Seasons

Winter Wonderland II

Leave a comment

imageThis 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

6 Comments

image

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? 🙂

Snow Day

Leave a comment

110873281

 

There’s a big Nor’easter sweeping up the coast. We’re forecast to get up to 14 inches of snow by tomorrow night.

3093efb9ef16c682c5aeceb5d269a4caAs a winter baby (February birthday), I’ve always loved snow. I have no problem being up north all year long.

As a teacher and a mom, I especially love snow days. Like today.

xmas-lights-ge-lights-swscan01680-copyI might actually get caught up with some of the extra work of the season (like trimming the tree that has been cut and put up in the living room for two days now without anything on it).

I might get to tackle the 8 loads of laundry or the 10 inch stack of papers.

My list is far longer than I can accomplish in one day (especially with everyone home and needing to eat…and I’m the chief cook and bottle washer), but it’s a gift nonetheless. Hope you’re all enjoying your day, wherever you are.

Do you have snow days (or a hot weather equivalent) in your neck of the woods?

Vintage Christmas

2 Comments

Vintage-Christmas-card-christmas-33061199-500-363It’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!)…

Vintage-Christmas-christmas-32887773-1200-881This 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). 1212-final-580x385

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!Vintage-Christmas-christmas-32837432-1024-768

Getting Ready For Thanksgiving

5 Comments
image

A practice run, with a Thanksgiving-style lunch

Some of you who have been here a while have probably figured out that I like to get into the various seasons. This often includes decorating.

Since Thanksgiving (and autumn in general) is my favorite holiday, I tend to do almost as much in-house decorating as I do for Christmas (I’m sure some posts about that will be forthcoming in the next month). 🙂

The picture above is from a week and a half ago, when my sister -in-law and her friend, my older daughter and her fiancé, and myself and my husband had lunch before my younger daughter’s performance as Ursula in The Little Mermaid at our local community theater.

Because I won’t see my sister-in-law on the actual holiday, and she was feeling down, as this will be her first year without her husband, who passed away unexpectedly in May, I decided to throw an impromptu “Thanksgiving luncheon” and do a little decorating. A kind of “special occasion” meal.

imageA couple years ago, I purchased these plates (because they were on sale, and I was finally getting a chance to host thanksgiving dinner for the first time, after years of traveling to either my parent’s home or my in-law’s home for the celebration).

 

 

The way I will always remember Pa 2 and family dinnersIn fact, this picture is of the last Thanksgiving I celebrated at the homestead, with my father at the head of the table. It was the year before he died, and this happy scene is one of the ways I will always fondly remember him. This is pretty much what our table looked like most nights, in terms of people around it, when I was growing up, and my father was always the warm, steady, strong center of our large and lively family of girls (with a few males thrown in, eventually, as we brought home beaus or married). Another picture similar to this one is featured in Moose Tracks on the Road to Heaven (which has  around 20 photos that are related to and sometimes inspired the novel’s scenes sprinkled throughout), so if any of you end up getting a copy of the book when it comes out, you can see if you find it. 🙂

Anyway, back to the reason for this post. Is there anyone else out there who just enjoys putting on a fancy meal once in a while – not where the food is necessarily fancy, but where you like to set a pretty table, or have things just look extra nice?

I’m hoping that maybe there are a few of you out in blog-land who have opinions about this one way or the other. So please share in the comments.

I’ll be sharing about something else that many find a little weird, in regards to how I prepare my turkey, in a future post, so stay-tuned! 🙂

Gobble, Gobble!

Leave a comment
snow-and-bluster-turkeys-art-by-persis-clayton-weirs-1925798120

painting called “Snow and Bluster Turkeys” by Persis Clayton Weirs

tdaytable_satevepost_normanrockwell

Thanksgiving by Norman Rockwell

I love turkeys…I like seeing them on my drive to work, where they will often be in a field, like pictured above, gathered in a flock and pecking for leftover grains in the farmer’s harvested fields.

They’re taking the spotlight in today’s blog post, since  we’re fast coming up on the quintessentially American holiday of Thanksgiving. It’s a time of family gatherings, reminiscing, stories, laughter, and, of course, eating. 🙂 Turkeys are often at the center of that part of the celebration for most.

 

image

“turkey” flower arrangement

Last weekend, my sister-in-law drove the two hour distance between our houses to go to one of the community theater performances of the “Little Mermaid” musical my daughter has a lead role in, as Ursula, The Sea Witch. Because we’re getting near to Thanksgiving, she brought with her a little gift for our mantel – a floral arrangement that looks to me (and looked to her when she purchased it) like a cross between an adorable, plump hedge hog and a turkey. It’s really cute…a little turkey whose body is make from a fat, round flower, with added fluffy  “pipe-cleaners for the tail and beak, a fuzzy foam ball for the head, and glued on “eyes”.

Clever, don’t you think?

 

The Snowman: The Only Constant is Change

Leave a comment

imageAs I mentioned in my last post, it’s begun to snow in Upstate New York. It’s very pretty in many ways, if a little early and a little cold, and some of the scenes I encounter in my travels recall a few bittersweet memories for me.

