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I cut out this photo from a newspaper and kept it at my desk at work—there’s something about it that I just loved.
In reading about Benedict XVI’s death last week, I found this story about the Pope Emeritus’ “spiritual testament”—so I thought for the last day of blogmas, I’d share if with you. You can read it here.
And in honor of him, we’ll wrap up Blogmas ‘22 with a German carol, “Josef Lieber, Josef Mein”
Hailey was the best Christmas gift this year! She obviously could not wait to get out and spend Christmas with us, so instead of being a New Year’s baby, she’s a Christmas baby.
She is so sweet, and really, is there anything sweeter than a newborn at Christmas? I don’t think so, especially when I get to spend Christmas Eve with a snuggled up baby on my chest.
Because she was a little early and there’s so much respiratory crap going around this year, the pediatrician asked us to wear masks if we’re holding her, hence my face gear. :) But it’s me!
Music: This is one of my FAVORITES—”The Seven Rejoices of Mary”, sung by Loreena McKennit.
When I was brainstorming my 2023 goals, one of the things that kept coming up was I do all the things I want to do—but I’m not consistent in doing them.
So my word of the year was pretttyyyyy evident. It’s consistency!
Let’s take goal three, for example—Creating a deeper relationship with God through regular prayer and confession.
I already have a regular prayer life. I already go to confession semi-regularly. But I want to do these things consistently. I want to say morning and evening prayer and my rosary every day—and that doesn’t happen. I want to make sure I’m going to confession once a month, etc. (The goal is every two weeks, eventually. Not right now!)
Consistency in fitness, in decluttering, in saving money, and in prayer is what I’m going for this year. Once I achieve consistency—and it’s easy to achieve, it’s almost automatic—then I can think about expanding what I’m doing to continue to reach higher goals. For example, the ultimate goal with working out is to be hitting the treadmill 5 days a week for thirty minutes. THat’s the ultimate, final goal, the “I’m running a marathon” goal. By consistency, I can work up to that goal and achieve it.
Here’s to being consistent in 2023!
Music: “The Echo Carol” (How Great Our Joy), Sung by the Benedictine Nuns of Ephesus in Gower, MO.
If it’s a new year, then it’s time for resolutions and new goals.
My goals this year really aren’t new, so to speak—they’re continuations of what I’ve been working on for the past few years, but with an adjusted focus. Does that make sense?
For example, I’ve always wanted to have a comfortable, cozy, organized home—but I wasn’t sure what that really looked like, in terms of appearance, decor, etc. Over the last year I learned what I like and what I don’t, what works and what doesn’t, and now I can apply that to focusing on this year’s house goal, which is to have a home full of things I love, and organized in a way that works for me and how I live.
An example of this is this lamp I got last year from Target.
I’d needed a new lamp in this space for years, but I couldn’t find one I liked—until I found this one. And finding that lamp solidified the “look” I’m going for in my house, which is English Cottage (think The Holiday or Country Living UK) meets a beach house.
With all that digression out of the way, here are my goals for 2023!
Goal #1: Grow emergency fund
Goal #2: Continue peloton work to become stronger and more fit—continue to have good lab results.
Goal #3: Deepen my relationship with God with regular prayer and confession. (I do do regular prayer but it’s not consistent. More on this tomorrow!)
Goal #4: To create home by decluttering and keeping what I love.
I’m not giving a ton of detail here—I’ll do that in future posts. But these are the four main goals for 2023 and I feel good about them!
Do you make new year’s resolutions or set new goals? I’d love to hear about them!
Today’s music: Ave Maria isn’t specifically a Christmas song, but it appears on a lot of holiday albums, so here’s a good version!
Dear brothers and sisters, it is only by pondering in the heart, in other words, by piecing together and finding unity in all we experience, that, following Mary, we can penetrate the mystery of a God who was made man out of love and who calls us to follow him on the path of love; a love to be expressed daily by generous service to the brethren. May the new year which we are confidently beginning today be a time in which to advance in that knowledge of the heart, which is the wisdom of saints. Let us pray, as we heard in the First Reading, that the Lord may “make his face to shine” upon us, “and be gracious” to us (cf. Nm 6: 24-7) and bless us. We may be certain of it: if we never tire of seeking his Face, if we never give in to the temptation of discouragement and doubt, if also among the many difficulties we encounter we always remain anchored to him, we will experience the power of his love and his mercy. May the fragile Child who today the Virgin shows to the world make us peacemakers, witnesses of him, the Prince of Peace. Amen!
