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Dipped Everythings For Your Holiday Celebrations
Years ago, when I worked as the manager of a law firm, the holidays meant one thing:
FOOD.
The baskets arrived every day from Thanksgiving on: dried fruit, specialty coffees, fancy cheeses, and chocolate-covered everything, with little cards tucked inside (“Thanks for a great year!”) from clients.
When I started my own business a couple of years later and started sending out holiday presents to associates of my own – including a food-type gift to each office with which I worked – I sifted through my memories of those Christmas baskets, trying to remember what everyone had liked best…and the answer was obvious:
Potato Soup For The Soul
Yesterday it rained and rained and rained, and I turned on the space heaters and wore thick socks and held my little girl all day long, but it felt like no matter what, I couldn't get warm. And even though the Christmas tree lights stayed on all day and my little fake fireplace did its best to keep our living room feeling cheerful, I felt…sad. I started thinking about people I wish I could see more often, and people that I can't see anymore at all. And then I started thinking about my children growing up and moving out and how desperately I'll miss them, and then poof:
--> Sadness spiral.
The holiday season can do that to you sometimes.
And so when I picked up my son from school, I decided it would be a good day to do something special together. We dragged out the little ladder that he uses when he helps me cook and pulled it over next to the stove. I chopped potatoes and carrots and celery and he poured them all into the pot, and then we snuggled up on the couch and watched Christmas cartoons while the soup bubbled and the kitchen filled up with the smell of wonderful things.
Let Me Blow Your Mind (Again!)
Remember when I blew your mind with that banana video way back when?
Well, I'ma 'bout to do it again.
You might want to sit down for this one.
Links & Love & Stuff
I have rediscovered Clinique's Black Honey lipstick (literally the first lipstick I ever owned; I got it as a birthday gift in seventh grade) and cannot stop wearing it. Also, it was conceptualized way back in 1971 as a "black turtleneck" for lips, which is cool.
Cressida and Huxley may be my new favorite baby names. And Lou. (Hipster Baby Names You Haven't Heard Of.)
These leatherette jeans are HOT.
Holiday Entertaining Hacks (Using Stuff You’ve Already Got Handy)
I'm not big on shelling out tons of money on holiday decor. I mean…that stuff can get expensive. And only gets used for, what, three weeks a year?
Nothankyou.
But for real: you totally don't have to do a massive decorating run in order to make your home look like Christmas exploded inside it. Presenting: some holiday hacks that let you get good and festive without stepping one single foot outside your door (or laying down one single cent).
Cutest Cold Weather Kids’ Clothes
Eeeeee. (Especially the teeny-tiny boots. All of them. Cannot stand the cuteness.)
Perfect for holiday gifts (just six days until Hanukkah!)...or just because baby, it's cold outside, and small people need big bundling.
1. I am so sad that my daughter already would not fit into these. Tiny camo booties! Are you kidding me? If you have a newborn in your life, please: let me live vicariously through you.
2. Just the sweetest hat-and-mittens set ever.
Like Grown-Up Summer Camp
One of the more fun things about moving to a new place: you get the chance to start from scratch. Even if you're bringing your "old" stuff with you (we're planning on carting about 50% of our furniture cross-country), placing items that you've come to take for granted into an entirely new space is such a cool opportunity to reimagine how you see your home. And since most of our furniture is relatively neutral - light grey sofa, brown leather armchair, wood coffee table - it can easily be given a completely new feel simply by switching out the throw pillows, blankets and other accessories.
I'm excited.
The result of all this excitement: I've been spending way, way too much time hanging out on Trulia.com and Homes.com, looking at places in the towns that we're considering (just for fun; the places that are available now obviously won't still be available when we're ready to actually move), and over and over again I keep returning to houses that look like…well, sort of like log cabins. Wood-paneled walls, exposed beams, rustic cabinetry, brick fireplaces.
And so regardless of the place we end up in, I think this is the look I'd like to go for.
Crucial Information For Your Christmas
I'm going to miss this house SO much.
I was definitely one of those people who resisted getting a faux Christmas tree. I mean, isn't the whole experience of lugging a tree home, sweeping up pine needles every day, and having a home that smells like a forest a huge part of what makes it feel like Christmas?
DIY Golden Creature Terrarium
The other day, Kendrick and I had dinner at our friend Erin's house (she of the awesome Pinterest and crafting blog and Peekskill-trip planning skills). She and her husband have an amazing midcentury buffet table in their dining room that they use to display various odds and ends that they've collected and/or made over the years, and when I spotted a tiny dome housing even tinier gold animals sitting on the buffet I was immediately transfixed. I had visions of them wandering through some obscure thrift store in some adorable middle-of-nowhere town and stumbling across priceless gilded tigers the size of thimbles that had once been the playthings of royal children during the Qing Dynasty, but that they had managed to score for five bucks.
Or something.
Five seconds later my son had whipped that glass dome off and plucked the animals off of their stand, and I was running towards him, with visions of him destroying some precious, irreplaceable artifact (and thereby destroying our newish friendship in the process). I snatched them out of his hands (--> tears), only to discover...
