Christmas Paper Weight

I confess:  I'm a big-time lover of Christmas.  I love everything about it.  The lights, the trees, the food, the music.  And I love to read just about everything about this wonderful holiday season.

I have another confession:  I cannot part with old Christmastime magazines.  I have Christmas issues of Country Living and Country Home (this one is from December 1999) that go back to the 1980s, and every year I haul them out and reread them (or at least look at the pictures).

I have issues of old (English) Country Living magazine from years gone by that my mother gave to me.  Old December issues of Better Homes and Gardens, Cottage Living, Martha Stewart Living, Mary Engelbreit's Home Companion and much, much more.  I remember the articles and still manage to enjoy them.  (I like and always reread one in the December 2000 issue of ME's Home Companion called "Have A Merry Mitzvah" (by Rachel Kornblum) about how Jewish people do good deeds at Christmastime like take their Christian colleague's shifts in hospitals, go caroling in Nursing Homes, etc.  It includes pictures of the two cutest little girls--who are probably in college by now.

Then there are all my favorite Christmas "annuals."  Christmas with Victoria.  Christmas with Southern Living.  Country Woman Christmas.

Last week I mentioned a few of the books I love to reread at Christmastime.  I have a bunch of Christmas children's books.  Naturally, The Polar Express; but then I have some that you've probably never heard.  "Emma's Christmas Wish" by Sallyann J. Murphy (and illustrated by Cary Phillips), Christmas Tree Sam by Helen D. Olds (copyright 1952--before I was even born; got it at a garage sale for a quarter); A Pussycat's Christmas by Margaret Wise Brown (illustrated by Anne Mortimer); The Christmas Robin (an English "Ladybird" book), adapted by David Hately from the Wise Robin by Noel Barr; and the extremely tacky (photographic) Merry Christmas America:  A Front Yard View of the Holidays.

At some time during the holiday season I will listen to Patrick Stewart read (an abridged version of) Dickens' A Christmas Carol (and look at the wonderful illustrated version of the book by Italian artist Roberto Innocenti.

Come the day after Christmas I'll put all these books and magazines away until next year.  But they'll be waiting for me to take out and enjoy again, and again, and again . . . .

Do like to read holiday books and magazines?

Old fashioned or modern?

“My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others.”



-- Bob Hope, American comedian and actor

Vintage Christmas Cards

A lot of people think that sending Christmas cards is a PITA.  I disagree.  I love to send Christmas cards and I love to receive them, too.

I bought a bunch of new-to-me vintage cards this summer -- put them somewhere safe, and now I can't find them.  It's not that I want to actually send them out to people because truthfully, not many people seem to like the old-fashioned (or should I say vintage) artwork on my wonderful, beautiful, terrific, cards.  : (
The days of me buying expensive cards (or anything else--except books and music) are over, so I usually buy my cards after Christmas during the 50-75% off sales, and if you hit the stores early, you can get some nice ones.

I'm looking forward to pulling my list together and doing my cards.  Sometimes I include a Christmas letter to a few old friends, but mostly I just scribble (and if you saw my handwriting, you'd agree) a few lines.  I like to hear from my pals, and I must be one of the few people who actually enjoys receiving those holiday letters filled with news.

Last year I participated in a "card exchange" with strangers from one of the cozy mystery lists I read (we compare notes on the mysteries we read).  I got a couple of letters from people I didn't know--filled with news about even more people I didn't know.  One was written by the family's adorable little dog--and included a picture.

I loved it!  (I wear bangs so that people can't see the words SUCKER that's written on my forehead.)

I keep a lot of the cards I receive, too.  One of my favorite cards came from my Grandfather.  He died back in the 1980s.  Every year I pull out that card and hang it.  I look at the words he wrote and lament the fact I barely knew him.  But he wrote "love Grandpa" and I have no doubt he did love me.  It never fails to move me to tears.

Christmas cards are one of my favorite things about the holiday season.  How about you?

Trotting out holiday favorites

On a recent visit to my local bookstore, I wandered through the mystery section to see what was new.  On all the cap ends were holiday mysteries.  Lots of them.  Whoa!

A quick look at the copyright dates proved that these were NOT new books getting preferential treatement, but that the bookstore was trotting out seasonal backlists to satisfy readers' desire to get in the holiday spirit with a little touch of murder.

Some bigger-name authors get their holiday books re-released every year with "new-improved" editions, with extras.  (Can you think of a better thing?  New editions--something every collector will want and NEED!) Ka-ching, ka-ching!

I told another writer friend that we needed to write holiday books that could be trotted out every year.  Unfortunately, it's usually the publisher--not the author--who decides these things.
Every year I trot out my favorite holiday books, too.  Here are just a few:




What are your favorite Christmas books?

Mail Early!

"Mail your packages early so the post office can lose them in time for Christmas."



-- Johnny Carson

Pass the dressing, please!

And Tomorrow Is . . .

Bopping around the Internet, I've read a lot of Thanksgiving posts from friends and virtual friends.  Like them, I'm grateful for a lot of things:  my husband and best friend, my mother, my brother, my cats, my friends....

