If quiet is not quite your jam tonight, download Target’s free holiday mix The Christmas Gig, here. It will keep you awake while you search through the junk drawer for one more pair of batteries, or that screwdriver that’s just small enough.

*I’ve been meaning to share my friend and amazing photographer Brooks’s engagement shoot with Lonnie Webb here. I LOVE Brooks’s photography as well which is always influenced by dance, movement and romance.

*I’m obsessing about finding the perfect white fairy lights like in Nigella’s house. I could watch her Christmas videos again and again.

*I did not get to make a December Daily book this year {sigh} but I am still inspired by Ali Edwards’s Daily journal here.

{Aqua trees from Kate’s Cottage on Etsy}
Happy Holidays everyone!

Pink Martini has a new Christmas album that’s a lot of fun.

Ben Folds has a new album, too called Lonely Avenue. One of my favorite novelists, Nick Hornby wrote the lyrics. Love this video of them chatting about working together. It’s what art should be: a collaborative conversation where we help each other be a little better.

—-
I’ve been reading Human Chain, Seamus Heaney’s new book of poems. I particularly like this one:

“Had I Not Been Awake”
by Seamus Heaney

Had I not been awake I would have missed it,
A wind that rose and whirled until the roof
Patterned with quick leaves off the sycamore

And got me up, the whole of me a-patter,
Alive and ticking like an electric fence:
Had I not been awake I would have missed it,

It came and went so unexpectedly
And almost it seemed dangerously,
Returning like an animal to the house,

A courier blast that there and then
Lapsed ordinary. But not ever
After. And not now.

*Have you seen these gorgeous scarves from Secret Pocket?

*The cutest radio Evoke Mio by Orla Kiely. It costs way more money than anyone should ever drop on a radio but hey, we’re window browsing here.

*Kate Spade’s book Things We Love looks like a lot of fun. It reminds me to think about what inspires me and what I would  paste in the pages of my notebook.




Peonies, a road trip, sparklers -sounds like a good start.

Happy hunting!

My paternal grandfather’s brother was 20 when he was killed in action in France on February 11, 1945. He wrote to my grandparents on January 31st. He explained that the mail was censored so he couldn’t say much, but he asked them to send more homemade cookies. “I finally got the other box you sent,” he wrote, “A little late but still good. Thanks.” He asked another sibling to send fruit cake. Knowing my grandmother, she would have had another box of cookies in the mail to him the next day. I wonder who received them. I hope another soldier was comforted by them. They really were amazing cookies.

My dad once told me the best birthday cake he ever tasted was the German chocolate cake that she made and sent to him when he was serving in Viet Nam. It was smooshed almost flat when it arrived. He ate it by a river in the jungle, but it still tasted like home in Indiana.

As we humbly remember and thank those who have had to do the unthinkable- who have had to walk into a situation that would send most of us running away in the other direction- I hope we remember that the little things we easily enjoy, like cookies or something made from home, can be so comforting in scary times.

To send love to our service men and women serving today check out:

*Operation Gratitude

*USO.org

*Any Soldier.com

*Books for soldiers

*Cell phones for soldiers

*Pen pals for soldiers

*For tips on what to send and not send, here’s a link.

When you see men and women in uniform in the airport, in the mall, at the game, please thank them for their service. It’s the least we can do.

Listening to: So Post All ‘Em by Yacht from the album – I Believe In You, Your Magic Is Real which may be the best Valentine message of all time.

-If Valentine’s Day is something you have been dreading, take an artist’s date! Julia Cameron writes about these in The Artist’s Way. Time for YOU to do something that fills up the well. If you don’t think you are an Artist, can I gently tell you …actually, you are.

-Longest Married Living Couple Herbert+Zelmyra Fisher, married 82 years, have been taking questions about marriage via Twitter @longestmarried and will answer them tomorrow here on Valentine’s Day (14th).

-Moomah is one of those discoveries that makes me thankful for the interwebs.

-Papa John’s Pizza will deliver heart-shaped pizza to your house upon request. I sent one home to my little girl yesterday and it was a hit.

-Watch and/or record love stories on Drop Everything for Love.com. The graphics on this site are awesome.

-The Crying Wife website that I found via @Soup_Lady is hysterical.

-I pick up film from the developer today for the first time in 10 years. I’m excited.

-Perfect dresses from Shabby Apple which I found via Stephmodo.

-Watching this teacher talk with her class about these paintings made me remember how exciting it can be to both learn and to share what you know.

This one, too…

He doesn’t hold grudges. He loves me, even when it’s really hard to do. He turns off lights when I have a migraine. He never rolls his eyes.

We are no model for greatness. Neither of us is perfect. I hope we stay together forever, but I don’t take for granted that we will. But at least I can say that I am much closer to becoming the person I would like to be because I’ve spent eleven years with him.

When were were planning our trip, we noticed there’s a restaurant in New York called Insieme. Insieme, italian for “together,” is one of those important words for us for reasons that are too dear to share, but sufficed to say, it’s one of two words that we would have had engraved inside our wedding rings, had we sprung for that. When he read to me the review of Insieme from the New York Times, I thought it was the perfect description for our marriage: “Its setting lacks magic, its kitchen can be inconsistent and a few of the dishes fall well short of the others. But when Insieme is good, it’s outstanding.”