—Pope Benedict XVI (1927-2022)
In today’s carol we have some trivia! Did you know this hymn was written by a Dominican blessed? It was—Bl. Henry Suso!
There were three things knit for gifts this year and now I can talk about them since they don’t have to be surprises anymore!
One of them I think I’d already shared—Hailey’s baby blanket.
Wrapped up in it :)
This is an adaptation of the Sully blanket pattern I’ve used for all the baby blankets I make, but every time I keep adapting is! This time I added a border of garter stitch all the way around—I start with four rows of garter stitch and then end with four rows of garter stitch, in addition to the four garter stitches at the end of each row. I don’t like to block blankets so I think that this makes the blanket “lie” a little bit better.
I used Rowan’s cashsoft merino in three colors: snowflake, vintage pink, and rosy.
Project Number 2: A winter scarf!
This was actually planned as a Christmas gift—I made my dad a scarf in easy mistake rib, using a nice navy blue yarn—and he got it before Christmas due to the insanely cold temperatures we had here! I’m glad I’d thought to make it!
(I don’t have any pictures, sorry, bad blogger me!)
Project Number 3: A Cowl for my Sister-in-law
This was sort of a random project. I had some of Quince and Co’s limited edition yarn based on a Taylor Swift song—Lavender Haze. I bought a few skeins thinking it would make some good cowls.
Once Hailey was born, I felt like I needed to make another Christmas gift for Sarah (my SIL) since one of her gifts was Hailey’s baby blanket—but since Hailey was here, it was hers now! Knowing that she loves sparkle, I thought I’d pair Lavender Haze with a sparkly Knit Collage yarn to make a really quick cowl that will keep her warm on walks with Hailey this winter!
The colors here aren’t really representative—it’s much more pink in person, not orange!
The pattern is Knit Collage’s Yarnicorn Cowl knit with Quince and Co Puffin and Knit Collage’s Star Spun in Lunar Landing. You need one skein of each and it seriously takes about two hours to knit up! Knit Collage’s yarns create really fun, unique knits. I’m going to make another one of these for my sister, except using the Knit Collage Kona Sky color way with the Lavender Haze.
Did you knit/crochet/craft any Christmas gifts? Tell me about them!
It actually ended up being a first Christmas for both my nieces—Hailey, as I wrote in an earlier post, wasn’t supposed to celebrate hers until next year! But she decided she couldn’t wait and had to have it now.
She spent her first Christmas Eve snoozing on my chest, which I have to say is a great way to spend Christmas on my end.
But for Miss Maddie, who is almost a year old, her first Christmas was very exciting!
She loved her Advent calendar—the little figures with their velcro backs were very intriguing to her (and sometimes they got stuck on her clothes!). She loved playing with them and placing them on the nativity scene.
She also had a couple of trees—one in her room:
And one that she could play with:
It had a train and ornaments too!
Her Advent/Christmas corner!
Madeleine did go to see Santa! She wasn’t scared of him, I don’t think, more…intrigued.
And YES, Santa commented on her missing boot! :) Maddie is still fighting against shoes and socks.
And they went to see the lights at the zoo!
For her first Christmas she got….a tricycle! That’s foot powered! I have never seen one of these and I think it’s adorable.
My sister made some great meals, which of course Madeleine enjoyed.
She wants food, lots of food!
And her birthday is at the beginning of January, so it’s going to be party-palooza for Maddie over the next week or so. In my opinion she had a highly excellent first Christmas!
From my trip to Houston this summer
I’ve been reading the coverage of the Southwest Fiasco, and what’s really scared me more than anything else is the comments from many people about PUTTING MEDICATION IN CHECKED BAGGAGE.
PEOPLE.
Never, ever, ever put your medications and medical devices in your checked baggage! EVER!
I always put my meds in my carry-on, which is an LL Bean backpack. Always. They are in a large zip-up pouch. I also take extra medicine, just for purposes like this fiasco, where you’re stuck somewhere—the last thing I want to worry about is my medication and my health. So I also pack the entire bottle of medication, in the pharmacy bottle, so if I have to take it somewhere to get refilled, I can do that and it will have all the information a new pharmacy would need to fill it.
(Some people say, “well, just have your doctor call it in to the new pharmacy!” Over the holidays, it might be hard to get your doctor’s office on the phone!)
