Wowza—what is happening to the poor wee blog? Apologies for not writing much lately. I’ve been up to my knees in strips of wrapping paper and glittery ornaments. Tis the season for jollity, and baby it’s on here. Not only has our tree been cozying the house with its sharp scent (I love coming in our front door and getting that first whiff), but it’s another holiday today (as in, this weekend since I didn't post this right away). Today is my favorite day of the year. Today is the day I relish m…
I have been feeling full---our home is full of good things. We have greenery and twinkling pieces of the rainbow lighting it. We sit next to our lit tree at night and talk about our days. We hold cups of warm cider in one hand and hold hands with the other, and we feel so blessed we might burst. But the thing is that November was a hard month, and December has started the same. We saw each other far less than we’d like. My strength and my expectations did not join. The past week, I've had the …
How is it December?! Instants of joy have been piling up, and are sprinkled all over like the pine needles I find in the kitchen. As usual, we were too busy enjoying to hold up a camera in the moment and so I go back and pick each one up and write it to relive. Having family around our family’s table for the first time was special this Thanksgiving, favourite of all beloved holidays. We took turns carving the turkey and then gathered around candles with plates of jewel-toned autumn bounty. I fi…
When we had just moved to New York, my sister mailed me a chocolate wrapper with a pre-printed message inside: You are exactly where you are supposed to be. I am a perpetual thrower-outer, but it's still sitting in the kitchen drawer next to the clothes-pins, smug in its safety. (This post has photos of foods we've been sampling, starting with coconut flour blueberry muffins.) It was just over a year ago that we were in Vienna meandering the Christmas markets and Prague holding hot stroopwaffles…
Shortly after the annual shopping for school supplies in elementary school, leaves would turn toward the sun, and then my birthday would come on a crisp day, the first of the school year. Fall, always, would be my season. My disillusionment when I found out fall started after my birthday was deep. Despite my reason to be newly aligned with summer, there has never been a chance I’d switch, then or now. Autumn is deliciousness. I love that it comes every year, and that we are in the thick of it n…
Lately my attention hovers like a butterfly’s—stopping here, then there, for one short, sweet sip of life before I flit to the next swaying leaf of a moment. There are so, so many places to alight in a city. Too many. The autumn has ripened to a brisk, yellow cool, and brought with it that swooping rush that lifts us into exhilarating gusts of doing. It's been busy in the city! So here I am in the blog, where I can clutch twiggy legs onto beauty and hold a few moments longer before lifting off. …
Hannah and I were little tikes when our families shared a house some twenty plus years ago, and since then, we’ve shared life from school choir concerts to European castle expeditions. She designed some incredible graphics for our wedding, and when we were asked to savour their day with them, we almost jumped out of the back of the Volkswagen in anticipation. Their day of union was celebrating in relaxed-country style with floral dresses, Izze soda toasts, canning jars and poppy-red twine. We t…
It might mean our fingers are zapped with static, we push our thermostat to the heat setting, and our necks see nothing behind spools of scarf, but we are mighty pleased about the arrival of the cold. Saturday brought mugs of tea and flakes blowing up and down our street. As we sat in our living room with music and each other, the abundant coziness made me feel burrowed, at home for real. And then Sunday was a day to feel the change. The air was positively spicy with a freshness brought out by t…
These days, I half-dream of it right before I fall asleep. Air. Fresh, windy, open. I have spurts during the week when my lungs pine for oxygen. I dream of opening the door into the green air, and sitting on the porch of my parents’ house. But, then, a day later, I walk outside and breeze is there. Yesterday was one of those "don't you just love living in New York?" days. It made me want to run errands and buy pumpkins, so I did. More in a sec. Today I’m back to the good old days of instants of …
Since I used to write more regularly, life has felt like a big wave (dramatic metaphor alert?). Everything we knew in Scotland has been pulled back to sea in a suctioned rush, and feeling the new water push to fill its place is still overwhelming. I miss opening the door to gull drifts on sea air. I miss coming in for warmth instead of for cool. Even though New York is exciting and there are new things to love here, for far too long, I have thought about how things would be if we were still in S…