Around Here at the Beginning of February

 

Daffodils are the cheeriest spring flowers. A bunch of tightly furled buds came home with me from the grocery store this week and are gradually opening inside the house. Outside, daffodils have a month or so to go before blooming. 

I finished the Japanese Rice Bag I showed you last week. It was a quick project and fun to do with the simple hand stitches as embellishment. 

I confess that I have an enormous stash of fabric, mostly linen and cotton, that I am determined to use. There are plans for a couple of summer dresses and tops, as well as a quilt or two. A small project like the bag is good motivation for me to get going on larger projects. 

I'm using the bag to store a crochet project I pick up from time to time - making flower coasters from cotton yarn. It's another "use it up" project. 

There are rice bags and there are rice bags. The one on the left is a Japanese Rice Bag, also known as Kinchaku, and was used as a lunch bag or small purse. This bag has a 7-inch square base. When the bags are made with a larger, 10-inch or more base, they are known as Komebukuro and were originally intended to carry rice to the temple for offerings. Check out the link for a lovely quiet video watching a master create a kinchaku bag.

The pink rice bag is a rectangle of fleece filled with rice or flax seeds and can be heated in the microwave to provide soothing relief to sore muscles. I have several of these and often sit with one at my back.

Two kinds of rice bags - both useful in different ways.

We've been noticing several Northern Flickers around our garden lately and I happened to catch one on my camera this morning. They are common to most of North America and I find their gentle colouring very beautiful. Do you see Northern Flickers in your garden?

Making decisions about our upcoming house renovation is taking a lot of time. There are just so many choices! We've been working on lighting recently and made the order for the kitchen today. For the month of February, the store had a promotion of "spin the wheel" and see how much of a discount you could get, from 5 - 40%. So I spun the wheel and was shocked to see it stop at 40%! That was a huge bonus, and the store owner said I was the only one thus far to have the wheel stop there. 

What colour is your kitchen? Or what colour would your ideal kitchen be? We are adding some colour into cabinets and I'm getting excited to begin the project. But first, someone has to retire from his day job! Just a few more weeks. 

Have a lovely Sunday and a great week ahead. I hope the lengthening days brighten your heart as much as they do mine. 

Friday Five: Almost Christmas

I confess that I lost all of my sparkle this week. On Tuesday I wanted nothing more than to pull a blanket over myself and lose myself in a book. My back hurt from top to bottom, my list seemed endless, and I did not want to go to work. All I wanted was one full day at home, and that wasn't going to happen.  

However, my sparkle is back. Two nights of wonderful sleep and lots of ticks on my list have me once again eagerly anticipating Christmas. Tomorrow is a half day of school. My Spanish 12 class is doing a rendition of Feliz Navidad for the school assembly that should be fun. 

The paper whites wanted a closer look at the Advent calendar and leaned right in, as if to speak to the angel. 

Now, about Christmas gifts. If ANYONE who will be at our house on December 24th is reading this post (I don't think they will, but just in case...) GO AWAY. You don't want to spoil any surprises, now do you? 

Friends of ours do handmade gifts for each other and last Christmas I thought it would be a fun idea to try. Our children were all on board, some more enthusiastically than others, but we gave it a whirl. We all spoke of being done by summer. HA! 

In reality, our year went like this:

January - thinking of ideas, finding ideas
February - thinking of ideas, finding ideas
March - ditto
April - ditto
May - ditto
June - ditto
July - narrowing things down
August - purchased raw materials
September - thought about getting started
October - thought a little more
November - started gifts
December - finished gifts

For our daughters and daughter-in-law, I made silk kimono toppers - like loose cardigans - lightweight. There are four there, because the dark pink one is a prototype. I sewed French seams and hand-rolled the hems, which took much longer than I anticipated. I'm quite pleased with the results and I hope the girls like them, too.

For the guys, Tim made wooden serving boards and he smoked salmon. They'll also each get a loaf of homemade rye bread, some spiced nuts, and other goodies.  

For the grands, I made flannel rag quilts. They came together quickly and I used up a lot of stash fabric. Tim made marshmallow shooters for them from PVC pipe and fittings. This evening, before wrapping them, we had a marshmallow shoot out in the kitchen. The shooters really work! There were marshmallows flying everywhere (the mini ones) and we were laughing so hard we could hardly blow the shooters. I hope the grands enjoy them as much as we did. 

We've had some crazy windstorms lately. Rain pelts against the windows and the house rattles with the wind. Many people lost power. Although our lights flickered seriously, we still have electricity. 

I came home this afternoon, turned on the tree lights, and made a cup of tea. So comforting. Then I wrapped gifts. They are all done.

About that endless list I mentioned. Quite a number of things were crossed out - deemed unimportant in the grand scheme of things. Permission granted to relax and enjoy rather than power through. 

Dinner tonight was a simple frittata with leftover ratatouille and cubes of ham, along with a salad. Easy peasy. Tomorrow the grands are spending the night here. We're planning a cozy time together. 

It feels good to have a little sparkle back. How are you doing?  

Counting the Days

November in our parts was particularly grey and wet - 27 days included rain; most days saw little or no sunshine. How different December is: clear days when the sun slants low across the garden to brighten home and heart. 

I went out with my camera this week after school to capture a bit of the light. How surprised I was to see this Mountain Bluet (centaurea montana) with a new bloom. I gave the plant a little cheer and praised it for being so stalwart. 
  

Most of the hydrangea blossoms have faded to papery brown, but a little pale blue remains here and there.

From our breakfast table we look out over the patio to the garden. I plunked some fir trimmings and a few holly stems into a pot, and placed it on the table for a bit of Christmas cheer.

A few people have expressed interest in my grown-up girl's Advent calendar, so here's some information.

