A Charmed Life

Eggcellent

My cousin Christine saw my blog entry the other day about making these fabric-decoupaged eggs and emailed me saying she was so stressed out and wished she could do something like that. So, I said, come on over! We made a date for lunch/chat/craft and away we went. We hadn't seen each other in a while what with work and kids and family and life, so it was nice to catch up. We sat in the tea room and snipped fabric, dipped brushes in Mod Podge, and wrapped the eggs in colorful patterns. The trick, I said, was to not give too much thought to what you're doing. We laughed and compared notes on kids (her younger two are boys the same ages as my girls--and each pair, the 15-year-olds and the 11-year-olds, seem to have been separated at birth). We spent about two hours and were terribly pleased at the results: not only are our patchwork eggs fabulous, but our stress level had ebbed, as well.

Eggs, bunnies, etc.

It looks like spring outside: the sun is shining, we can see the grass, the irises have started to shoot through the earth. But oooh, that cold lion of a March wind! Fierce. And I'm not talking Project Runway here. Still, the calendar says it's coming, with Western Easter right on it's heels (and my birthday sandwiched in between like so much egg salad), so I took some time today to put out a few more things.

First are some of my mother's miniatures. I just love that Hendredon duck and all the little bunnies. The German girl in the back is something I bought my mother ohhh, nearly 30 years ago at this tiny, wonderful shop in Harvard Square that's now probably a McDonald's or something. I'm cheating with her a bit--she's representative of May, the month my mother was born.

Here's my egg tree. I used to force forsythia around this time and put the eggs on that, but our forsythia bush mysteriously stopped blooming for several years, so I bought this. Now that we've moved and have a new, bloomin' bush, I'd forgotten about that tradition, but I think I'll try to bring it back. The blue and green egg up front was a birthday gift many, many years ago from my dear friend Jeanne. It is a handpainted scene of bunnies bringing colored eggs out from a burrow under a tree, ostensibly to begin hiding them. I have no idea in my wildest imagination how such as tiny, detailed painting is accomplished, except that whoever did it had more patience than I could muster in a lifetime. The other eggs are from a trip about 15 years ago to visit my friend Ann in Illinois. Her husband watched our very small children while we escaped to a tea/gift shoppe where we had tea and found these eggs marked down. We each grabbed about a dozen. Some of mine got damaged in a flood a while back, but these survived to celebrate another year.

That's Nibble, a gerbil, and our latest critter. He joined the family Friday, to the cat's consternation. Nibble is a little camera shy, but he is pretty adorable--which is saying something since I am not a big fan of rodents. Meredith, however, is over the moon with happiness at her new pet; she calls herself his "mommy." Of course I fret that the cat will get it, or that it will die anyway, or somehow, some other tragedy will occur. But I guess you can't prevent your children from experiencing disappointment or heartache, so we're enjoying Nibble while he's here (I made my husband ensure that the cage is completely secure and cat-proof). Welcome, Nibble!

And so, it begins

Two of the radio stations I frequently listen to have been playing Christmas music for a couple of weeks now; I saw cars sporting pine and spruce "hood ornaments" the day after Thanksgiving; many of my neighbors have their lights up already; and "A Charlie Brown Christmas," "White Christmas" and "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" (the original, animated, Boris Karloff version, if you please)--all my favorites, have already been on TV. So, is it any wonder I feel like I'm already "late" with my Christmas decorations?

I can remember when my mother would complain about retailers declaring the day after Thanksgiving the "official" start of the Christmas season ("Can't they even wait until December?" She'd rant.), and "Christmas Creep" has just gotten worse ever since. Yes, I heard carols playing in one store in October. October!

I do have to admit I've done a lot of my shopping already. The convenience of e-tailing and the lure of Internet specials and free shipping are just too hard to resist. Plus, I have found that by chance or strategy (most likely the latter), waiting until it's really the season (on my terms) often means that my local stores are out of the things I want. And, I rationalize, buying early means I have more time to decorate and make gifts. Uh-huh.

But the seasons and the holidays are important to me. I like enjoying every last splash of summer until the leaves begin to fall, and then every last crisp and crunchy red leaf against the the azure sky until the first snowflake. October is for cider and pumpkins, November is for harvest and thanks, December is for Christmas and Solstice. (January is for diets, but that's another story.)

So, it's December 1st, this morning there was a dusting of snow on my lawn (though it melted like powdered sugar on a warm muffin as the sun grew strong), and I'm taking out the treasured holiday decorations, little by little, one day at a time.

Cornucopia

A long weekend like this gives me plenty of time to think and write, so here are some thoughts and pictures.

1. I told you I led a charmed life, right? How else can you explain my having a wonderful friend like Ann (remember her from a couple of posts back?) who knows me so well and cares about me so much that she spent months search antique shops and flea markets looking for these vintage tablecloths that dropped onto my doorstep via the postman earlier this week? I have a collection of them (somewhere between 60 and 100 at least, I've lost count) and still can't resist them when I see one I don't have. What a glorious, guilt-free gift she sent me. Way more fun than gilding pumkins, I assure you.