But first, let me say that I know the snow isn’t technically early for this area (I’ve lived within 150 miles of my hometown for most of my life), but I prefer if it holds off until after December 1, when I can more suitably get into the holiday spirit (of course I wouldn’t mind if it drifted away by February and spring would arrive, but that doesn’t usually happen until April or May)

Anyway, as I was driving into work after this first, several-inch snow,  it called to mind images from one of my favorite holiday books/movies, The Snowman by Raymond Briggs.v2-CD7662962Peacock%20Theatre%20Sa

This story – which I associate primarily with the film version, because of my at-the-time very young daughters’ insistence that we purchase it on VHS and play it several times each holiday season – makes me feel bittersweet (as I think it was intended to do for readers/viewers anyway).

For me, now, however, the bittersweet feelings the film and music (a lovely score with “Walking in the Air” by Peter Auty) engender in me are compounded by the fact that my daughters are no longer little girls. That time has passed and exists only in my memories now. Awareness of this creates a little catch in my throat sometimes…a sense of nostalgia and longing that burns for a second or can even make me tear up a bit.

imageThat’s what happened as I saw these scenes of snow-covered farm land and fields. It made me long for the days when my daughters were little and reveled in the simple, innocent pleasures of snuggling up on the couch with me, holding warm cups of cocoa as we watched The Snowman together.image

It is the way of the world, I suppose: The only constant in life is change.

Here’s the full video of the film version of The Snowman for those of you who haven’t seen it before (or just want to watch it again). It’s definitely Christmas-oriented, so if you’re like me, and try to hold off until December to indulge in such festive material, then feel free to bookmark and come back to watch later! Or just do a search on YouTube and you can find it there. 😉

 

 

Some “Cozy” Images of a Favorite Holiday

Leave a comment

Vintage-Thanksgiving-Dinner-CardI think I’ve already said I love Thanksgiving as a holiday best of all. Now, the “fictions” that have built, perhaps, over the way it began are a little different, and I’m not going to get into that in this post. I’m talking for now about what the American Thanksgiving holiday has come to be and represent.

It focuses on one of my favorite qualities (Gratitude!) that I’ve been trying to make a more concerted effort to recognize and pay attention to in this life that (as is also true for many of you, I’m sure) has become very busy, work-packed, and sometimes complex in challenging ways.

It’s a day set aside to spend with people you love, eating delicious food, without expectation of giving or getting material presents. There are plenty of intangible gifts given, however, in memories, shared humor, love, and friendship, and to me, those are the best kind. 🙂

thankgiving 1 thanksgivingHere are a couple more images I like for their “coziness” factor. I’ll be a posting a few more in the coming week or two, but for now, since my busy life dictates I have to run to the auto dealer and get some service done on my vehicle, I have to dash and dream of a couple weeks from now and the happy day of Thanksgiving.

If you are from a different area of the world, do you have any holidays that are similar to America’s Thanksgiving holiday? I’d love to hear about it in the comments, if you do!

Autumn Decorating

2 Comments
image

My mantel, decorated for autumn…the candles – and angel candleholders – work for Christmas, too, so I get a lot of mileage out of them 🙂

I used to only go all out decorating inside the house for Christmas.

But more recently, I’ve brought my love of Autumn indoors and a few years ago, purchased some leaf garlands, wreaths, and candle tapers in appropriate hues. Sometimes I get them out before Halloween, and other times, like this year, they don’t make it onto mantels and walls until the beginning of November.

I can’t help wondering how many others like to decorate for autumn in their homes. There must be some, otherwise, the stores wouldn’t carry the items I’ve found. But I only know one other person, personally, who does this kind of thing. I hope I’m not too weird (but I’m afraid it’s pretty likely that I am…and for more reasons than just my decorating proclivities!). 🙂

pumpkinsI’ve gone to the store to buy ceramic, composite, and otherwise formed and decorated “harvest” pumpkins (the darker orange one of these, from Big Lots, is on my dining room table on an autumn table-runner as a centerpiece at the moment)…

 

harvestAbout five years ago, I even picked up some “Pilgrim” figurines at the grocery store that are similar to these. These are a little more ornate, but they’re made of similar composite (not plastic but not ceramic either) material that makes them not too easily breakable (important when you have cats that chase each other and sometimes knock things over).

So now my house is all decked out for Thanksgiving, which I guess is a good thing, since I’m cooking again this year, and there will be at least six – and maybe ten – at the table. It’s my favorite holiday, though, so I can’t wait.

How about you – other than the traditional Christmas/Hanukkah times, do you like to bring any of the seasons indoors?

Colors

Leave a comment

 

 

image

View from my side yard November 2014

“Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.”
― Pablo Picasso

“Mere color, unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways. ”
― Oscar Wilde

“Color directly influences the soul. Color is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul.”
― Wassily Kandinksi

I am in love with colors and have been since I could remember. If I had the skill to paint, I would (I tried…but as Picasso said, one can never really “learn” how. It wasn’t something I could do.) And yet, “colors” come in all forms, which is why I’ve included quotes by a painter, a writer, and another painter who likens the work to music.

My joy comes from “painting with words”.

What do colors – in nature, your home, your clothing, your world – mean to you?