking, and most important of all, spending time with each other, which is the foundation of good memories):
And this (because my five weeks grades are due Tuesday)…
And this (because final issues for the book always crop up and require attention, from setting up accounts to creating TOC lists, to creating cover letters and mailing out review copies and trying to build some promotional efforts)…
And I have brewing a perfect storm of craziness that quickly escalates stress to red-line levels. Like on a daily basis. Tempers can flare and cause reactions that definitely don’t add to the serenity of life. 🙂
As a mom (even though my girls are teens they still have a gazillion activities, sports, and social issues to navigate), it’s easy to start to feel like this:
What to do?
I don’t have any silver bullet, I’m afraid. All I can offer is an idea that occasionally helps me to slow down so I can process what’s happening. It helps me to deflate some of the intensity of stress when it begins to overwhelm: Just live in the moment.
Attitude affects everything, whether its the day-to-day grind or the challenges of facing illness and pain (when my father was undergoing chemo and treatment during his final illness, he reiterated that to me many times, and one of the moments he was most proud was when his doctor’s office staff pooled to together and gave him a little pin that said “Great attitude award”, because he had one of the best they’d ever worked with).
While we can manage some things (like schedules or what we add to them by saying “yes” to too many things), there is much we can’t control. Much that just has to get done and needs that have to be met.
They will be. It will all work out. Just consider what this poster says. It helps. It really does. 🙂
Anyone else have tips for getting through stressful times?
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? 🙂
M. Reed McCall, Author 