Advent Season

This week Advent began, we pulled the first  of the holiday decorations out of the boxes (albeit waiting on the tree which won't happen until Sunday afternoon) and we got our fruitcake baked and began its bathing schedule. The holidays are in full swing...so much cinnamon scented happiness scattered all about.

I am working on ideas for myriad gifts and thinking about all the little things that we'll be doing between now and our departure for Michigan that will help to add small touches of holiday cheer and a sense of ownership for our own little family traditions. I am caught in a land between being the happy child who goes home to my parent's for Christmas and being the beaming mother who fashions a memorable celebration for her own tiny tots. This is my own little way of appeasing the piece of me that is a bit grouchy about always donning the child cap when I so long to also be the mommy who is mistress of my own celebration. The season between now and Christmas week is all mine to plan and celebrate in. This afternoon, while the oxtail stew was simmering on the stove, the boys and I were putting together a pomander. I am sure there were many cloves squished and dropped on the floor and more than a few sticky fingers, which is somehow just as it should be.

This year my cookie baking will be a simpler affair since the neighbor lady just dropped a note in our mailbox to tell me that one of those fabled cookie exchanges will take place at her house on the 12th. I am still pinching myself over the fabulous good luck that I have been really, truly invited to such a fete. I cannot wait. Now I just have to pick a perfect recipe and whip up my six dozen offerings.

I am going out to the garden next to start snipping boughs off of the offending yews, cluttering the front of the house. I plan to cover the mantle with them and then whirl up a wreath for the front door with a big red bow on it. It will be free, festive and those horrible misshapen bushes will have served a purpose after all. That's the way it should be; may all our little obstacles end up as lively, decorative embellishments.

Radiators, Restoration and Garden Rehab

Its getting cold and its time to wear socks every time we go outdoors now and test out radiator life indoors. I love our radiators. It makes me happy turn the thermostat and hear them hum and hang my towel on one in the morning.

I started carving out the first of our garden beds this morning and have plans to ask our next door neighbor for the use of his chainsaw to remove the yews all across the front of the house. Am looking forward to the open look and all the possibility it allows. The gardens I made this morning are super cute and I have plans for a climbing rose on a trellis on the stone wall at the back, an arbor in another section of the yard, and am hoping to divide and transplant the peonies, irises and daylilies that we inherited with the house. I can't wait to see what color they all are. I will bet on pink for the peonies and my landscape designer friend things the daylilies  might be stella d'oro which would make me quite happy as they are a little more controllable and interesting than giant swaths of the orange variety.

"Before" of where I put the two new little beds. I love this doorway and can't wait to frame it beautifully.

Cutting and rolling up the sod to make it an open soil area for flowering plants!

Sod rolls

A kind of chopped off "After" shot...shows all of the small bed on the left and part of the bigger one on the right. They are both half moons against the stone. Climbing rose will go on the wall to the right.

Here's where I envision the arbor. Right in that gap between that pole on the ground and edge of the new bed. I think it will be a great entrance to the garden from the drive.

 

 

A view of some of the yews across the front of the house that will require a chainsaw.

Have chicken and baked potatoes in the oven and a table I trashpicked off a curb that I'm working on restoring. If only I had a magical stash of spray paint to pick through and use, I'd love to paint it and also the changing table I made and the days for painting large furniture outdoors are drawing to a close. Pretty soon paint won't dry well because it will be too cold.

Legs of my trash table

And the oh-so-separated at the moment top...trying to figure out how to put it back together.

Am stoked for a weekend as I have made a new plan, run errands on weekends and thus eliminate manic insanity on the days when I have the car during the week. It should help me keep the dashing around minimized during the week and help me actually get into some sort of a home routine again. As is we're either totally grounded and cozy-home or running our heads off with three quarters of us in tears by the time we run home panting at the end of the day and realize there aren't any dinner plans. Can't have that.