My insulin, insulin supplies, blood glucose kit, and my cochlear implant batteries and charger also go in my carry-on, always.
Does this take up space in my bag? Yes. Does it mean I can’t fly with just carry-ons? Also yes. I must check a bag.
But it’s much easier to check a bag than it is to lose medications, get them replaced, and, oh, worry about my body going into meltdown while I’m stuck somewhere!
I didn’t fly a lot pre-transplant, mostly because it was hard to do with my CF related machinery (aerosol machine, nebulizer, etc.) , but I have a travel size aerosol machine that I used when I did fly or travel, and it could fit in a backpack and wasn’t terribly heavy. I could also fit the supplies in my bag. So if I had to carry those around now, I could do it (They have much smaller ones now than they did in the year 1999!)
Folks. I beg you. Never, ever, EVER put your medications and medical supplies in your checked bags. Never in life. Do not do it. Pay to check the bag. NEVER EVER put your medicines in a place where you can’t get them.
There must always be a Christmas book post! :) There are a few more coming from Amazon that I bought with gift cards I received. So this is really like Christmas books part one.
Go-To Dinners, Ina Garten*: I love Ina’s cookbooks—I have all of them—and when she has a new one, it’s a guaranteed item on my Christmas list. I’ve already gone through and marked up the recipes I want to try, and there are a lot of them.
Welcome to Our Table: This cookbook is by the Penguins’ (my favorite hockey team) wives and girlfriends, and the sales support the Penguins’ Charitable Foundation. It is pretty cool to see recipes from Anna Malkin in here. If you’re a hockey fan, this is a great book—with lots of good recipes even if you’re not!
Queens of the Age of Chivalry,* Alison Weir: Why yes, I am a British History Nut. This book is the third in Weir’s series of books on the queens of England up to the Tudors, starting with William the Conqueror’s wife, Matilda of Flanders. There will be four books in the series (here are the other two: Queens of the Conquest and Queens of the Crusades). Weir has written full biographies of some of these ladies, so if you want even more detail, you can get it!
Antoinette’s Sister*, Diana Giovinazzo: I’m a sucker for anything about Marie Antoinette—she was really the first historical figure I “got into”, as it were, so this novel is pretty perfect for me. It’s told from her sister Charlotte’s viewpoint, which should make it even more interesting. I will report back.
The Lays of Beleriand*, JRR Tolkien: This is the third volume in the “History of Middle Earth” series. I’ve been working my way through this, very out of order—I’ve read the four that deal explicitly with Lord of the Rings, but then I went back and started at the beginning, with The Book of Lost Tales Vol. 1 and Vol. 2. If you’re really into Tolkien, these are good reads. If you’re not, then you’ll be bored stiff!
(asterisk—Amazon affilate link)
Our family Christmas celebrations have varied wildly over the years. When we were little (we meaning my brother and I—this was before my sister was born), we spent Christmas in Pittsburgh with my parents’ families. Christmas Eve we usually spent with my dad’s family, and Christmas Day with my mom’s family. (Back then my mom still had siblings living at home—she’s the third of eight kids. Dad is the youngest of three.)
The big special thing, though, was that Santa came early to our house. We did Christmas at home before we left for Pittsburgh. And yes, I really did love telling my classmates that. :)
Once my sister was born, the celebrations became different. One year my Grandma D came down ,but most years we were at home. Mom sang in the choir and played the flute for Midnight Mass, so we went to an earlier Mass, then came home, then mom left for midnight Mass. Once I was old enough to help dad (er, “Santa”) set out toys, that was my job, and Bryan had to keep Melanie from trying to get downstairs! After college, I sang in the church choir at Midnight Mass.
When I was in junior high, we started a family reunion on my mom’s side a few days after Christmas, which took place in various hotels. For the past 10 years or so it’s been here in town, but we haven’t rescheduled it since the pandemic—but there have also been weddings and graduations, so we’ve been able to see each other outside of the holidays, which is nice. There are so many of us that we don’t fit in anyone’s house anymore!
So Christmas at home now looks like this: we go to 4:00 Mass, have dinner after, and then exchange gifts with my brother and sister-in-law at their house. This year, the best gift was baby Hailey—their daughter! She was due to arrive in early January ut she decided she just had to spend Christmas with us, so I spent most of Christmas Eve this year with a newborn sleeping on my chest.
