So this is Christmas......and a New Year begins...

Kids grow up and life changes but I am looking back.....and forward...... listening to old music and new...... and window shopping in a new way.
There was Kindergarten and smiling faces.
And snowmen and snowforts.
There were missing teeth and frozen mitts.
Christmas lights and christmas pageants.

There's my mom in her stylin coat out coming to see what the great snowman in the middle of the driveway. I wonder now if she was worried about backing her car out over him? She was probably in her 30's there.

And even farther back I was once a kid too. I had red hair and my brother grew into that head (of which he is pretty smart.) Somebody please stop that clock! Santa was what Christmas morning was all about. Telling him our hearts desires and our parents hunting for that special present to make everything come off like a fairy tale.
There were Grandpa and Grandpa moments that can never be re-lived. We've lost a few of our family along the way. Those are the pictures that still make me sad. But alas we are not inviscible in this life. "Enjoy it while you can... we hear that all the time don't we".

There was a lot of art. On wrapping paper, homemade cards, and some pretty fantastic decoupage jars for coins and flowers I remember being brought home from school with pride.
Here are memories of my Dad, Little Nanny, Big Nanny decorating a tree, and Auntie Jean, my Nana and my Grandpa - all who are no longer here. Tyson is 21 and my neice is in Grade 8 and Mike and I are no longer together.


Yup, times sure do change. Who would have ever known. The days that lie ahead. .

There have been lots of packages along the way, specially wrapped for special people. Just a little gesture of good will to say "I thought of you" and I hope you feel special today.

Fast forward to a "teenage Christmas" where the boys sleep in til noon and there are no Christmas movies playing because the game systems are hooked up to the television. The days of Lego have passed and there is expensive cologne and wallets with money in them. We share Christmas between 2 homes now but the baking, and cooking must feed larger bellies.



Funny enough, and with a little resistance - I still managed to get Parker to play a good old board game of Scrabble. Now he spelt words like sex and fart but we laughed and debated if certain words were allowed and Tyson sat on the side-line with computer access to Dictionary.com. I tried my best to throw in a little "joy" - even if it cost me some points. We made snowflake sugar cookies and yes, Parker cut **one**. And one is enough for me.
I put out much fewer decorations than I ever have before. Not sure why - maybe the old girl is getting tired? Whatever the reason - there were touches here and there.

A rosemary tree and a few candles, bowls of candies and chocolates, and our new dog, "Charlie" all made it seem a little like Christmas.


Well Charlie is exhausted from too much begging and Julie is exhausted from too much thinking. So today was boxing day and we both pulled a lazy and stayed in pajamas all day and ate leftover butter tarts for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Really.

Good bye Christmas 2010.

I need someone to read to me while I rest......

Or it seems like I will never ever get through all the books I would like to read. I am working on "A Vintage Affair". Into the first 30 pages and I am liking this book. I was looking for a copy of the cover to show you and I found an earlier version. Actually I like this covershot even better than the current one. It is a story of fashion, friendship, regret and redemption. About a girl named Phoebe who quit her textiles job at Sotheby's to open a Vintage Clothing shoppe. Then there was "Water for Elephants". Another well written book for the sentimental heart. It too is a love story, mystery, drama, comedy and historical novel all rolled into one. "The Mermaid Chair" was another one that I flipped through the pages pretty quickly on. This story deals with the restlessness of a middle-aged woman who "should" be happy, but is not. Stifled by her conventional marriage, estranged from her mentally unbalanced mother and haunted by her father's death, she travels to the dreaded South Carolina barrier island of her childhood to confront her mother's bizarre behavior, and while she is there, she falls in love with a monk at the island monastery. (Hmmmmm)She is also the same author who wrote "The LIfe of Bees" which I liked. (Book definitely better than the movie - but I love the kitchen scene of all the girls singing together while they are cooking)In this book you meet Lilly, a young white girl who faces the realization that racism makes no sense, as she runs away from home and moves in with 3 black sisters amidst the beginnings of the days when black people were finally allowed to register as voters. Its really interesting to walk through this era from the point of view of Lily.I remember reading a book that found me utterring... "great story" while holding my heart. "What Remains" is a Memoir of Fate, Friendship and Love”. The story of a best friendship between Caroline Kennedy and Carole Radziwill. What do I have that is still waiting to be read? There is a stack on my nite stand that looks like this...
Reviews say: The Italian Lover is a beautiful meditation on love and the enigmatic relationship that exists between art and romance, and how cinema can act as a looking glass so that the past is laid over the future and the future is laid over the past. Blending the otherworldly beauty of his exotic setting, the author steeps his novel in Italian history, literature and culture; the story reads almost like a magical travelogue to the beautiful city of Florence.

We'll Always Have Paris is part auto-biography in telling the tale of how the author came from Australia and then LA to end up living in Paris. This part blends easily with telling tales of the history of Paris, the great places to hang out in Paris, and the way of life in Paris.
" The Flirt" Not sure how this one will go but I liked this author's other book...... "Elegance". So I will give it a try too.
Let me know what your fav's are... so I can see how high the stack will go before it topples over.

Ya know, Christmas is very near and I always remember that my dad would buy each of us some books especially picked out for each of our interests. He always went just a couple of days before Christmas because he would come home with the special bags. I think that's where my love for books and magazines started. Maybe that's why I keep buying them with the thought that one day I will have nothing to do but relax and read a good book. I've done it - but not often enough as testiment to the stacks of books and magazines piling up around me. Maybe reading and writing has been replaced by laptops and blogging?
Time is always there. It's just been re-arranged with the wrong priorities in first place. Perhaps.

I found this quote on books..... I like it.

I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

~Anna Quindlen, "Enough Bookshelves," New York Times, 7 August 1991