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the december to january transition is always a difficult one for me. life will settle down again soon. for now, i am caught up in revisting the past year, thinking of all that has come to pass like our trip to maine and tom's biking accident. memories become like raindrops falling over and over again in my mind.

back in november, i found a few photos of myself as a child that i have been carrying around with me. there is one in particular that i love. it features me, my mom, and my sister standing on the steps of the capital building in sc. i'm wearing some awesome boots and a checkered shirt; i must be about five.

i've carefully examined every detail of this photo over and over. you see, i have been using it as a bookmark and have found myself studying it each time i opened or closed the book. the photo has since moved to the fridge and i'm quite enchanted with it still.

therefore, i think my only resolution for 2008 is to remember and celebrate my five year old self. the girl who believed in the world and trusted that everything would be okay. the girl who loved getting up every morning to see what the day had in store. the girl who loved the outdoors, her bike, her grandfather's garden, chapter books, and her family. i think i could learn a lot from her.

happy new year friends. may your 2008 sparkle.
xox

487

wishing you all the merriest, most lovely holiday celebrations.

may your heart be filled with joy and peace in the new year.

xo

now, for you...a little christmas duet.

and finally, introducing, the theme song for our band.

please note these takes are full of little imperfections. we still wanted to share them with you. hope you enjoy!


see you back here in 2008!

486: five senses friday (the return of)

see:
-the most amazing cloudscapes above the bookshop
-tiny drops of rain, a fine mist that lasted maybe 5 minutes (from my office window)
-shiny, sparkly christmas cards arriving in the mail daily
-clocks always indicating that i was late
-a plate of baklava, festively wrapped in the hands of a favorite customer


taste:

-delicious stollen from my favorite durham bakery, guglhupf
-indian food (paneer do piaza) at the bookshop holiday dinner
-thumbprint cookies with blueberry and strawberry jam
-homemade biscotti from a good friend
-numerous bowls of soup (tomato with cheese, french onion, southwestern chowder)

hear:
-the wonderful clink of the book weights at work
-the 10:30 am train
-the fun banter of annie hall
-the heat miser and the snow miser songs
-(currently) the bbc news hour

smell:
-the different evening meals of those in our neighborhood. the smells swirled out into the street and mingled making for interesting, unidentifiable combinations.
-pizza...lilly's...more specifically the buddha (feta, basil, tomato, onion)
-frasier fir candle


touch:
-sticky sugar from the stollen on all of my fingers
-my warm coffee mug each morning
-holding hands or actually, gloves holding gloves
-the feel of my favorite comfort shoes on tired working feet (see photo)
-sunshine after days of cold


i'm off for the weekend, though i do have to work on christmas eve. tom and i are working on a song that i hope we'll post on monday. either way, i'll definitely pop back in on monday to send out some holiday cheer.

enjoy your weekend.

485

now we're talking. :) frost a few days ago. these photos made me late for work but there's more to life than being on time...

484

wonderful gifts from the lovely and talented andrea. if you haven't checked out her blog, you are in for a real treat. i'm super excited to have my own hot water bottle, especially now that the weather has turned colder here. look at the fantastic cover! linen with a touch of tartan plaid. perfect! and i can't wait to read the book. i'm taking it along on my travels. thank you andrea. you are a dear.

we got so much done yesterday. i finished up some shopping and tom helped by baking cookies and roasting nuts. we took 2 photobooth strips yesterday at the mall too and these are making their way into the homemade christmas cards.

i also came home with a bag of single origin chocolate bars from the office christmas party. things are looking up. :)

thinking of posting photos only for the rest of the week.

have a great day.

483: slow down

this is my plea to the month of december. it can't be the 18th. it just can't! i haven't even made a big mug of homemade hot chocolate yet. sure we've hung lights and brought berries indoors. we've watched our three favorite holiday classics and we've listened to the rat pack and the charlie brown christmas album, but i still have a huge list, a list that i really don't think i'm going to complete before the new year.

we have cookies to bake (i'm hoping for thumbprints with farmer's market jam), gifts to finish buying (yikes!), a holiday dinner to prepare for a co-worker, a holiday song to record and post (if only). well, i'm sure you don't want/need to see my entire list so let's just say i'm behind. yes friends i am so far behind i cannot even see the finish line.

this of course does not even include the numerous emails i owe some of you. it seems i can barely formulate my thoughts enough to make a blog post these days. (speaking of this, thank you to those of you who left such heartfelt comments yesterday. i was fearing that i was beginning to sound like a broken record.)

i'm sure a few of you out there can sympathize. please tell me you can.