That’s a pretty good way to spend Christmas Eve.
Christmas Day is very relaxed—I spend the day with my parents. We open gifts and have food and generally hang out all day, usually with some football or A Christmas Story thrown in. This year was Madeleine’s first Christmas, so we FaceTimed with them a few times. It was so cute to see Maddie celebrate her first Christmas!
How does your family celebrate Christmas? Tell me about it!
My parents love Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol, and “Winter Was Warm” is one of my mom’s favorite songs from it, so….here you go!
The two recipes I make every year for Christmas, without fail, are these two recipes from Ina Garten:
Hermit Bars (like gingerbread) : I don’t do the glaze on them, to cut down on unnecessary carbs. :) Feel free to try it at your house if you like! (For sixteen bars, they’re 20.6 carbs each—that’s without the glaze.)
Hermit bars with tea, December 23. It was -5 that day! (And that was up from -8!)
Blueberry (at our house!) crumble bars (47 g of carbs per bar (if you make 12)). I leave out the almonds because the granola I use has almonds in it, and I also leave out the confectioner’s sugar.
Blueberry crumble bars
I’m including the carb count for my fellow folks-who-need-to-know-that :)
For today’s music, it’s music AND video! Enjoy the dancing Candy Canes of New York City Ballet while you have some treats!
I have so much yarn and knitting to show you! (and books. Always the books.)
Let’s get started!
This is a project from Knit Stars Season 6. It’s not a technical project, it’s an emotion-guided project. Each color represents a certain emotion and you knit with that color until you feel like you’re done with it. So it’s an intuitive project, as well as an emotional one. There’s also a journal that accompanies the project.
I’ve used every color in the kit except black (the dark color you see is navy), and it is really surprising to see what emotions I’ve assigned to each color.
It’s called the “Heartstrings shawl”, and you see the loose ends? Those are the heartstrings—they don’t get woven in.
Jacqui (the designer)’s mother died a few years (five, I think) after receiving a double lung transplant, so I knew this project would be really resonant for me, and it has been. I’ve really enjoyed working on it, and so far I’ve had 21 colors changes!
The yarn is KPC’s Glencoul, which is absolutely buttery. Seriously. I just love working with it. So this project is really just total indulgence!
(Ravelry notes here)
Since the project is still on the needles, it’s a little scrunched up! When it’s done it’ll be easier to see the pattern.
This is my first stranded color work project and I am absolutely in love! This pattern is so much fun. (You can get it from Jennifer’s Etsy shop). Jennifer, who is a Navajo woman, is inspired by Native American history and culture in her work. This design is based off of a Hopi design.
I’m using Malabrigio’s Caprino (80% superfine wool and 20% cashmere, be still my heart) in pearl and pines.
If you’re looking for a first stranded color work project I think this one is perfect! (Ravelry notes here)
This is a finished object! It’s an entire year of weather in my town!
I used the high temperature to determine what color to use (you could use the low, the high, or the average temp).
Unlike heartstrings, I have a LOT of ends to weave in here. Also pardon apartment carpet.
2021 began on the right side of the photo. The dark burgundy divider shows where winter and spring end, and after the divider, its summer and fall (through the end of 2021). Once all the ends are woven in you’ll have a better idea of its shape, but it’s a big project! I loved making this. All my notes on it are here.
Book time!
As you know, I got lots of books for Christmas. I’ve made a dent in some of them: The Ballerinas, The Lost Crown*, Clanlands Almanac*, and The Ballerina Mindset* have been read (I got The Last Crown and The Ballerina Project with Christmas gift cards). I’m about to start The Island* (also Amazon gift card purchase) and I’m re-reading In This House of Brede*. (If you want to follow me on Goodreads, here’s my profile. )
I also took advantage of Barnes and Noble’s hardback book sale and got The Tenant of Wildfell Hall for my Penguin clothbound collection!
What are you reading/making?
To make this more fun, I give you: John Denver and the Muppets at the start.
So by the time you’re reading this, I’ll be at the hospital having a colonoscopy because I know how to start the year right! :-P
No, this isn’t a cause for concern—it’s regular screening because people with CF have higher rates of colon cancer. So we get to enjoy the special fun.
Anyway, the PSAs are: make your doctor appointments. Right now. Put them in the book. Schedule them.
If you’re a lady who is 40, it’s time to get mammograms! If you have breast cancer in you family, you need to get them earlier! They’re not bad, just do them!
