goodbye 2015

I watched the sun rise this morning from my favorite spot in the house. We live on the  corner of the street and it's something of a fishbowl effect in our front room. But if you sink into the big comfy chair, the street disappears and you look out on trees and a climbing rose draped across the window.

My Christmas village is set up right by that window - and the sun rise over this little forested kingdom was beautiful this morning.

I'll be packing up all of the Christmas things today. Putting away Christmas feels like a first brave step into the unknown of a New Year. I trot out the familiar, the comfortable, the memorable things each Christmas. They serve as a comfort to assuage the grief, the shocks, the unforeseen events that hit me over the past 11 months. Then I put away those things and face whatever may come in the next 11 with a somewhat soothed sense of "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

I wish for you, a fresh hope in this New Year.

winter sunrise

First Day of Winter

8:45 a.m.

Target Parking Lot

see

I was there to see

my senior daughter playing flute in her last Christmas concert 

 I just let the music wash over me

red cup

birthday breakfast with my sweet sixteener

I recited my "the day you were born" story which included a 3 hour easy labor; our 1st night home in a flu infected household; us two spending the night on the couch. My spiel ended with "let's do this every year" and "why aren't you a squeakier wheel?" Every family has one. The quiet wheel.

blue sky ...

... after 2 weeks of rain, it is a welcome sight

a peaceful moment

... and hoping the same for you dear friends ...

simple

frost

Life is more hectic than ever and I've felt drained "beyond reason" (as I told a friend recently). I will be trying to tend to my creative side more kindly. My sanity and my energy will return as it always does when I have times of "slowing down and seeing" - the first and most important ingredients in a creative life. I've not much time to set my hands to scissors, paintbrushes, pliers, needle, thread, but my phone is always with me and the camera in it is awesome. I will blog these seeing moments. It is a kindness to myself worth sharing wth you.