Listening to: Amelie

Maybe it’s all of the red, but Valentine’s Day has me thinking about revisiting Amelie.

Listening to: You Are My Everything – Miles Davis {click play below if you want to listen with me while you read}

It’s a rainy, Parisian kind of day today which has me thinking of Valentines. Here are some heart-shaped links for you:

*Chocolate. Chocolove chocolate bars are my favorite and even come with a poem inside. I have not received any freebies, but I welcome them with open arms.

*Pack Your Bags. Here is a honeymoon packing check-list from Real Simple which I thought might come in handy if you are leaving town for Valentine’s Day.

*Here’s a link on how to tie a bow tie.

*Music. A link to the most romantic album of all time: Ella & Louis.

*Movies. Catch a good love story. {Here are some ideas…Shakespeare In Love, Four Weddings & A Funeral, When Harry Met Sally, Only You, Pride & Prejudice, Amelie, Say Anything, Sense & Sensibility, Emma, An Affair To Remember, The Notebook, Sliding Doors, Moonstruck, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones, Fools Rush In, Stranger Than Fiction, The Wedding Date, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Up at the Villa, French Kiss, Pretty Woman, The Holiday, Mansfield Park, Roman Holiday, Love Actually, and so on.}

*Love letters. I love the Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett (1845-1846) vol 1 which you can read online for free here if you can’t find a copy. I searched for years for the correspondence of George Bernard Shaw & Mrs. Patrick Campbell. I searched bookshops in Sligo and Galway and Dublin and finally found one upstairs in the attic at Poor Richard’s Books in Frankfort, Kentucky for $11. Go figure. Whenever I have anything for work in Frankfort, I swing by Poor Richard’s. They have a coffee shop, too. Though not love letters, I do have my eye on this collection of letters between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. Speaking of letters, I’m eagerly awaiting the DVD release {because I can never make it to the theater} of Bright Star, based on John Keats and his love letters to Fanny Brawne.

*Poems of course. There are so many to choose from on the topic of Valentines. Nikki Giovanni’s Love Poems are old faves. Though not a romantic poem, wanted to share A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal, by Billy Collins, from Picnic Lightning. {I think about this poem sometimes when I write here as I often don’t know the people, 2,000 this month, who are reading on the other side. It’s a curious thing and sometimes makes me feel very shy.}

A Portrait of the Reader with a Bowl of Cereal
Every morning I sit across from you
at the same small table,
the sun all over the breakfast things—
curve of a blue-and-white pitcher,
a dish of berries—
me in a sweatshirt or robe,
you invisible.

Most days, we are suspended
over a deep pool of silence.
I stare straight through you
or look out the window at the garden,
the powerful sky,
a cloud passing behind a tree.

There is no need to pass the toast,
the pot of jam,
or pour you a cup of tea,
and I can hide behind the paper,
rotate in its drum of calamitous news.

But some days I may notice
a little door swinging open
in the morning air,
and maybe the tea leaves
of some dream will be stuck
to the china slope of the hour—

then I will lean forward,
elbows on the table,
with something to tell you,
and you will look up, as always,
your spoon dripping milk, ready to listen.

*A novel about crazy love like Love In The Time of Cholera, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My copy is marked up and I’ve underlined passages like these:

“It had to teach her to think of love as a state of grace: not the means to anything but the alpha and the omega, an end in itself.” p. 293 Penguin Press.

“… marriage ends every night after making love, and must be rebuilt every morning before breakfast.” p. 209

*Photos.
Fuji Instax film cameras is the Fuji answer to Polariod.  I have not tried one, but aren’t they the cutest?

Listening to: Sufjan Stevens’s peaceful version of Joy To The World.

Last week, I picked up the Food Network’s holiday magazine for the cookie recipes, but discovered these gems too:

*Snow & Graham wrapping paper – classy stuff.

*A search for Snow & Graham led me to this great stationary resource Red Stamp.com

*The magazine also featured this Pouch Tea Mug which, naturally, is sold out today.

*The coolest feature though wasn’t a recipe, but a look into Nigella’s house. According to the article, {p. 71} Nigella, “keeps brown paint chips above her coffeemaker so that guests can point out how milky they want their coffee or tea.” Genius. They advertize this mug that accomplishes the same thing.

totally brill.

*I couldn’t find my favorite Nigella Christmas episode online to share with you, but what I loved about it {aside from her built-in bookshelves everywhere} was her twinkle lights that almost seem pink, the little stockings she hangs on her kids’ bunk beds and the peaceful lighting. It’s idyllic and the kind of calm I try to hold on to after the holidays are over. This year, it will be a big challenge with the most heavily scheduled January in my career. As Grandpa used to say, I’m blessed with work.

This week, we’re turning the pages of:
Christmas At The Zoo.
You Are My Miracle
The Sweet Smell of Christmas
The Grinch
The holiday pop-up books from Robert Sabuda
The Berenstain Bears Trim The Tree
If You Take A Mouse To The Movies {aka The Popcorn Book in our house}
A Snowy Day
The Little Drummer Boy
Snow
Olive The Other Reindeer
Little Tree inspired by the sweetest poem by ee cummings

“The little tree had found his own special place that was waiting for him all his life.” Chris Raschka

Here’s a lovely list of holiday reading recommendations from SouleMama and another even better one here.

What are your favorite holiday books?