What are You Doing New Year’s Eve?

I Resolve

Source: theindigobunting.blogspot.com via Trena on Pinterest

 

 

To eat lunch with a cloth napkin and real silverware. (I did this for about a month, yay me)

 

To use trays, for everything. And to put flowers on trays. (Yes, I used trays all year, and hopefully I’ll continue to use them)

To begin learning a new language. If I only learn the articles by next year that is fine. (I took a French Class, yay me)

To begin to learn cello (this one has made the list three years straight, we’ll see if it happens.) (Fail. But I have found a cello teacher)

To return to Europe (to any country for any time at all). (Went to Poland!)

To study Chinese history. (Fail. But I did start a history of Russia, can I get brownie points for that one?)

To read a complete newspaper everyday (preferably the WSJ), not just the comics and picture captions. (Half fail.)

To read fifty-two (52) books in a year (the year before last I came short by four books. How lame is that?) (The grand total came to 20)

To write one real letter each week. (Haha, fail)

To actually cook breakfast once a week, during the work week. (Mmmm, kinda)

To go to the theater four (4) times in the course of the year. (Yes! Made this one, Firebird, Nebucco, A Christmas Carol, and Suite Surrender)

To memorize one (1) poem. Doesn’t matter how long. (Nope.)

Not to count how many times I go to the gym in a week. (Yes, totally did this and I picked up Ballet again!)

Not to eliminate an entire food group for the sake of some diet. (I gave up wheat for a while.)

Not to exhaust myself by trying to get up at 5 a.m. for no reason. (Yes! Sleep, a resolution I can keep!)

To make sure when I leave the house (for any reason) my hair is combed, both my shoes match. And that I am (preferably) wearing lipstick (chapstick will suffice). (I kept this one I think, and now I own a lot of lipstick.)

I think that is it. Bring on 2012!

Toast Your Sore Throat

I hate sore throats. Thank goodness for hot toddies. ‘Nuff said.

Source: princeofwales.wordpress.com via Trena on Pinterest

Hygge

Source: google.com via Trena on Pinterest

 

 

Today was a day of pajamas, long naps, hot soup, Christmas lights, and movies. The Danes call it hygge. It’s pretty amazing.

Merry Christmas!

Social Network Christmas

Okay, so this video has made the rounds already, but I wanted to post it because I like the music, and I couldn’t find another sample of it that was a good as this one. Its a rendition of O Come, O Come Emmanuel by Folk Angels. If I was their agent we’d work on another name for them, but let’s not work on that. FYI: this version is missing some of the lyrics.

 

Morning Ponderings

I was thinking this morning as I rubbed my bi-daily dose of moister into my skin, what exactly do cosmetic companies mean when they tell you to rub “a pearl sized amount” of lotion onto one’s face? Do they know that pearls come in a range of sizes (and shapes for that matter)? Are they talking about a 10mm pearl? A 20mm pearl? Something in the middle like a 14mm? Or are we talking seed pearls? Really, there are so many different sizes of pearls, I am convinced they should find a better example.

Source: stellarjewelry.com via Trena on Pinterest

Visions of Sugar Plums

I saw the Nutcracker over the weekend, it was a small production, but it simply lovely.

Source: lasvegasblog.harrahs.com via Trena on Pinterest

 

The Pas De Duex from this ballet is one of my favorites.

Come Further In!

Every year about this time I start to re-read the entire Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. I hope to do this for the rest of my life, because every year I find that the story changes a bit, and the land within the wardrobe gets a little deeper and more mysterious instead of more familiar. Each year Aslan calls the children to Narnia and I find myself learning more from these children’s books than all the WSJ articles I read in a year.

C.S. Lewis wrote a letter to his god-daughter, Lucy, in response to her comments on The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. And it encapsulates these books for me.

Dear Lucy,

You’ve got it exactly right. A strict allegory is like a puzzle with a solution: a great romance is like a flower whose smell reminds you of something you can’t quite place.*

For me the Chronicles of Narnia really are like that “flower whose smell reminds you of something you can’t quite place.” As I grow older I am more and more able to place the smell, or I have better idea from which direction the smell is coming, but it remains elusive. And a part of me thinks I would be horribly disappointed to wake up one day and realize I could place the smell of the flower, because it would mean the adventure is over. But the other part of me, the Lucy part of me, knows that once I find out where the scent comes from, the adventure will finally begin! Come further up and further in!

*C.S. Lewis Letters to Children (New York: Macmillian Publishing Company, 1985), 81.

Christmas Shopping? What Christmas Shopping?

Or you can panic. I am not panicking. Yet. I am a firm believer in keeping the Christmas season for the traditional length of time: twelve (12) days. So that means there is longer period of time in which to complete shopping and it doesn’t all have to be done in one frantic day. Of course I am not a parent with children, so I do understand that there is certain urgency in some cases to get the shopping done before Christmas. But don’t panic yet folks. Prepare, but don’t freak out.