1. Wash all of the clothes you own.
2. Start selecting outfits for the trip ahead.
3. Pick accessories that match each outfit.
4. Begin considering over-analyzing all of the possible activities that may await you, taking into consideration the unlikely chance that you’ll go swimming in Minnesota in December, need a costume, have to transition an outfit from day to night, be too cold, be too hot, be too casual, be too formal, or have absolutely nothing to wear to a specific event.
5. Add more outfits to the suitcase.
6. Add more necklaces, mittens, shoes, earrings, tights, belts, headbands, scarves, bracelets, gloves and pajamas to the suitcase.
7. Realize you have grossly overpacked.
8. Remove one pair of socks from the suitcase.
9. Hold the suitcase in mid-air and balance precariously on the bathroom scale to check the bag’s weight.
10. Remove one more pair of socks from the suitcase and say a little prayer.
Tonight was the first time that I ever went to a movie by myself.
It was a good choice.
It’s beginning to look and feel a lot more like Christmas. Last night Lena and I did a little holiday shopping downtown, and we splurged on $1 tacos — hooray for Taco Tuesday and Feliz Navidad to you all.
We also treated ourselves to buy-one-get-one frozen yogurt because of a Christmas promotion. I sampled the fro-yo flavored like egg nog, but I wasn’t impressed enough to commit to a whole cup. I wish La Berry would introduce some additional holiday flavors like peanut blossom, spritz cookie, peppermint stick or frozen hot chocolate. Now those are sweet holiday traditions I can stand behind.
I put up my re-gifted Christmas tree and decorated it more than two weeks ago, but I was waiting for Lena to return home before I posted a photo of it. She visited family in China for three weeks, so our dazzling little tree was a nice welcome home surprise. It is borrowed from our friends, Chris and Beth, who were given the same tree a few years ago as a way to add holiday spirit to their apartment. It’s such a perfect example of the season of giving. Lena and I were also fortunate that their cat, Frank, just happens to love eating its 100 percent artificial needles.
Silly, kitty.
Lucky, me.
I think my first solo attempt at decking the halls looks pretty good. Granted, I decorated the tree using only materials accumulated during a few passes through the Target Christmas aisle, so everything matches perfectly. I also hung two stockings on the washing machine closet knobs to finish off my stint as a holiday décor maven. This year my decorations aren’t elaborate or the ambitious endeavors I see on Pinterest, but I had to start somewhere.
It also feels a bit more like Christmas time despite Savannah’s 70-degree temperatures because I dragged jet-lagged Lena around the mall for a few hours on Sunday. We were able to check a few items off of each of our shopping lists and feel the crisp December chill every time we wandered near the terrible small mall’s air conditioning vents.
Should I be concerned that my shopping list is still longer than my purchased list?
Nahhh. I work well under tight deadlines, right?
A roadside sign
(Apparently in South Carolinians don’t use the abbreviation X-mas.)
I’ve been feeling very craftless lately. It’s similar to being restless, but triggered, in my case, by over-exposure to HGTV and stumbling upon the blog design*sponge. Check it out, but not until you finish reading this blog or doing whatever else you planned on for the next two hours. It’s pretty darn addicting, especially the DIY and before & after sections.
Anyway, I used to be a crafty person. I would decide spontaneously that I needed to sew something. Next, I would determine what that something should be, pull out the sewing machine, dig through tubs of my mom’s old fabric and start the project before she got home from work.
Somehow I never managed to also finish a project before Mom returned that night.
I have fond memories of her walking through the house and the sudden gasp she’d utter after realizing that our dining room looked more like an explosion at Jo-Ann Fabrics than a refined eatery.
Usually my brilliant ideas also turned into her headache. I would do all of the fun project steps like cutting, surging and piecing, but never the determinedly hateful aspects of ironing and pinning. Aren’t they the worst?!?!
I would get oh-so-close to completing a project but somehow it always landed on her to-do list. One time I thought it would be a great idea to make a denim quilt out of old jeans. I raided the family Goodwill pile and found a number of pairs that would work for my plan. I started slicing and dicing the jeans until I had a bunch of quilt blocks ready for construction. I sewed all of the quilt blocks together, tuckering out the Serger to a point of no return (I’m still sorry about that Mom!) and then let it sit idle for just long enough that the lovely Kris Swanson came along and sewed the trim to perfection, a process requiring gross pinning and ironing.
Similar small miracles continue to happen in my life. My mom gave me a beautiful new quilt this fall that some of her friends sewed for charity and she won in an auction. I didn’t have any pillow shams to match, but I only waited a few weeks until, POOF, matching pillowcases just happened to land in my mailbox. She’s quite the wizard, that mother of mine.
I suppose I could have gotten a bit crafty and creative last weekend when we decorated Cora and Harold’s house for Christmas, but it just wasn’t the right time.
For Cora it’s not decorating; it’s prop styling.
Apparently I didn’t inherit the same exceptionally visual, feng shui, nearly-neurotic taste for home décor as my sister. Harold and I were too afraid to help in the tree decorating process, which is more of a science than an exercise in merriment. Cora painstakingly placed and replaced each ornament on the tree until the spruce looked like it should be in an ad for Pottery Barn. When Harold and I started to harass her about the meticulous treatment, she started putting additional bows and holly berries on certain bulbs. “You see! This is why they had to be perfect. There’s accoutrema that goes on them!”
Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. Now we really weren’t going near the tree.
“I don’t even know what that means!” said Harold. “Do you?”
“Ahhh…I have a general idea,” I said. “Accoutrema…accoutrement…hmmm….actually, no. I got nothing.”
For the benefit of my fellow peasants, I’ll explain that accoutrema is a word from Old French for a noticeable or impressive item used to clothe or equip another entity.
After that point, I completely abandoned participation in the actual decorating aspect and resigned to the position of holiday music DJ.
I came up with a new hit song:
Deck the halls with Latin boys and French words,
Fa la la la la, la la la la.
You’re lucky my blog doesn’t include Smell-a-Vision
Most families have holiday traditions. A lot of people look forward to the smells of a holiday feast wafting from the kitchen and all throughout the house. Christmas meals with my family do not have the same allure.
The maternal side of my family is 100 percent Swedish, and we have a tradition of serving lutefisk at Christmas dinner.
Lutefisk is a Scandinavian fish that has a smell and history all its own. The codfish is first dried and salted as a preservative. In order to get the fish back to a chewable consistency it is soaked in lye. The lye, of course, is inedible so it later goes through a dilution process where the fish is soaked in cold water that’s changed daily to remove the toxins.
All of this prep means that the food could be months old in the salted stage, and a week-or-better in a gelatinous stage before it makes it into a pot to be boiled in cheese cloth with All Spice cloves. The cheese cloth contains the fish in a glob that, when served, is reminiscent of a white, bony, jello. Yum. Yum.
You’re probably thinking, “Does Laura actually eat this?”
Well, no.
The pungent odor of the fish is enough to drive 22-year-old me away to the kiddie table at meals. My grandfather, uncles, and even a few of my cousins just shake their heads in disbelief. For them, lutefisk is a delicacy.