For our first child's second Christmas (she was less than 2 months old for her first Christmas), I stitched up an Advent calendar. We were living in a small town on the edge of the Amazon jungle and I was thinking about how to establish traditions with our little family. It was a simple affair, red cotton with a green print tree appliqued onto it, 24 little red pockets and felt ornaments. I think we used masking tape on the back of the ornaments for the first few years, until we returned to Canada for a visit and I bought some Velcro dots. 

Tim's mother made another Advent calendar, with larger pockets and a sturdy cardboard nativity scene with windows and Bible verses. These calendars played a big part in December. The children (3) took turns opening the window and reading the verse, applying the ornament to the tree, and looking in the pocket for a treat or a note telling of a special activity. This tradition continued until the last child left home.

There is grief when a treasured tradition is outgrown. Tim and I decided that we needed to create new traditions for "just the two of us". My grown-up girl Advent calendar is something I came up with after seeing an idea for a white calendar in Marie Claire Idees magazine. 

It was simple to make - an old picture frame painted white, a cut-to-measure piece of thin plywood covered with suede-like cloth, dates made from stenciled label tags, and upholstery tacks for hanging. The fun part was finding treasures to hang on the calendar. Most of them are visible in the photo, but here's a short summary:

For each Sunday of Advent I created cardstock tags with paper, glitter, and a printed Love, Joy, Hope, Peace. 
Old chandelier crystals
Tiny vintage glass ornaments and some new
Cream-coloured shapes created from a felted sweater and bits of lace and buttons
A tiny beaded angel
A muslin primitive angel
A vintage clip-on earring

I have some other bits and pieces of jewelry that I'm thinking of replacing some of these ornaments with.

Christmas decor is being brought out a little at a time here. How lovely this season is. 

Tell me, have you discarded some traditions and embraced others? 

Of Lavender and Reading

I'm not all that fond of the scent of lavender. Too much of it gives me a headache. But I do like the faint whiff I get when I open a drawer or linen closet containing a lavender sachet. A couple of weeks ago I cut some lavender and dried it, along with lemon balm leaves. The two mixed together well and I stitched together some sachets from leftover silk dupioni.Tied up in sets of two with scraps of ribbon, they make pretty packages.

As you surmised from the previous post, we're off on a trip. We're here for the weekend in Chilliwack, and on Monday morning, early, will be heading east, through the interior, across the Rocky Mountains, to Alberta, to visit family and and to attend the wedding of a friend's daughter.

I've never posted while traveling, but my computer is along for the trip, and we'll see what happens. Internet accessibility might be hard to come by.

Choosing what to take along for reading material is always an important part of packing for a trip. You'll see that I have the magazine I wanted to get to earlier this week, a classic to revisit, and a new book, Quiet: The power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking. It's a book I've heard of from a number of sources recently, including Pondside, and my youngest daughter. Thus far I've read the introduction and it's shaping up to be an interesting book.

What are you reading? 

Sleeping Beauty Baby Shower

A baby shower was planned for BEFORE the baby's birth. But the baby must like parties and really wanted to be there in person. And so she was. The baby's mother thought she could swing a couple of hours sitting in a chair eating, visiting and opening presents. So we went ahead with it. 

Sleeping Beauty was the mother's favourite fairy tale and so we went with the that for a theme. Pink was the colour of the day, with lush peonies in vases around the room. On the door, a white wooden frame held a bouquet and across the frame was a ribbon lettered with the classic opening lines, "Once upon a time..."
 

We took a few quotations from the story, lettered them onto cardstock and placed them on easels. And another quote "Every good and perfect gift comes from above..." from the book of James in the Bible. A banner over the fireplace said "Sleeping Beauty" and we gathered the gifts in and around a doll bed made for Baby Sadie's Auntie when she was a child.

On the mantel I stacked well-worn children's books gathered from my bookshelves and placed vases of peonies atop. A simple collage of photos of the baby and her parents took centre stage on the mantel.

Auntie Katie (mother of the Little Miss) made gorgeous pink and white tissue flowers which we hung in corners and above the dining room table. To present the menu, I covered books with plain white paper and lettered whimsical menu names on the spine - such as Courtly Sage Crisps, Queen Mother's Cream Puffs, and Pink Palace Punch.  Auntie Ashley prepared some delectable food - which I'll wait to post since many of my food pictures didn't turn out, and there are enough leftovers to take more photos, now that I have a little more time.

This is the cake that Auntie Katie made for the shower. She is so talented and makes cakes that are not only beautiful to look at, but also delicious to eat. The buttercream icing was so light and not too sweet. In fact, after this post is up, I'm going to have a piece.

The guest of honour slept through the entire shower, but I snapped this photo as she was getting ready to go home. Car seats may keep little ones safe, and I advocate their use, but she looks entirely too tiny and fragile for all the straps and buttons. 

Linking to Mosaic Monday, hosted by Mary at the Little Red House.

Making Stuff

Every year I plan on what I'd like to make for Christmas. For me, handmade gifts are the best. I love receiving them and giving them. In about August or at the latest, September, I start thinking about what I'd like to make for gifts this Christmas.

This year there was too much drama going on in our household for me to think about Christmas as early as usual. But I still have lots of ideas swirling around in my mind and I have a few projects on the go. I've learned that it's no good to get all flustered about undone projects, but just to let them go until later. Gifts can be given all year round.

An alternative to making everything myself is to purchase gifts that are handmade by other artists and crafters. These gifts are much more personal, and often of better quality than mass-produced items from overseas.

If you click on the image to the right (the one on the left is just an image, no link), you'll find a directory of handmade items compiled by Michelle at Wee Folk Art. Maybe you'll find something you've been looking for there.