December At Home

Wintertime homemaking is here. Christmas decorating. Cleaning. Rearranging. And making hygge wherever I can. Having a big snow storm during Thanksgiving vacation has added just the right wintertime feelings and scenery to match the mood. We are now officially plunged into deep snow wintertime, albeit early.

I can hardly settle down to write this post because I really want to bake. But I also really want to have something happier than my last post written here. Something that reflects a contented sense of well-being to go with deep snow winter beauty. Thus this fluff of words. No complaining allowed.

We just finished reading Helen Hoover’s, A Place in the Woods. I read while Elv drives: home from the cabin, from shopping in Duluth, or traveling to and from Nebraska where we spent Thanksgiving weekend with a couple of our children and grands. This book is about a couple who moved from Chicago to the north woods in the Arrowhead and lived “rustic” for seventeen years. You’d laugh at us. But we’re odd like that. I think I’ll get a copy of We Took To The Woods next. Maybe someday I’ll write our own story about such things.

But I always come away from those stories wondering if it is a selfish pursuit. It has been so ingrained in us to think in terms of one another-ing: loving your neighbor (we’d have a few of those), living close to church, having family close by, and boonies phobia in general. And what will people think? Well, that’s not really a question, is it? People generally think whatever they want to think about us. And having already decided that we are a little odd with our cabin adventures we are now free to let them and do what we like, right? Those are my thought processes.

Mantel piece decorating holds a special charm for me. Of course, because it means a fireplace and wood burning heat, but also because it is a great place to create an idea of comfort and to display the seasonal pretties. And lights. Old books. Something blue, of course. This cracked teapot is perfect, don’t you think?

This little African violet is Kristine’s. It just lives on my window sill because they’re living in a tiny house for now. It reminds me of Mom Graber, who always had three or four of them blooming on her window sill. I wish I’d have asked her how she could get them to bloom. This one is happy and growing. Maybe it will bloom sometime soon.