sweater (with a bow!) | pants | heels
A list of a few things I’m loving right now from a favorite lipstick to a pastime with the boys. What are your favorite things these days?
weekend links.
Birthday celebrations are officially over for this boy. What a good 3rd birthday it was. This weekend we have company for dinner and then we are going to a Christmas party. And we’re supposed to get snow! What are you guys doing? (Side note: our Elf on the Shelf has moved twice.)
Some weekend reading…
happy 3rd birthday, Anders!
The other day he woke up, around 6:45 or 7, his usual, and cuddled for a few minutes, also his usual. He doesn’t rush through it most mornings, like it’s a totally necessary start to his day as much as it is to mine. He moves around, his body heavy on mine, never wanting me to be facing away from him. Not my body, not my face. He’ll even take my chin between both hands to direct my face to be towards his. Eventually, he was ready to go downstairs and he crept away from the bed where I was still lying and opened the bedroom door. There’s a window at the end of the hallway. I heard him gasp and say, “It so boo-ful!” And then he ran back into the room and lifted a curtain to look outside a different window. It was facing a different direction than the first window, on the side of the house, so he dropped the curtain, and quickly climbed on the bed, and lifted another one facing the front of the house. “Look! It so boo-ful!” He held the curtain open for me. The sky was pink with the late sunrise and he wanted me to see what he was seeing.
Our favorite Christmas books.
I remember when I was little and the Christmas boxes would come out and within them, so would the Christmas books. My Mom was more organized than I am, and would tuck those Christmas books away so that when they came out again around December 1, there was so much to be discovered in those boxes besides just Christmas ornaments and a Nativity scene. Ours are stuck between all the other everyday books all year long, so the kids are used to seeing them, though we don’t actually pull them off the shelves and read them except in December.
Christmas in Boston.
I’ve invited my friend Rachael to post today about all the best things Boston has to offer at Christmastime. I’d take her advice (and have taken her advice) any number of times on a visit to the city. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to just follow her and the girls around as they bring us to the latest foodie stop or coolest new kid attraction in town. Aside from being an excellent tour guide, her blog is at the top of my favorites list. Her writing will no doubt capture you too. Enjoy this glimpse of festive Boston as told by Rachael! (Pictures are hers too.)
hunt christmas extravaganza vii.
We got our Christmas tree this weekend and, given that the days deliver about three hours of sunlight right now, I’m so glad to see its twinkly presence on my first floor. In the morning when I wake up, at night when I’m getting work done, she’s there looking all charming and pretty. I vote Christmas trees in our homes all winter long. January and February are already looking bleak with her absence.
weekend links.
This was a recent dinner–pork ragu over pappardelle from this cookbook–and it was a total win. I’m trying to share meals as I make them over on this account (either in the feed or in the stories) in case you’re in a dinner funk. Anyway, this weekend is a busy one, but the kids still have runny noses so I’m packing them full of good stuff to beat this. Colds, be gone! Have you guys gotten your trees yet?
Some weekend reading…
Goals.
top | cropped pant | boots | choker
Call it end of the year analysis, or maybe it’s the fact that I just had a birthday, but I’m wanting to, more all the time, figure out how to be better. Is this just what getting older is all about? Anyway, here is a small list of some things that I want to implement starting today:
Cancelled plans.
I’ve got a little warm Anders lying on my lap right now, having just woken up from a restless sleep because of a stuffy nose. The weather turns, and the colds come to town. I’m always thinking a few days in advance with these colds. “Okay, we’ve got such and such party on Saturday so we’ve really got to kick this one to the curb by then so we can all go.” If only I could get the rest of my family as passionate as I am when it comes to virus-killing (drink your bone broth, kids! here’s your elderberry syrup! oh that oily film on the top of your oatmeal? it’s just cod liver oil! yummmm!). Oh well. Winter is the season of cancelled plans sometimes.You see, that’s why I love pajamas so much. Because I know I’ll be in them a lot.
I feel like this is an appropriate time to (re)share my wintertime essentials. One through four are still in heavy rotation during the winter months, and if I would stop being lazy, five would be too. I even have the dried berries in the pantry! I have added these capsules to the arsenal and am on box number two of them, but haven’t been able to test them out on a really wicked cold yet. (Pray tell why are you on box 2 then? Mostly for allergies or the beginnings of a cold and I do believe it’s helped both.) Stay tuned. They were recommended to me by a reader and the reviews are awesome.
Well, I think it’s high time I bring this tiny little person up to bed and join him myself. He’s sitting here trying to get inside my robe (he loves cuddling up inside it) and I think cuddled up in bed is an even better option.
To good health, keeping plans, and your loved ones in front of New England Christmas scenes! Isn’t that wall just the best? It’s not the last you’ll be seeing of it this season.
Thankful.
count your blessings. name them one by one.
for all of these faces above who fill my life in so many ways, who make me feel deeper than I knew possible, and who inspire me to be a better version of myself every single day, I’m thankful. for the clean slate they give me when I inevitably screw up, I’m thankful. for the love they show me, the lessons they teach me, and the forgiveness they give me, I’m thankful. for the life we live together, I’m thankful. happy thanksgiving to all of you. take this time to tell the ones you love just how much. it is no small thing.
{photos by the one and only Mark Spooner; haven’t shown the one I chose for the Christmas card yet because, hello, it’s not card time yet.}