*listening to the pines makes me forget about my list, which is both good and bad i guess. mostly good. :)

*i can't wait to see more from the subtle circle.

hope your day is productive. mine too. yes, there's always hope.

xo

482

good morning.

hope you all had a lovely weekend. we finally received some rain (!!) and the weather feels more like december.

so back to the forest. the book i mentioned on friday is the wild braid by stanley kunitz. a few passages really stand out to me and had me thinking of my own childhood and my first home. we always lived near wooded lots. even as i grew older and we moved two times, we still lived next to a wooded area, perfect for exploring. as a child, this is how i spent my time: walking in the woods, building forts, playing beside streams, collecting rocks or pinecones, playing detective. this last activity involved looking for trash in the woods and then "interpreting" what these "clues" meant. fun stuff.

from kunitz' book:

I would find a leaf or a stone in the underbrush and have the sensation that nobody else had seen quite the same thing...In the woods, one loses the sense of time. It's quite a different experience from walking in the streets. The streets are human creations. In the woods what one finds are cosmic creations.

when i was older, i would walk into the lot next door for quiet, for space. i would sometimes gather bits of nature to decorate our table. i would notice the lightning bugs or the strong smell of pine. the forest, even a very small patch, was like a friend and i feel it shaped who i am today. it is helpful to remember this connection and to seek out the forest when i am feeling down or anxious. without a doubt, time in nature is the one thing that restores me fully.

while the kunitz passage above reminds me of my childhood, these 2 verses from the (middle of a) billy collins' poem entitled "directions" remind me of how i feel now on these friday walks.

The best time is late afternoon
when the sun strobes through
the columns of trees as you are hiking up,
and when you find an agreeable rock
to sit on, you will be able to see
the light pouring down into the woods
and breaking into the shapes and tones
of things and you will hear nothing
but a sprig of birdsong or the leafy
falling of a cone or nut through the trees,
and if this is your day you might even
spot a hare or feel the wing-beats of geese
driving overhead toward some destination.

But it is hard to speak of these things
how the voices of light enter the body
and begin to recite their stories
how the earth holds us painfully against
its breast made of humus and brambles
how we who will soon be gone regard
the entities that continue to return
greener than ever, spring water flowing
through a meadow and the shadows of clouds
passing over the hills and the ground
where we stand in the tremble of thought
taking the vast outside into ourselves.


"taking the vast outside into ourselves". love that so much.

do you have a favorite poem or book about the forest? i'd love for you to share it in the comments.

see you tomorrow.

481: the forest

it's friday. thank goodness. i am so tired and in need of a pick me up. and lucky me it's my day off. we are about to head out for a walk and then we'll stop by a cafe and read the times and just soak up the morning.

i have been reading a book this week that made me realize how important the forest has always been to me. always. i'll share more of my thoughts and more from the book next week.


until then....i hope you have a great weekend.

480

there is so much to do at this time of the year! i am making list upon list upon list and fear that i will never get it all done. i have packages that i have been wanting to send, gifts to make, cards to create and send, etc. my head is swirling and i'm very distracted, running here and there.

so it was nice to stop for just a moment and notice how beautiful this little patch of sunlight looked on my letterpress goodies from port2port. a moment of noticing, of peace, of beauty. we all need this. we need the time to linger for just a bit.

don't forget to take a small break for yourself today. you deserve it.

xo

479

i'm really drawn to red these days. these two photos were just taken wandering around my neighborhood. there is always so much to see, so much that calls out to me.

thank you for all of the mobile love. i have a few more ideas that emerged while i was making this first mobile. i'm hoping to have time to explore them this weekend. the original idea came to me while on one of our friday walks. i have been taking what i like to call "tangle" photos and i realized that these simple mobiles occur naturally in the forest. looking forward to showing you more soon.

we saw a beautiful production of the little prince last night. it was such a joy to sit in the audience and take in all of the sights and sounds. i love nothing more than sitting in a dark, quiet theater and forgetting that i am surrounded by so many others. when the lights come back on, it's always a surprise to see so many faces. it makes me smile to think of so many different individuals gathered together in the name of art and beauty.

"Le plus important est invisible"--Antoine de Saint Exupery

translated as "The most important is invisible" or as Katherine Woods translates "Whatever is essential is invisible to the eye".

thinking of this today....

478: winter greens

hi everyone.

thanks so much for all of the wonderful comments. i always enjoy reading them.

today, i have an early gift for you: tom's winter collard greens recipe! collards are one of those vegetables that had to grow on me. as a child, i detested them. i wouldn't even taste them except for on new year's day. on new year's day, i would take two big bites. :) tradition has it that those who ate collards on january 1 would have plenty of money coming their way in the new year.

now is the time to eat these healthy greens. the local farmers here will tell you that collard greens taste much better after the first frost. they're sweeter, less bitter. last weekend, we picked up a beautiful bunch, and tom was excited. you see, he's been working on a new recipe. it's simple and festive and perfect for december.

tom's easy winter collard greens

1 large bunch of collard greens
half a large onion
medium red pepper
a few cloves of garlic
fresh squeezed grapefruit juice (from 1/2 grapefruit)
olive oil
tabasco
sea salt
freshly cracked pepper

sautee onion, peppers, and garlic in olive oil. add salt to taste and a dash of tabasco. remove ribs from collards, slice into thin strips and rinse. add collards to pan and cook over low. add grapefruit juice and tabasco and salt. t never uses exact measurements so play around and add to taste. keep cooking until collards reach desired tenderness. serve and top with freshly cracked pepper.

we think they go well with a hearty serving of potatoes anna. yum.

