MIA in NoVa-land

Sorry I’ve been MIA over here, but I’m still in my Virginia burbs bubble (not counting a few city escapes). It’s been a bit of a whirlwind but overall a really good visit! I’ll be sad to leave…

I’ll be back in Seattle with solo time on my hands soon enough, so till then I’m enjoying being semi-unplugged in this cozy, familiar place.

How were your holiday weekends? Great, I hope:)

Happy birthday today to my dear lass Ellita!!

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Happy Thanksgiving!

Cozied into a packed family room, all watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Around 4 o’clock, 19 of us will feast on turkey and stuffing and potatoes and pie. There will be a wee bit of chaos, hopefully no drama and undoubtedly heaps of food and gratitude. Man, I love this holiday.

Happy Thanksgiving, y’all! Enjoy.
Cheers!

‘Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend.
Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.’~Melody Beattie

Thankful week

‘Appreciate again and again, freshly and naively, the basic goods of life, with awe, pleasure, wonder and even ecstasy, however stale these experiences may have become to others.’~Abraham Maslow

In here, it is warm and cozy. And noisy. Christmas music clamors overhead; businessmen near me banter in languages from around the globe. Things feel cheery. Life appears to be easy-breezy for all of us lucky souls. (Myself included… Enjoying a light roast and soon meeting a dear friend for a midday catch-up.)

Out there, he sits, cowering from the rain. He waits. And he waits. Roses for $5, bouquets for $7. He pops up. At last, a customer.

Happy grateful week, friends.

Home

Home for the holidays.

As Dorothy said, there’s just no place like it:)

Would you like some lagom with that hygge?

Lagom (LAH-gom) adv. or adj. Swedish: “Perfectly in balance: not too much, not too little.”

Have a wonderful Friday, all of you.

Quiet

A wee reminder to often pause for quiet as we enter the thick of the bustling holiday season (yeeha!). Have a wonderful day, y’all! I’ll be leaving on a jet plane tomorrow;  home is so close I can TASTE it. 🙂

“Alone—in moments of prayer or meditation, or simply in stillness—we breathe more deeply, see more fully, hear more keenly. We notice more, and in the process, we return to what is sacred.”~Katrina Kenison

Mood-boosters

Saw this “coping” list the other day and liked it.

What are your tricks for cheering up during sad or bad or just plain *blah* spells?

Things that put some pep in my step this week have included:

~tea, coffee, any warm ‘n’ cozy drink, really

~music, music, music

~reaching out. Job-wise, friend-wise, family-wise. Even if I fear I lack the energy to initiate, keeping in mind that good ole Universal Law of Attraction.

~movement (runs, walks, elliptical, anything that gets the blood flowing and the thoughts shifted)

~today, a multi-hour visit with a dear college pal whose spirit is so lovely and pure and supportive and uplifting that I can’t help but remember life is good. Really good.

~guilty pleasure boob tube. My latest vice: Hart of Dixie. Show me a sappy story set in the sweet South, and I’m a happy gal.

~collage-making! These days they call them “vision boards,” but I reckon adolescent Mitch and I were onto something way back when when we regularly covered my parents’ kitchen floor in magazine cut-outs and pasted to our hearts’ content. Sure, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Luke Perry and Christian Bale stole the limelight in those days, but I still find there is something so calming and therapeutic when it comes to putting together the puzzle pieces of a creative collage.

What lifts your spirits as we plunge into darker, colder months?

The process:

The result: