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 Jumping right back in again. Care to join me? A photo a day. I'll be happy to include a link here to your journey, if you'd like. I have some new ideas for my approach this year, new ways to make this creative project an opportunity for growth. So ready!

 And this is a little glimpse into another promise being made good -- making, making, making. The supply of handmade holiday gifts should be more than ample by the time December rolls around again. I've promised this, repeatedly, before -- that I'd carry my energy for making things that strikes, reliably, *just* before Christmas into the coming year so that I'd be ready next time. And just because I've failed before doesn't mean I can't make it happen this time. Watch this space.

And keep believing in what's important, stay focused on actions that spread goodness and that are a catalyst for positive change. There isn't anything we can do if we put our minds, and our hands, to it.

And that's 365

I did it.

I set out, on January 1, 2016, to take a photograph every day. I did take photos every day. Even though I often had to resort to posting them in batches, I did what I set out to do. I'm kind of amazed. In many ways, Natalie was the angel on my shoulder; she joined in on the project and seeing her stay steady helped me to not give up. Thank you, Natalie.

I'm struck by how our collective take on 2016 was that it was awful. The year that sucked, it seems. I see that -- I see all our horrible losses, I see a world gone wrong politically, I see the ravages of global climate change and the collapse of empathy. But I also saw joy, and reasons to hope, and reasons to believe. My beloved Cubs won the World Series, for goodness sake!

We are here. We have survived. We may have difficult work ahead of us, and particularly large obstacles to climb over and eradicate. But we will move forward. We will make progress. We will find the good things, the joys; we will hold hope and we will create hope for others. The problems, the evils that have come into sharp focus this year are not new, they are simply newly exposed.

So let's face them head on. Let us remember that every day, every action, every choice, is an important part of a collective whole -- and the energy and intent of those small parts will define the whole. Let's believe in what we know to be true: there is good in the world.

And, finally, let's share. Put yourself out there, share your ideas, add your voice. I'll be here.

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

It's also an annual thing

In the days *just before* and then immediately after Christmas, I always get my most crafty urges and energies. This is when I always declare that I will keep Christmas (crafting) in my heart throughout the year, and be ready by next Christmas to go nearly all handmade.

It's ok.  It's ok that I go through this every year, and it's ok that it hasn't panned out that way before. That doesn't have to mean that I feel defeated already; this could, in fact, be the year.

I love bears. I love Christmas. I love making. This first endeavor is based on an old Martha Stewart pattern set (as you may well already know, Martha and her minions have really fallen down, as years have passed, in terms of writing worthwhile instructions -- instead of using the limitlessness of the web to our collective advantage, now it's usually minimal patterns, instructions that don't match up to the project or that skim over the stuff you actually need to know); btw, search "woodland" on her site for a slew of interesting ideas.

And so off I go. Making and enjoying and looking out at the cold and not worrying about how far I get.

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

Nor'easter

Biggest snowflakes. Ever?

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

Color and texture and city life

A trip into town today.

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

Settled in

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

Boxing Day to some...

...and always Game Day to us. Have you played a newer board game recently? They've gotten super, super complicated -- the impact of card games like Magic, and online gaming, and role-playing games. In a way it's kind of wonderful to see something become so very complex (a sign, perhaps, that the apocalypse, at least measured by patience and education and long-range planning/commitment?), although in the heat of the moment I sometimes have to really remind myself of this (I can get a little frustrated when it seems like it's going to take weeks and weeks, maybe more, to really understand the game and it's strategy -- although that's partly because it's kind of open-ended and incumbent upon the players...). Well, in any case, remarkably, I won this round.

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

Merry Christmas to us all

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

In case you were wondering

Do you ever play this game? Just try typing the very beginning of a question into Google; it's usually fairly hilarious, informative, puzzling, and revealing of the zeitgeist....

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

Now it's real

Ken's now officially home from work, and home for the holidays. Dean had a Magic deck ready and waiting so that they could play. I stir up some dinner with these two in view, with holiday music playing, and I feel Christmas. Maybe I'm a little especially obsessed, or observant, of these moments now that I miss them so much; absence makes the ordinary feel extraordinary.

