Christmastime is here.

It feels so good to be back on the blog.  I've missed writing more and more, especially recently.  I find myself thinking about how I would write something that happened to me during the day, or how I'm feeling, and turning it into my latest imaginary "post."

I told some friends this the other day, and they asked me the obvious question - so, why don't you start writing again? So, here I am!

More to come soon - but for now, a few glimpses into the happenings this season at our home:

• Made a Pinterest craft with rolled magazine pages
• Decorated for the holidays
• Made Christmas cookies with family
• Finished my internship at the Department of Education last week with a trip to the White House!
• Worked on papers and applied to grad schools with my husband over many cups of coffee
•  Visited Amanda, my college roommate for all four years, and her husband Tyler in the hospital to meet their new little girl, Leah! We love her already...
• Got our Christmas tree!
• Went to the cabin with friends to just relax.

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

Rachel

{My First Sewing Attempt!}

The Before

The After

Today I finally pulled out my brand new sewing machine (a gift from my mom this year for Christmas!) and sat down to conquer my very first sewing attempt - curtains.  A few days ... or maybe more like weeks... ago, I showed the wide open window we have in our living room.  I love the big old windows we have in our apartment, but they can certainly be a little exposing when you're stumbling around in your pajamas in the morning... So my first attempt at my sewing machine was to sew a curtain for our living room window.  I am not domestic at heart, and although I love artistic endeavors, I rarely am very good at them without either some major help or copying them from someone else's design.  Sad, but true...



So, with that in mind, I'll show you my first attempt - not great, a little shorter than I intended, and quite a bit crooked, but I'm excited just because I threaded my machine (on my own!), made it work (on my own!), and sewed a curtain (on my own!).  For me - that's a big deal!  I'll take this little victory for today. 

Here I am...back again.

It feels good to be back to the blog again.  Honestly, I'm not feeling quite up to it yet... the weeks after Christmas have quite honestly been tough for me (although full of wonderful things at the same time).  I have battled some anxiety that has flared up again with being more alone and unstructured after Christmas break.  I'm working on it in the best way I can, but am seeking out new ways to deal with it even more - I'm committed to being back to the best self I can be!  Part of that will be returning to blogging.  Not only do I love writing, but it is therapeutic and helps to process what is going on around and inside of me. Paired with more outdoors time, more walking, and more sleep, I think things are going to be looking up.  And even if that's a slow process, at least it's progress in my process.


For Christmas, I got so many wonderful things (more than we expected or asked for!), including a sewing machine.  I have to admit, I'm not actually much of a sew-er, as in, I don't know how to!  (except for watching my mom as I was growing up, which I'm hoping will come back to me quickly)  I am determined to learn how to use it, and I'm excited to try my mind at a few things.  First on the list, these draft dodgers from Martha Stewart and curtains (I guess more like valances) for the kitchen door and the living room window by my desk.  It is a huge window that is wide open and lets in a beautiful amount of natural light (I love old windows!) but is, well.... a little exposing.  If you're walking by out of the shower, or wearing pjs, or doing Zumba, it can be a little embarrassing.  

Here's the before:

Back deck door

Living room window

 
I'm going to be working with some fabric we have from other curtains to make shorter, half-curtain, valance type of curtain so that this window still has lots of natural light.  More to come in the next post with after pictures!

Today, I'm praying this prayer from Spoken Worship by Gerald Kelly:

Give me grace to not be, gracefully, the parts I am not called to be and to play with elegance the roles I'm given.

Fill me in somewhere in this giant jigsaw, God, somewhere in this work of art you're working.  Weave your wondrous tapestry until the twisted threads of me, surrendered to your artistry form an image that is beautiful to see. 

- R.

morning light.

I have been so distracted lately, and probably rightly so.  This past week, I wrote 45 pages worth of final papers, and wrapped up lots of loose ends that stood between me and the completion of my first semester of seminary.  What a good semester it was.   I learned so much about faith, politics, policy issues, and how to navigate public transportation {on my own}.  Actually, realizing what I can do on my own (navigate two trains a day, stay away a night or two a week from my husband, pack on the fly, deal with unexpected complications...) has been a huge boost for my self-confidence this fall.

It's my second full day without any schoolwork to do (once January rolls around, I have to buckle down and write a chapter for one of my professor's books that will be submitted for publishing in the spring).  Yesterday, I woke up feeling like I would have no idea what to do with myself, but I found plenty of wonderful, relaxing ways to fill my time (disclaimer: my definition of wonderful).  I had a lazy morning with cereal, coffee, and the Today Show.  I went out and stopped at my favorite thrifting stops, and then spent time wandering around the city library.  I came home with an armful of books that I can't wait to read.  Last night, I practically devoured a "for fun" book (it has been so long since I've read something with no purpose whatsoever).  I read all of White Oleander last night between dinner and bed.  It is a sad, mysterious book, but it has a lot to say about resilience and the people who make life meaningful.