Eye appointments, dentist appointments, all the appointments—make them. Do it.
And that is all I have for you today :)
FYI: The 12th day will be delayed due to the colonoscopy, but it will be out this week!)
(Well, and a Patty picture)
Patty and Dolly at the park! (With brother Frankie)
This week is the week of BABY BOOM. So really, it’s two children are born this week, both of them girls!
My friend Tiffany is having her second child on Thursday! And my niece arrives this week, we think!
(You can read about Tiff’s little boy Billy here and here)
As Melanie said in Gone With the Wind, “The happiest days are when babies come!”
I thiiiink this might be my first birthday party? Not sure!
Obviously meeting Patty was high on this list!
Favorite Memory: Meeting Patty!
Best thing I read: Go Tell The Bees that I am Gone *
Best new habit: Barre workouts!
Most Memorable Adventure: Amish Country! (all posts here)
That sky!
Song on Repeat: “Immanuel’s Land” (Audrey Assad) and “This Could Change Everything”
Milestone celebrated: 16 years post-transplant!
Best meal or recipe: Kolaches in Houston, and the food in Amish Country!
biggest change: My sister is pregnant and little Maddie will be joining us NEXT WEEK!
Most beautiful sight I saw:
Mel’s ultrasound, and…Patty :)
“Who is this weird person taking my picture ?”
How about you—what were some of your best things?
Christmas music: “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”, Judy Garland (From Meet Me In St. Louis)
Today’s a Marian feast day, hence Marian photo!
Welcome, 2022!
I hope that all of you have a New Year that is full of joy, happiness, blessings, and good books.
The USCC offers this prayer service to bring in a new year.
Today is also the Solemnity of Mary Mother of God., so we’re going to have some Marian Christmas music.
This song is one of my favorites! Give it a listen!
This is sadly not captioned, so the lyrics are here.
Since it’s New Year’s Eve I thought it was a good time to slot the “new year’s goals” entry into the blogmas calendar.
I don’t make resolutions. I make goals. I discovered Lara Casey’s Powersheets in 2015 right after I’d left my job at the Senate, and they literally changed my life. I wouldn’t have written—or published!—my book without them!
(No I don’t get paid to say that, I just LOVE THEM)
So ever since then, I’ve used them to set goals for the year. The Powersheets break these goals down into monthly “tending lists”, which are broken down even further into Monthly Action Items, Weekly Action Items, and Daily Action Items.
I do the “prep work” in November and December, and I usually write out the tending list for the next month on the last Thursday of the month, which was yesterday.
So here are my goals for 2022! (I’m summarizing here. There are some things that I keep to myself, evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. :) )
(THIS is basically my aesthetic)
Yesterday I made my tending list for the month: (yes I blurred some things out :) )
Each goal has a color attached to it as you can see here. The hot pink is for spiritual growth—that’s a never-ending goal, so I don’t purposely “set that” as a goal each year.
Create healthy snack list: This is harder than it sounds for me. As I’ve written before, one of the hardest things for me post transplant has been the food adjustment. Before transplant, I was never really hungry. You read that right. Never. I might like some things, but I didn’t crave food, or really get hungry.
Post-transplant….um, that changed. :) Which was GOOD! I grew an inch and a half! My body was so malnourished that it took everything I was throwing at it, and I physically filled out. But…I didn’t know how to really eat. And also I’m on prednisone forever, which messes up hunger cues. So before when I was never really hungry, now I’m never really not hungry. I could always eat something.
Throw diabetes on top of that, and it’s messy. So one of the things I want to do this month is create a healthy snack list and then stock my house according. A healthy snack, for my purposes, is one that combines protein+fat+carbs (Yes, people like me do need to have carbs. Fairly regularly, actually, or else the blood sugar plummets and that’s not good either.).
The January Cure is a thing Apartment Therapy does. It’s a 20 day house cleaning/organizing challenge.
Wellness challenge I am all signed up for!
February budget: I use EveryDollar (the free version) and I love it!
Retreat Day: I do this monthly. It’s a day when I turn off my electronics and read, work out, and look over my goals for the next month.
Confession: I’m working on going to confession once a month. So I write it down here so I don’t forget to do it!
These are all health related:
Meal plan: I used to be good about this and then I slacked off. I generally plan for 4-5 days of meals so I have some flexibility if I just don’t feel like cooking and instead have PBJ, or my parents invite me over for dinner or a friend wants to go out!
