Living

I am rarely lured by the lovely fresh flowers that are so cleverly marketed to me at my local grocery store. My will power is usually quite strong. I push my cart right by them telling myself that I never really cared for lilies anyway and the Christmas cactus's will only bloom for a short while... But alas I caved this past weekend. I blame it on the need for something other than the four us to be living in our home. That and the sneaky $2.99 bin in which they were calling my name from... The bait was set and I am left dangling from their hook. But they are so pretty aren't they?

Sun + light

1. Sunshine and spider webs!, 2. The man came from the light - L' uomo venuto dalla luce, 3. Freshness, 4. Feel fresh, 5. January 1st 6.45 a.m., 6. Untitled, 7. Dale Chihuly shared the spotlight yesterday!, 8. Women in red make pictures in the first ray of sunshine..., 9. Untitled

Because I haven't done one of these in awhile... I wanted the pictures I chose to focus on light. In this part of the country (world) we don't see a whole lot of sun and light this time of the year. I found my subconscious needing it, my eyes finding it and my soul being warmed by these photographs. The good news: my mother reminded us at Christmas that the worst is over; the days are now getting longer...if even only by minutes. It adds up.

Green Tuesdays: 1

In honor of my first Green Tuesday I am sharing two green ideas...

First: recycle your Christmas Tree. I know a lot of us have taken ours down already but if you're like my friend, it may still be sitting out in the backyard waiting for someone to miraculously come and take it away. Many areas (including here in Williamsport) have places you can take your tree and the city will turn it into mulch (for free!).

Second: recycle or donate your old cell phones. Cell phones contain mercury, cadmium, lead, and other poisonous materials (who knew?). Tossing these in the landfill will allow the toxins to leak into the soil, which get into the water which...well you know the rest. If you go to www.electronicsrecycling.com you can enter your zip code and it will list the recycling places closest to you. Here in Williamsport it looks like we need to go to Lewisburg. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, there are up to 130 million unused cell phones in the United States. Recycling those phones would save enough energy to power 194,000 households for one year.

Hello new year

So with all this time off over the holidays you would think that I could post more than one thing to the blog...but no, instead I seem to be absorbed in life at home with no schedule and quite frankly have forgotten about the blog (shhh don't tell). But to catch you up let me tell you what I have been doing...

First; soup, soup and more soup. It's that time of year. I love to make soup. There is just no substitute for a great bowl of soup and a nice slice of bread on the side. My latest was this Southwestern Soup that is on the cover of Southern Living this month. I saw the magazine while standing in line at Lowe's (been living there lately) and it just had to be made for dinner.

Been reading the creative family - lots of interesting thoughts and ideas for raising children in a creative environment. Having more fun with less toys...aahhh, love this idea. After the blissful madness of Christmas I am faced with more plastic and more junk. Some is inevitable and by no means do I believe that all plastic toys are junk, but I know my kids have a lot...a really really lot and I feel at times that I am fighting an endless battle to try and instill values and a sense of appreciation for what my boys have. The author of the book is Amanda Blake Soule...in addition to her book she has a lovely blog soule mama that is worth checking out.

And I would not be Andria if I didn't do some baking. I have made the famous molasses cookies, a raisin puff cookie and these soft lemon sugar cookies...

After our bellies are full of soup and bread and cookies John and I retire to the living room to read for the half hour that the boys give us before tubby time. They head to the basement for some really bad evening television probably involving a square sponge that lives in a pineapple under the sea and we get 30 minutes of peace - it's a trade off I'm willing to make. Anyway, this was under the Christmas Tree for me and I am salivating over each and every page...

And with design on my mind...www.rugman.com was a rather dangerous discovery. My sister in law turned me on to this website. Real Persian hand knotted rugs. I've bought two already and I'm eyeing up a third for my kitchen.

Last but not least...it is the new year and I do believe in resolutions. I believe in resolutions anytime of the year~all the times of the year, so why not January 1 too? For me January is a wonderful time to start fresh and set some goals. All my decorations get put away which inevitably leads to some cleaning and reorganizing and throwing away. It's a time for taxes (or at least thinking about taxes), a time for settling last years business and money and starting fresh. I have a list of resolutions/ideas/thoughts/goals and one is to concentrate on living a bit greener and being more conscious of what "living green" really means. I don't think I'm horribly behind the eight ball here...I mean...my parents were green before green was cool so I have a foundation...I just want to work on it a little, maybe put in some flooring and maybe walls? I'm hoping this book can help to spark some thoughts. And because the fate of resolutions is often grim I propose that I make Tuesdays Green Tuesdays. I will post a green thought for the week...this will help keep me accountable and maybe help spread the word a bit? Stay tuned for my first green post tomorrow! Okay, so I think you're caught up. Sigh. Welcome 2009 - here I come!