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

Saving your place

Dean was grateful I remembered to save out his most favorite ornaments for him to hang. He watched the two Prep and Landing shows with us tonight(these became instant traditions -- very well done!), and then was in the mood to do his bit of decorating. They are never too old. You just have to make it smooth and easy and let it unfold on their terms, I believe. I believe.

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

Gingerbread Day

 I believe I made my first gingerbread house when Dean was 2. For the record, that's crazy; I think I was in that parenting phase of trying desperately hard to make up for working in a high-level corporate job full-time by trying to ultra do things with Dean, for Dean. I remember that he was sweet and super-patient and mostly watched and provided moral support which I dearly needed -- that house almost undid me and I do remember resorting to using straight pins to hold the panels together. He surprised me by asking me to make one again the following Christmas and our tradition was born.

 (In the photo above, Dean demonstrates a great trick; it is MUCH easier to at least partially decorate the panels (and then let them dry) BEFORE you construct the house. Of course this depends on the kind of decorating you want to do -- attaching big candies and stuff would be easier once it's up, but small, piped details are easier to do beforehand. He's also kind of demonstrating why it's much harder to construct on a small or raised plate; you cannot lie the pieces out flat, upside-down, in the way that it's best to start constructing [I tried to find a good online guide but had a hard time -- this one is not ideal, but at 1:59 she has the pieces laid out and begins putting them together in the same way I'm talking about.)

So you slowly put up each wall, as Dean is doing here, and use cans or other heavy, small objects to help support walls as you go. This shape that he's doing, with walls that flare out, is MUCH harder to do than houses with straight sides -- another important tip!

 

 

 So the mistake I made this year was that I randomly tried some new house shapes without really checking them first to make sure the patterns were correct. On this house that I'm in the midst of building, above, the roof panels were too short -- they wouldn't fit across the width of the house so that they would rest on those triangular roofline pieces. After puzzling for a few minutes, I decided to cut bamboo skewers to act as supports -- you can just see inside to the roof piece that's on, that I liberally applied royal icing to the bamboo and then used lots of icing to fill in the gap between the triangular roofline piece and the roof itself.  You can also just see, on the right, the odd kind of tower I had to build, using a drinking cup, a coaster, a towel, and a soup can in order to support the roof piece while it dried. If I had built this house on a regular board, as I usually do, it wouldn't have been so hard -- but this cake plate has raised edges and very little space left around the house to place supports. Poor planning on my part.

Dean chose to go with a very rustic, gnome-made in the woods look for his house; he likes to make things that look more real and less precious. I can feel the bitterly cold winds blowing around his little snow-speckled cabin....

 

This is my House 1, with the roof panels that had to be supported inside with bamboo. I made the wreath while it was down flat, and then attached it to the house once it dried.

 And this is my House 2. Another risky design -- roofs this large and this sloping are very difficult to attach. Plus I definitely pushed the dough too far and rolled too thinly in order to get 3 houses out of one batch; this was the first time I had several pieces crack and had to work around that issue. On this house, one of the roof panels cracked completely in half. I decided to use icing to just fuse it back together, and then *hid* it by using a roof design of kind of squiggly, uneven lines. I also pushed the envelope on the icing in that two batches would have been better -- we were a little tight coming down to the end or else I could have piped more details on the roof, for example, that would have even better hidden the cracks. But, I kind of love the more simple look, and the honesty.

 And here are our three little houses. Dean does not like to put lights in his. I used battery-operated, tiny LED lights and just tucked the battery backs at the back wall of the houses. Ta-da!

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

That's better

It's only all right when we're all together. He's grown, and he's happy to be home.

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

Ready and waiting

A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.

Homemaking

Dean takes his last final exam tomorrow morning, and then in the afternoon he comes home with Ken for his winter break. A month! Can't wait to have him back here. Getting ready for our annual gingerbread house construction day, listening to Christmas music (honestly, every day since Thanksgiving), and looking out the window at the snow. Grateful for all the things that make this time of year so precious to me, and reminding myself that it's the briefness of the season -- the fleetingness -- that's inherent in what makes it so profound. We don't live this way year-round; we cannot. We can aspire to it, surely, but it only truly exists in this little December bubble.


A photo a day over at Chicken Blog, too.