I'm grateful for turkey.  (I LOVE turkey--especially the dark meat.)  I love stuffing.  I love Indian food.  I love Mexican food.  Green beans.  Potatoes.  (Gee, I'd better stop talking about food, or next thing you know my head will be in the fridge and I'll be scarfing leftovers.)

I'm grateful for MUSIC!  I'm grateful for a non-leaky roof over my head.  (And it's rained so hard for the past couple of days I was thinking about building an ark!)  I could just go on and on and bore you...so why don't I just say

It's Gotta Be Perfect

Thanksgiving:  Two days and counting.  Once again, I've started my holiday housecleaning late.

But that was Monday of a holiday week.  Added to that, I've caught a cold.  The last thing I want to do is tackle the months of cleaning I didn't take  seriously while working on some project or other.  Oh, my house isn't a the kind of hovel you see on "Hoarders."  There might be clutter in the way of books and magazines (I like to read), but underneath it's fairly clean and usually not too untidy.

I have never been a Martha Stewart wannabe.  Okay, maybe 10% of me might aspire to that level of domestic divadom, but the rest of the time I handle household tasks when they need to get handled and not before.  (Like, why do laundry until you run out of underwear and socks?)

And then the holidays arrive.  Madison Avenue not only wants us to buy beyond our means, but ancillary industries (women's magazines and TV shows--in fact, entire TV networks (Food Network, HGTV, etc.)) want us to have perfect homes.  Perfect, antiseptically clean homes, with the perfect decor, perfectly laid tables with a feast worthy of a millionaire.

What makes us buy into this stuff?  I think it's guilt.  These days, everyone is pulled in so many directions, and we're bombarded with images that have little to do with our real lives.  And then the nostalgia factor kicks in.  We MUST do it as we've done it before.  We MUST have a perfect family, that looks like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

The reality is that our lives aren't perfect.  Our families often disappoint us (and you know who you are).  The house isn't perfect.  The one place you didn't dust is the place where your brother writes the date.  The cat barfs on the rug five minutes before the company arrives--and sometimes waits until they sit down to dinner.

Can't we just have a nice, peaceful holiday?  Enjoy each other's company and not worry about the dust or the cat hair on the couch?

Nope.  I'll be cleaning like a fiend for the next two days.  Gotta bake those pies--and roast that turkey.  After all, it's gotta be perfect.

How about you?

It's all about bustling!

My poor husband.  His sanity is at risk.  And there's not much he can do about it.  It's all in my hands.

You see, despite my rant of a few weeks ago . . . I like the holidays.  In fact, I love the holidays.  A LOT.  I love the lights, the decorations, the food, buying presents, wrapping them.  Mostly, I like holiday music.  And movies, too.  And since November 1st, I've been playing my CDs and watching the movies, all of which drives Mr. Ivy NUTS!

I've been playing the holiday music a lot, too.  The CDs are put away for ten months of the year, so it's like renewing an old friendship when I haul them all out.  My favorite is actually a cheapie I got at the grocery store.  It's called Popular Christmas for a New Age.  I think it cost me five bucks.  And since then, I've found copies at garage sales.  (Apparently not everyone loves it as much as me.)  I've now got four--YES FOUR--copies of it.  That means I can play it in my car, and have a copy of it in three different rooms of the house.  (Okay, I also buy a lot of boom boxes at garage sales.)

Hubby and I have side-by-side offices (I have to go through his to get to mine).  Naturally, as soon as the first strains of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" start up, he wails, "Oh, jeeze, the noise has started--again!"  (That's where the sanity comes in.)  We do have an agreement that I will NOT play the vocals until Thanksgiving . . . but I've already kind of cheated on that one.  (Just a little.)

The one part of the holidays that I absolutely love but try to avoid is the cookies.  The cakes.  The candy.  The hot hors d'oeuvres.  The cold hors d'oeuvres.  The eggnog.  The chips and dips.  Oh, I could go on, and on (and on).  But man--over the lips and forever on the hips.

I've got six more weeks of music, decorations, and lights.  And I'm going to revel in it.  How about you?

The Last Rose of Summer

Friday, during the early hours of the morning, we had our first killing frost.  We live by a farm and we went to see how the unpicked crops had faired.

Not well.

It's so sad to see so much unpicked produce -- that maybe a food pantry could have used -- ruined.  From past experience, we know that the all those peppers will rot.  (Millions of them.)  The farmer told us that their kids work full-time jobs and they only have the two of them to pick acres and acres of produce.  We'd seen them out there for hours on end, but they couldn't make a dent in picking all that they planted.

As we were coming back into our yard, we noticed one last bloom on our climbing rose.  Sadly, the stem shattered.  But, we'd seen a rose tip in water at a lovely tearoom once, and so that's how we enjoyed it.

Just beautiful, isn't it?

Happy Halloween!

The Greed Season Begins

They're starting to arrive, mixed in with the political flyers--circulars and catalogs proclaiming BIG SALES full of bargains.  Clothes, jewelry, small appliances--anything you want or need and it's all ON SALE--at BARGAIN prices!

GO BUY IT, NOW!!!!