Day 365

Since I seem to have totally missed Christmas I figured I could squeak out one more post for 2008.

looking back - love all the traveling I did with my family enjoyed watching Duncan mellow and Cooper grow embraced lots of imperfections saved a nice amount of money learned how to use layers in photoshop (finally) designed a house wrote lots of notes to my children became more aware of my dreams looking forward - create more art study history build a home practice patience work on being more green drink more water watch my baby go to his first day of school be in the moment nurture my family

Snow

Snow can be wonderfully beautiful.

And it can be wonderfully cold.

Home

He's glad to be home.

Really, honest. What? You think he misses 85 and sunny every day? Oh how boring. What? You think aqua marine waters top ice crusted mud covered once was snow? Oh man, you just don't see the value of family. He missed us...he is glad to be home.

The best is yet to come

The best part of playing out in the cold is definitely coming home and drinking hot cocoa ~ complete with crushed candy canes. Oh yeah, I see totally see a whip cream mustache coming on...

Cabin fever

It had to be done. First, we totally got the shaft here in the North East with snow. Every news story is snow snow snow. Every blog I read, from Oregon to Utah to Maine...yep, buckets of snow. Us? Wintry mix. WHAT IS THAT? I'll tell you what it is....mean. The boys and I had a fun "inside" day planned...more coloring, building with blocks, cookie baking, hair dying (ooops, did I say that?). Anyway by noon we were (literally) climbing the walls. What? You don't think preschool boys can actually climb walls? Stop over. I threw on their coats, first we hit Wegmans for some lunch and then to the park. I pulled up, turned off the car and announced to the boys that I wanted them to get out and run. Run and run and run. Run until you can't run another second. We forgot hats... and gloves. But we didn't care. In fact, Cooper even said "hey mom this is actually fun"!

December evening

Enjoying a delightfully creative evening here tonight. It's a bit rainy and art seemed the perfect way to kill a couple hours. Cooper chose to go the race car route, while Duncan went a little more crafty and made his mother a bouquet of flowers. Me? Oh I can't resist anything having to do with paper...add photos and I'm in heaven. I have actually been working on a 25 days of December album - documenting each day with photos + words. I plan on sharing a few photos of the project but I need to take the photographs in the daytime...lighting in the evening in my house is just not conducive to that sort of thing. Hoping you all had an equally enjoyable evening.

In this moment

Right now I am: Relieved: that I got so much checked off my "list to do" over the weekend. Excited: because some of the cool goodies I ordered online are starting to show up.

Blessed: to capture photos like this... Anxious: for the season to slow down and hurry up and get here! Ready: to give, to overflow, to tear, to smile, to enjoy, to love, to sleep, to create, to catch my breath.

Being (un)authentic

Okay so I skipped the tree shopping story. It's inevitable, year after year we flip flop between cutting down our own or buying a pre-cut. Maybe it's because we live in the Northeast, but there seems to be this underlying sense that if we all hop in the truck, drive 30 miles to a tree farm, cut down our tree and haul it home, we are somehow more "authentic" than those who pull up to the roadside stand, pay $30 and tie the beauty on the roof. Last year we did the authentic route (as we do pretty much every other year); we went out as a family, I took pictures, we drank hot cocoa while they wrapped up our tree...it was angelic...if you could over look the kids complaining the minute we got out of the car because they were cold and we couldn't find a straight tree without gaping holes to safe our life. Cooper had to pee (thank goodness Duncan was still in diapers), we had to drill our own hole in the bottom once we got it home because the "authentic" guys don't have that fancy machine. We never were sure if our drilling was off or if the trunk was just crooked to start with? So anyway, when the discussion came up this year I asked the boys what they wanted to do...Cooper said "mom, can we just GO, PICK IT OUT and BE DONE WITH IT"? And so we did...off to Tebb's we went, $36 and she is perfect. And we didn't even have to get out of the car long enough to catch a chill. Stay tuned for next year when we will forget how miserable it was and feel the need to once again be authentic.

The tree

You really can't resist the magic of a Christmas Tree. The boys keep telling me that they have the prettiest tree of all. I caught Duncan just sitting and staring at it this evening. He admitted that it's really hard not to touch (and play) with the decorations. Not even the best Christmas movie seems to trump sitting, staring & dreaming.

Getting on with December

Handmade recycled ornaments.

A sign of the times: I haven't been able to post anything for over a week because my computer had a virus. Apparently it was "going around". When I called my IT guy and explained the symptoms he in fact said "yeah, it's been going around...we've had a few computers here in our office get it". He said "no problem, just drop her off in the morning and I will fix her up". Huh. Do you know that my computer's even go in for annual checkups? Would we even have dreamed this 10 years ago? Do you remember 5 years ago when even the word "virus" sent us all into a tail spin? Now it's like the flu...annoying if you get it because it slows you down for a few days, but you seem to recover with no lasting ill effects. You can even get software (ie. a flu shot) to ward off most strains. Okay, well heading off now to get "the tree"...be back later with some pics!