2. Fellow Good Greek Girl and amazing artist Anna Maria Horner mused in her blog today about the absence of black in current crafting, and hinted that her new line of fabric might have some not-so-basic black accents. Well, Anna, I think as usual you are on to something, as many of the holiday home dec shows I watched last night on HGTV noted that black is becoming the new green in holiday decorating. Also, this book, pictured above, with its black, red, and white cover shows many textile motifs with hints of black; black really sets off the other colors.

I recommend this book to any lover of textiles and color. It contains some wonderful historic information, but its greatest appeal is full page after full page of textiles motifs, with color combinations, designs, applications, and text that will inspire the artist and home decorator.

3. These are probably my four favorite compliments, in no particular order:

Your children are so well-behaved.

Your home looks beautiful!

This is delicious. May I have the recipe?

You look great. Have you lost weight?

Alas, I don't hear 1 or 4 as often as I'd like (both my fault, though I do hear often that our girls are creative, intelligent, well-spoken, beautiful, and personable--all good things that I guess I secretly believe are better attributes than "well-behaved"), but on Thanksgiving Day I did hear the other two raves, many times over, and it made all the cleaning, de-cluttering, polishing, cooking, planning, and general stressing worth it. When everyone else had sat down at the three tables we had set up in our great room and I came in from loading up my plate with goodies from the buffet table, I was reminded of the last scene from "Hannah and Her Sisters," where the old, bickering parents are laughing and kissing, the kids are giggling and showing kindness to each other, the criss-crossed couples are with who they're supposed to be with, and the food, music, and familial mish-mosh is all bathed in soft candlelight. For a moment, I stood in the doorway and looked around at friends, and friends of friends, at one table with my husband and some of his siblings; the girls--from 5 to 15--chirping at another table; little boys under the watchful eye of parents at the third table...three generations, people I've known for more than 25 years who began as friends and are now family, too...

I live for moments like these. And I would love to show you a picture--I kept my camera at the ready all day--but some moments you just have to experience as they come. And I could never have captured it in a photograph anyway. It was a fleeting sensation--a warm, happy, group of people enjoying themselves in our home.

And, perhaps, the best part came last night as Daughter 1 and I had one of our long, rambling, midnight talks about life. I had worried that I made everyone work too hard for the event, but Olivia spontaneously said it was a great Thanksgiving and she was proud of how everything looked and how enjoyable it all was.

And that, my friends, is the greatest compliment of all.

Thanks, and Thanks Again

When I was a girl, it was my job to put out these little pilgrim candles on the Thanksgiving table. OK, not these candles, precisely. These I bought at an antique show (pre-eBay) for some exhorbitant price (the originals cost 15 cents--it says so on the bottom) in an attempt to buy back some of my childhood. Anyway, they were just like these and we actually LIT them, which I'm sure is why I no longer have the originals. My mother saved everything, so I'm sure if they were extant, I would have found them somewhere.

Daughter No. 2, Meredith, helped me bake the pies, below.

Daughter No. 1, Olivia, is more of a free spirit, likely to draft and recite a tone poem for the occasion. Mere has learned how to roll out the dough and cut out the leaves and hearts for the edging. We do our best to space them evenly but do not require perfection (anymore). This is why we don't let Dad, with his engineer's mind, do this part. True, the points of the maple leaves would be evenly separated to the millimeter, but we don't have all day, you know, as my mother used to say. Besides, he's in charge of the turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes, and he does a fabulous job at that.

I'm very thankful for my family, and my many good friends, who encourage me when I'm down (occasionally), and shrug and keep silent when I'm being unreasonable (often), and laugh with me, always.

The Frost is on the Pumpkin

Any day, perhaps any moment now, my friend Ann is going to call me and ask, "So, are you gilding pumpkins?" This is in reference to my attempts at making a "Martha"-style Thanksgiving each year.

I will admit that for many years I searched out edible 24-carat gold dust for my cookies, carved hearts, instead of scary faces, into pumpkins, made white-chocolate snowflakes dotted with silver dragees and scattered them on cakes, fashioned a turkey-shaped dip container out of a hollowed-out acorn squash and some red and yellow peppers, and so on. But my husband's low-key, let's-just-bring-potluck family seemed non-plussed by my efforts, and someone from my own "let's-out-Martha-Martha" family always seemed to trump me with personalized pilgrim cookies or pressed-leaf placecards.

On top of which, I eventually realized that I seemed to be going to great lengths just for the wow factor--to impress others--not out of any enjoyment on my part. And certainly not for the enjoyment of my husband and children, who endured my tears when the lemon curd curdled or my blue mood when no one noticed I had coordinated the design on the cocktail napkins with the door wreath. So, just about the time Martha went to jail, I quit trying too hard.

However, when we moved to this house, I found that both I and Martha (fresh out of her orange jumpsuit) had mellowed. Plus, I had a whole new stage on which to work, one I'd waited for my whole life. This fall, I had a blast cutting down the cornstalks my husband grew out in the lower-40 (aka our back yard) and lashing them to the pillars, then selecting white pumpkins and painting 3 and 1 on them, which not only signified Halloween but also happens to be our house number. Clever, no? OK, lucky. And easy.

So, even though right now I am surrounded by the good china, counting out the silver place settings in anticipation of having 22 to dinner Thursday, when Ann calls to ask if I am gilding the pumpkins, I will answer, "No. I'm enjoying the season."

And we'll both have a good laugh.