this is now my favorite collard greens recipe hands down. so good! hope you like it too.

don't miss mav's guide to giving great books this holiday season. so many wonderful choices. i have two to add:

if you can still find a copy of tin house no. 33, you should definitely pick one up for your favorite english major. it has an amazing cover and features the work of aimee bender, kelly link, miranda july and more. i've found that barnes and noble and borders are sometimes slow to change out their literary mags so you may luck out.

pure dessert by alice medrich. it's on the top of my wish list. i flipped through a copy at the bookstore this weekend and think it's just grand.

and now it's off to the dentist with me. you know what i'll be wearing, right? short sleeves are just the ticket on this 78 degree december day from the twilight zone. :)

477: scenes from our friday walk

it was another nice weekend. a walk by the river on friday. so funny to see where we gravitate. i take to the paths scouring the brush for treasures like the abandoned wasp nest, and then i slowly make my way down to the water. t takes to the rocks, crossing the river and back again. at times, we sat very still and just breathed in the cool air, following the bare tree branches until they met the icy blue sky.

on saturday we went to the farmer's market and shopped with our empty fridge in mind. potatoes, collards, peppers, dried butter beans, strawberry and blueberry jam, and cheese were picked up along with beautiful greenery and beeswax tapers. then it was off to guglhupf bakery to pick up 2 loaves of bread (black pepper parmesan and cranberry pecan). i love buying from local farmers and artisans. it just makes my day!

later we walked a good distance to the nasher art museum to take a closer look at the dan and lia perjovschi exhibit. loved lia's mind maps (of course) and dan's postcards from america. the day ended with the number eight special at bahn's. all in all, good times.

and sunday, well. where did it go? you tell me.

hope yours was nice.
xo

476: the end of the week

this is what started off our wonderfully slow weekend last friday. i really think we are going to have to make this a weekly ritual. :)

it's the perfect simple pleasure. take one fancy chocolate bar (we brought along this bar) into the woods along with a thermos of chai. find a beautiful spot to sit and eat your snack. watch the colors ripple in the water and think of all in your life that is beautiful and brings you joy.

i call this the "chai with a view" meditation and believe me, it works wonders. you should definitely give it a try.

xo

475

there's nothing we like better than a cold weather walk.

finally got the new dvd burner which means i will be able to post lots of new photos very soon.

don't miss jen's winter wonders shop! her beautiful handmade coasters would make an amazing gift!

i'm in a hurry today. hope you have a great day!

474

good morning.

thanks everyone for the photo love and for the well wishes. we both appreciate it.

yesterday, i stared out of the window at work and looked at the layers of stacked gray clouds. to me, they looked like snow clouds, but that, my friends, is wishful thinking. we are still in the midst of an exceptional drought.

reading the paper yesterday i realized that we are only a few weeks away from being asked to use paper plates (this is not solving the problem but adding to another, i think), having our water turned off except for 3 hours a day, or having the pressure so low that the water comes out as a trickle. i did not expect this to happen here in the south, in what used to be the land of daily summer thunderstorms.

i grew up here and many of my memories involve rain. it was always a part of the natural cycle...something we did NOT have to worry about, think about. but as the days pass, i am becoming more and more anxious. when will the rain come? what if it doesn't?

i love the sunlight at this time of year. i do. i really do, but what i'm desperately hoping for is a good old fashioned downpour.

the sunlight feels bittersweet.

473

hi.

this photo was taken at the same time as the ones yesterday but i am standing back a bit. i think it is my favorite.

other favorite photos of light:

afternoon sunlight

first summer sky marks

winter day

we will become silhouettes

yesterday started with badminton and ended with a broken thumb, though the two events weren't related at all. t has a broken thumb. and yes, it is on the same arm that was hurt in the biking accident. he was busy chiseling away on the tree stump table and accidentally hit his thumb. the first urgent care clinic sent him to duke clinic and then finally on to the ER. he's fine but they had to take his nail. ouch, right?

we're hoping for a better day today. you know, one filled with cookies and cocoa and after work chit chat while bundled up in the backyard. i'll let you know how it goes.

hope your day is nice!

472: sun spots

this weekend was the first weekend in a good while that seemed to move along at a slow pace, and i soaked up every last bit of goodness it offered.

a walk in the woods with a thermos of chai
quiet moments by the river
the cozy feeling of wearing long gloves
laughter
a movie (darjeeling limited) with popcorn
finishing my hat (thanks to a good friend)
sunday afternoon cooking (spinach lasagna and grapefruit yogurt cake)
wandering around our neighborhood finding so much color still
a day of warm sunshine, a day of gray
reading in the early afternoon under the covers
bringing berries and branches indoors
buying a tiny christmas cactus


i could go on and on. it was just what i needed. wonderful times ten.

i took these photos in charleston over thanksgiving weekend. we had just come inside from a walk and i turned the corner and realized i was standing in the most beautiful amber light. i took many photos and these are my favorites. i have one more pair to share with you tomorrow. of course, they are inspired by the brilliant work of uta barth.




if you have gray skies today, these are for you.

see you tomorrow then.
xo