Weigh: Every week. Yes.
Barre 2x/week: This isn’t barre like pure barre or barre 3. This is ballet barre, using YouTube videos. And no, I don’t mean an entire barre, which is about 45-50 minutes. Right now, my goal is 10-15 minutes of barre twice a week. This isn’t all the exercise I do in a week, but I want to make sure I do these, so that’s why they’re a weekly goal.
BIAY: the Bible In A Year podcast. I started last May, so I want to make sure that I keep going! (Folks, this is amazing. I love doing it. (Here’s a post on what I’ve learned so far—I need to write another one of these!)
January Cure Items: This is the daily accountability for the January Cure Monthly item.
Budget check in: This used to be called “balancing your checkbook”. :) But this is where I reconcile my budget with my actual spending.
TA-DA! That’s my January tending list and my goals for 2022! How about you? What goals have you set?
CHRISTMAS MUSIC: “In The Bleak Midwinter” from Renee Fleming and Rufus Wainwright
Our Christmas breakfast, for as long as I can remember, breakfast has been cinnamon rolls and sausage. I look forward to this meal all year. They’re just the Pillsbury type, and the sausage varies—now we use turkey sausage—so it’s simple, but it’s great, and I really appreciate that mom still makes it for me, now that my siblings are married and spend Christmas with their spouses (or, in Melanie’s case, she can’t get home for Christmas, because she’s going to have Maddie any minute now. :) ).
I usually make two Barefoot Contessa recipes for Christmas: The raspberry crumble bars (you can use any flavor of jam!) and the hermit bars (spicy gingerbread). I don’t make the icing for the hermit bars, because I think they taste great enough on their own. I’ve also made Giada’s citrus biscotti in the past. Mom is also a huge fan of snickerdoodles, so she would make those sometimes too.
Our dinner has varied greatly through the years, to the point that there really isn't anything we have every year, with the exception of Schwann’s peppermint stick ice cream! And if there is a party during the season, I will make THE GUINNESS CAKE.
I almost always get a cookbook for Christmas now—and have ever since I moved out after college, although my first cookbook (that wasn’t an American Girl historical cookbook!) was Betty Crocker’s Quick and Easy, which I still have, and used when I lived in an apartment, briefly, my senior year of college. This year I got Half Baked Harvest Super Simple, so I will be marking the recipes that I want to make, and then making them over the next week and a half or so.
Do you have Christmas/holiday food traditions?
Christmas music: If we’re talking about food, then we probably need a carol with food in it :)
Let’s have “The Christmas Song” sung by Nat King Cole, huh? :)
I’m not sure whose Christmas tree this is. :)
You can read all the blogmas posts here!
As a kid (I mean up until about the age of 9, I think), we spent Christmas in Pittsburgh. That meant that my brother and I got our Santa gifts early, which made us very happy and made our classmates very jealous. At the time, there weren’t as many grandkids as there are now, so my brother and I were pretty spoiled with presents by our grandparents, aunts, and uncles.
We would arrive in Pittsburgh on Christmas Eve and stay at one grandparents’ or the others that day, and then spend the next day with the others. I seem to remember that we usually spent Christmas Eve with Dad’s family—his two sisters, their husband, kids, and my grandmother (my grandfather died when my dad was 20). Being southern Italians, they did the Feast of the Seven Fishes for a long time—I don’t think they it when I was old enough to actually partake, or they did, and the kids just didn’t get the food. Gifts were after dinner in the living room. Bryan (my brother) and I were (and still are, but with the addition of Melanie!) the youngest grandchildren on this side of the family, so we got most of the gifts (I think?). I do remember adults opening things as well, but being a kid I didn’t really pay attention!
at the Heilmann Christmas party. L-R: Diane [Patty’s mom!], Jeff, me, and Julie holding my screaming brother.
The Heilmann Christmas was multi-parted. My great-grandmother lived in a nearby apartment building and we would have a Christmas party there in the building’s “party room”, which you see above. This was also the location for a lot of my early birthday parties. (Remember, not a lot of grand kids on this side, lots of people who wanted to spoil small children.)