Today, I'm being lazy once again, trying to decide which book to read next and where I will ride my bike to today.  I had a whole to-do list of plans for today, but I forgot that I was car-less and therefore can only be as productive as where I can walk or bike to.  So I will gladly embrace today as a quiet, lazy one.

Lately I've been taking lots of pictures of the late morning light in our apartment.  Although winter days can seem bleak, there is something so still and beautiful about the late morning light of the winter.  Taking pictures of the simple everyday spots that are transformed in the morning light helps me appreciate the places that I spend my every day.

I am so excited for the weekend over here.  Ben has had a ton of work lately, so a break is much-needed.  We've been taking weeknight mini-trips this week to break up the work days: driving in the country and looking at lights plus a trip to Sonic for milkshakes, stopping by Toys R Us last night (yep, my husband is a kid at heart - and I love it) and getting fountain sodas on the way home, and tonight, we're itching for more lights and I'm itching for a night of no cooking.  The last weekend before Christmas!  What a good one it's going to be.

“I embrace the messiness of life, I find it so beautiful actually.”
Brad Pitt

“I watched the early morning light pass over and through the windows of colored glass, leaving streaks of red and green and yellow on the stone floor.  Now I know it is like happiness-- it is there or it is not, you cannot hold it or keep it.” Karen Cushman

In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary.  Aaron Rose

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas {over here}.

Pictures from a Rainy Weekend.

Rainy weekends call for none other than a good house cleaning.  There's finally no excuse to ignore the piles of dishes, dust, and clutter that has accumulated (at least that's what usually constitutes cleaning at our house...).  This weekend we did all of that, thanks to the help of my willing husband and some laundry assistance from my parents.

I took advantage of some down time on Sunday to start working on better organization for my kitchen.  I made a good start, but I know I have more to do, which first will involve reading/researching a few good ideas for organizing a small apartment kitchen.

Just a few before and after photos of surface-level organizing:

Before

 (Yes, I do like to watch Hulu while

working in the kitchen.)

After

And then I was finally able to get outside and survey the state of our very wet fall garden.  We still have a few things going - kale, pumpkins, eggplant, tomatoes, and hot peppers, not to mention a few cantaloupes and maybe squash (we're waiting to see what will happen with those).  I would have snapped more ground-level photos, but the bugs were at me non-stop, so I made as quick a stop as I could!

Tomatoes, squash, kale, and pumpkins (look hard!)

LOTS of tomatoes!

(You can see the effects of a few days of rain 

from looking at the pots on our fire escape!)

As you can see, we still have burgeoning tomato plants, which means that more salsa is in the works this week (maybe with a little extra kick since we have so many hot peppers and we're not really spicy-eating people.)! 

I am already looking forward to next spring and the garden planning and experiments that it will bring.  But for now, we will enjoy the last simple pleasures of our wet fall garden. 

"...I have great faith in a seed.  Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders."               -- Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday, In Pictures.

 

Yesterday there was an extremely successful pickle canning, thanks to:

1 - Tons of cucumbers, 

2 - Seriously, as big as my hand! (See the comparison?)

3 - Target canning equipment, which has been so much better than I would've thought

4 - A happy kitchen, looking out on a reorganized porch (more on that later in the post)

5+6 - Coffee (always a must-have for me!) and a new apron from my great friend, Amanda.

Ben and I tasted the pickles a little later that evening, and they are delicious (Ben said even better than store-bought!).  We devoured the first jar so fast, we are now glad we have six more pints of them in the pantry!

I was also feeling inspired to reorganize our porch.  Since summer has been drawing to a close (although I'm not believing it quite yet...), our porch has kind of become a little...straggly.  My plants have mostly died since our last vacation, and the deck has become somewhat of a shelf for all the last minute things I drop there and neglect to put away later on.  SO, it was most definitely time for a clean-up!  I think it's much better, and mostly because it feels so much better - cleaner, less haphazard, and more shabby-chic (at least I hope so!).  

 Happily reorganized and clean porch!
1+2 - Before photos: Not proud of these...
3,4,5,6 - Salvation Army purchases to organize/decorate the porch
7 - All for $13.29! (everything else I used was what we already had around)
8-13 - The "afters", plus curtains from our closet and tie-backs made from dishtowels... I had to work with had we had!

Once again, I'm reminded of an article I read in Psychology Today a few weeks ago, that an unexpected source of happiness is to do something with our hands.  Psychologists have actually found this effective as a source of therapy - to have their clients begin pottery, art, writing, journaling, playing piano, etc.  You can read more about it here.  It makes sense to me, though - after a full day of doing something productive, I feel more completed myself, more at peace with my life (but maybe it's also because I don't have to trip over the things on my porch anymore!).