We Don’t Take Turns

I’m sure you all you parents out there in blog land know the drill by now – you produce a few wee ones and the glorious glorious days of sleeping until 11 AM come to an abrupt and screeching halt.  As fun as it is to stagger out of bed before first light and immediately [...]

2012 Resolutions

I get the vibe that people aren’t that fond of New Year’s Resolutions? Whatever, I love them, and we all know it’s my vote that counts, so here are mine: 1. Get Eli into Kindergarten.  This is more complicated than one might imagine, but whatever, let’s do this thing. 2. Fix the backyard so it [...]

Christmas Decor 2011

It’s taken me until just about now to be satisfied with the amount of Christmas decorations that we have up in the house, and I’d say I’ve been buying and making them for about ten years.  Every year I buy one expensiveish thing to supplement all the handmade stuff, although I don’t know if I [...]

House To Do 2012

Every year I like to type this list up. I don’t know that I’ve ever finished it, but it’s good to get it all out there. A girl can dream, right? Also, those links are the only previous year I can find, even though I know I’ve done this a million times. Whatever. Here’s our [...]

Not In My Backyard

So today is really actually a pretty nice day.  Aside from the fact that this December could not have been less Christmassy, the weather has been basically awesome and has reminded me why I can never leave California and why we live here.  I do love sunshine. Normally it starts raining in November and it [...]

Advent Days: I Forget

Somewhere in there we went to see Santa.  Katie was not a fan, although Eli was fine with it. I think it’s especially awesome that now if you ask Katie if she likes Santa or wants to see Santa, she looks right at you, shakes her head violently, and says “NOOOOOO. Santa NOOOOOO.” I also [...]

The Best Books I Read This Year

(Some of these books were published prior to 2011, but I read them this year.) 1. The Lonely Polygamist 2. One Day 3. Please Ignore Vera Dietz 4. Crossing the Tracks 5. Daughter of Smoke and Bone 6. State of Wonder 7. Where She Went 8. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake 9. Ok for [...]

Stockings

Swistle’s post on stockings was going to result in the leaving an eight paragraph comment, so I thought I’d just pontificate about stockings over here. So the evolution of our Christmas is that I went from wrapping up EVERY SINGLE THING I COULD FIND and putting it under the Christmas tree to be opened on [...]

Advent Day 12, 13, and 14

Advent Day 12 was “Decorate Christmas Cookies.” We decorated gingerbread cookies and sugar cookies. I made the gingerbread men the night before, from this recipe.  Normally I am not a huge gingerbread person, but once a year I get this CRAVING and I must have a soft spicy made from scratch gingerbread man, and that [...]

Advent Day Eight, Nine, and Ten: The Lull

Dear Christmas:  You Can Suck It.  Love, Elizabeth I believe we have officially entered what shall heretofore be referred to as the Dreaded Christmas Lull.  Or just the Lull for short. I’m not sure how to explain this Lull, exactly. It will probably take all of my most fancy tricky writing.  Luckily fancy tricky writing [...]