I don’t remember sequence, exactly, but we would open gifts at Grandma and Pa’s (mom’s parents), and then at some point there was the party at Nana’s, which wasn’t far away. Diane and her family (my Aunt Sue, Uncle John—mom’s brother—and her sister, Megan) lived in St. Louis and it was always a lot of fun to see her, since we’re only six months apart in age. Julie (seen above at the right) is the oldest grandchild, I’m second, and Di is third. (Also, the first child in every family on my mom’s side was a girl, too!) We spent a lot of time playing Barbies. (Well, Di and I. I don’t think Julie was into Barbies.)
I loved the way we spent Christmas. It evolved, of course, as we got older, but it was really magical when I was little, especially getting to spend so much time with my relatives.
Gifts I remember getting? A Sesame Street sleeping bag and a banjo (also Sesame Street), and the My Little Pony Pink Perfume Palace! (I loved that thing so much I took it to Walt Disney World when I was seven. It was my carry-on. I’m not kidding.)
Christmas Music: TWOFER!
1) O Come, All Ye Faithful, from the Dominican Friars of the Province of St. Joseph!
For some reason, I remember singing this at my grandparents’ church. I don’t know if it actually happens, but I have a very strong memory of it (I was wearing a white dress with navy blue anchors on it). So, I’m sharing this one today!
2) I should’ve posted this yesterday since it was the feast of the Holy Innocents—Loreena Mckennit singing the Coventry Carol.
OK it is time for THE BOOK HAUL.
I always get a lot of books for Christmas—either as gifts or because of gift cards to book stores. :) I have actually ordered some more books that haven’t arrived yet, so those will probably show up in next week’s Yarn Along! If I’ve read it already there will be notes. If not, just the title and a link.
(All book links are affiliate links!)
The Ballerinas, Rachel Kapelke-Dale. A former soloist with the Paris Opera Ballet returns to set (choreograph) a new ballet on its dancers. She wants to use two of her former friends in the ballet—especially Lindsay, who she hurt years ago and now wants to make it up to her. The suspense is in what our narrator actually did, as well as the machinations of the other characters who swirl around her, including a former boyfriend and the ghost of her mother, who was a former etoile (star, the highest level a dancer can achieve at the Paris Opera Ballet). There’s definitely a tinge of Black Swan to this one, but I found it incredibly propulsive and couldn’t put it down on Christmas Day.
Cloud Cuckoo Land, Anthony Doerr
Drums of Autumn 25th Anniversary Edition, Diana Gabaldon. The fourth installment in her Outlander series, this one takes the Frasers (Claire, Jamie, and Ian) to America to settle. It also involves Brianna, Jamie and Claire’s daughter, whom Claire left behind in the 1960s. If you haven’t read it, I don’t want to spoil it! This was the basis for season four of the TV show.
Outlander Knitting: I’ve looked through this, not enough to really digest any of the patterns, but there’s a variety of things here, from accessories to home items to some garments. Now that I can do stranded color work (more on that next week!) there are projects in this book that I can do, now which is very exciting.
Half Baked Harvest Super Simple: I fell in love with Tieghan’s first book Half Baked Harvest, which I picked up in Houston during my summer trip, so naturally I asked for her second book for Christmas! There are lots of good things in here so I’m looking forward to going through it with my post-it notes and marking recipes I want to try. (All my cookbooks have tons of post-it notes in them, marking recipes I want to try. I use a lot of post-it notes!)
Now for (some of) the Amazon books!
The Ballerina Mindset, Megan Fairchild. As you know if you’ve read here for any length of time, I love ballet. So reading Megan’s book as definitely something I wanted to do! She’s a principal dancer at New York City Ballet, has acted on Broadway, is earning her MBA, and has three kids. Whew! I’m really excited to dive into this one.
The Island, Victoria Hislop. I saw this book on The Duchess of Cornwall’s (Camilla, Prince Charles’ Wife) Reading Room feed. If you’ve not heard of it, the feed showcases books that the Duchess loves with there being several books a season”. It’s a great way for me to expand my literary horizons! The Island was featured in season 4, so I put it on my Amazon wish list. It involves Greece, leprosy, WWII, and family ties—sounds pretty good!
Christmas fact: Today is the Feast of the Holy Innocents (it’s also the wedding anniversary for two of my friends!)
Christmas Music: Linda Eder with the Broadway Gospel Choir , “Do You Hear What I Hear?”
(Fun fact: This was one of the “traditionals'“ in my high school choir. We had two of them, and one of them was this one, which we called “Do you hear what I know” because, let’s be honest, it’s hard to remember the order here, people!)