You know, until the last year or so, it never occurred to me that our entire economy is entirely based upon GREED.  Capitalism depends on people wanting EVERYTHING they can get their hands on, whether they need it or not.  Businesses, from tiny to gigantic, want us to max out our credit cards and strive to acquire EVERYTHING.  And we fall for it!

I was caught up in that treadmill myself.  A few years back, my mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I said EVERYTHING.  And I still do ... but, I'm finding that while I may still want everything, I'm learning to live with only what I really need.  And you know what, I don't always need to pay retail for what I need, either.

How did we come to this "avarice is everything" type of life?  (And more importantly, what does it say about us as a people?)  We've allowed ourselves to be seduced by ads and TV commercials--with colorful photography--to want everything and RIGHT NOW.  From hamburgers to hummers--and the bigger the better.

For instance, take fast food commercials.  They make every burger or slice of pizza look like a million bucks.  Usually with long strings of gooey cheese (stretched in slo-mo), or hamburger buns that look like they've been sliced with a laser beam.  When you get the actual food at these establishments, the meat is gray and the buns often look like someone sat on them.  The cheese is gooey all right, but it's so stringy you need a pair of scissors to cut it before you can stuff it into your pie hole.  No wonder there's an obesity problem in this country.  You can't watch TV for more than ten minutes without some fast food giant telling you to EAT IT ALL and hang the calories.

It's time to say ENOUGH.  It's time to go back to gilding walnuts and stringing popcorn to decorate the tree.  It's time to say "family first" not "consumer debt" to the holiday season.  It's time to say, "I will not go into hock so some CEO (of a company where the labor has be outsourced offshore) can collect his multimillion dollar golden parachute."

What do I want for Christmas?  A few books.  Maybe a couple of CDs.  But do I want my family to go into hock for it?

NO!

I'm going to try for a more simple holiday season this year.  I have a feeling, I'll enjoy it a whole lot better.

How about you?

Oh, how I love to rake leaves--NOT!

Over the weekend, Mr. Ivy and I drove through Central New York and admired the brilliant colors--spectacular oranges and reds stood out against the evergreens and deep blue sky.  Just gorgeous.  Lots of the best trees weren't in the woods, but in regular people's yards.  And ya know what happens when they fall?  Someone is gonna have to rake them up.

Why is it that TV commercials (and usually for some kind of pain reliever) try to convince us that raking leaves is fun?  It's not.  It's back-breaking work.  Yesterday I raked a bunch of leaves.  Mostly, I dragged them.  Hubby walked around the yard (about a million times), with the proton pack (otherwise known as a leaf blower) and herded the leaves into BIG, l-o-n-g piles, while I raked them onto a long green tarp, and dragged them around the side of the house, through the backyard and into the field behind us.
E-I-G-H-T-E-E-N times.

Okay, it was my idea to rake the stupid things.  I figured if it rained (and it looked like it might), it would be a lot harder trying to scrape wet leaves off the grass--or worse, try to find any grass under the wet leaves come spring.  So, out we went to take care of the leaf problem.

Two hours later . . .

To reward myself afterwards, I decided to take care of the catnip crop.  More fun!  Years ago, we decided to buy a catnip plant to give our guys a treat.  Since then, that one little plant has produced hundreds of children scattered around the yard.  To some people, catnip is nothing more than a weed, but to our cat, Buster, it's his drug of choice.  And we are his enablers.

A few weeks back, I went around the yard and rounded up all the plants.  I put them in the garage to dry and have been meaning to do something with the leaves.  Yesterday was the day.

Buster came out into the enclosed porch, while I ripped the leaves from the stalks outside on the picnic table.  A lot of catnip dust flew into the air, and Buster tried to jump through the screen to get it.  While I did the harvesting, a bumble bee paid me a visit, sitting on the watering can.  It was in the 50s, and Mr. Bee was quite tired (and probably cold).  He rested for a while, and we conversed, then he flew off, hopefully for home.

Like my beans, this catnip crop was stellar.  We've got more than enough to last the winter . . . uh, unless Buster learns how to open Tupperware.

Oh, and guess what:  it rained all night.  We got those leaves up just in time.

Have you done your raking yet?

A sucker for watercolors

Okay, I admit it ... there should be a self-help group for people who fall in love with one particular item and don't care what form it comes in.  For me, it's watercolors.

I saw this one at a yard sale over the summer, and even though it's no longer "in" to have these kinds of images around (that form of Country is sooooo passe these days), I fell in love with this original watercolor of a young girl.  It's just darling.

I don't yet know what I'm going to do with it, but it's just so sweet.  Don't you agree?

Aren't they adorable?

As I've mentioned before, the yard sales have been few and far between. But for some reason we were blessed with fantastic weather this past weekend, which caused a bunch of people to have sales--even though they hadn't advertised them.  (Maybe I can just sniff them out.)

The best stop, though, was in Wolcott at the Presbyterian church's rummage sale.  Look what I found!

And here's the back side of the poppies.

And the back side of the rose mug.

I want to believe that these are hand painted. (One of them is signed.)  But I'm just not sure.  Sadly, the cups themselves are cheap.  (They look like Fire King, but they aren't marked.)  But who cares when you can drink out of such lovely mugs.