Zentangle Wrapping

"Brown paper packages tied up with string,

These are a few of my favorite things."

    These song lyrics are no doubt engraved the memories of many who will read this.  A song that plays each year on the radio in my house during Christmas.  This year, though, I didn't just hum along with it.  It gave me an idea.  A, slightly crazy one, you might say.

    Over the summer I took an interest in a form of drawing called Zentangle.  I have since then been slowly but surely practicing it when I can, and bit by bit I come to enjoy it even more than I did before.  The simple patterns are fun and with small practice are easy to draw ( which is good for me because I have the artistic talent of a goat ).  Combine them and some shading you've created a swirling tile of abstract wonder.

    I have always loved hearing stories from my parents and grandparents about the different traditions that they used to have when they were children, and there was one in particular that came to mind when that song first played this year.  It was the one about how my oma would spend her Christmas' back on her family's farm in the 40's and 50's.  They didn't have fancy wrapping paper like we do today.  They really did wrap their gifts in brown paper.

    So I got to thinking, and thought, why don't I do that this year?  And then I got to thinking some more ( a dangerous endeavor ), and thought, why don't I also hand draw a different Zentangle pattern on each of the pieces of brown paper I use?  That'll be fun, right?

    Well it turns out I did have fun doing it, and despite the seven sharpies I went through and all the extra time it took away from other things that may or may not have been more important, I am so glad I did it.  They are not perfect; I could go on endlessly about all the little imperfections in my drawings.  But what matters is that as much care went into the wrapping as did the gifts that they hold, and I'm happy I was able to put in a little extra care for the people I care most about.

    I will never be able to show them just how much they mean to me, but I'll have to keep trying anyways.

    So now I'm burning scented wax like crazy in my room to try and get the sharpie smell out, but oh well.  Something tells me I'll be crazy enough to do the same thing again next year, despite all the extra hassle.  You know, been there, done that, and then went back and did it again several more times because apparently I never learn.

Em

Tree Trimming and Carrol Singing

    The time has flown this past week and a half.  I didn't even realize how many days had past until I woke up yesterday and flipped my calendar to December.  I mean really, can you believe that it's December already?
     I managed to survive National Novel Writing Month, but even though I wrote all of those thousands of words, I did not finish my novel.  Turns out, I put more words into parts of my story than I thought I would originally, so that I reached my word count but not the end of my plot line by the time the month was over.  I'll have to keep writing then.  This novel will be much longer than what I planned, I think.
    Thanksgiving here was wonderful.  We didn't eat any turkey this year.  No, we went with German food for the main course.  Rouladen and purple cabbage.  For dessert, a chocolate chip skillet cookie. It doesn't get much better than that.  Don't know what rouladen is?  Well let me tell you.  Strips of beef with onions, bacon, pickle relish, and mustard rolled into it, browned and then slow cooked in gravy for hours.  It's so tender you don't even have to cut it.  The flavors from the meat rolls seep out into the gravy to make the most delicious gravy you have ever tasted.  Seriously, the gravy you could actually drink.  It's practically the whole reason you make rouladen to begin with, just to get that gravy.  Better than turkey?  I think so.
    ( I might have tried to get a picture of the food for you, but telling everyone to wait to eat for a moment so I could snap a picture would've been like jumping into a pool of piranhas and hoping they wouldn't bite me.  Impossible, really.  And dangerous. )
    We stuck with our tradition of putting up all our Christmas decorations on the inside the day after Thanksgiving.  Friday was a day of Christmas movies and music playing in the background while we decked the halls and threw tinsel around.  It was also the day that Christmas music was allowed to be played in our house.  Day before Thanksgiving?  No Christmas music allowed.  Day after Thanksgiving?  Bring out the jingle bells and ho ho ho's.
    It really doesn't take long to decorate the house.  What takes hours is the Christmas tree.  But in the end, it is very worth it.  Nothing matches and it doesn't look fancy, and that is just the way I like it.  I love to see it glow and ago searching through it in the dim light like our very own game of I Spy.
    All the Old World Christmas ornaments sparkle.  Homemade snowmen and garland add a soft and slightly fluffy touch.  Red candles are an old German tradition to remind us of our ancestors.  There are a few strange looking items, like a starfish and a burnt gingerbread heart ( yes, that's a moose sitting there behind the burnt cookie ).  Some wooden switches from St. Nick sit up there to remind us of when we were children and weren't exactly on our best behavior.  And if you look closely, you might even find a little turtle hiding in the tree branches.  All of this topped with tinsel that glitters in the tiny, colored lights.  I couldn't love it more.

    I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving and that you are now belting out the carols at full volume now that it's over ( because I am and I really don't want to be the only one who's hurting their throat here ).

Em  :)

A Trip to the Sand Dunes

    Prepare for a long post.  Today was amazing.
    Last night my dad and I decided that we were going to go hiking out at the sand dunes.  So I stayed up till 2 a.m. making these to wear.

    A pair of wrist warmers, as I had none before.  I knew that it would be cold out at the sand dunes, and that they would help keep my hands warm over a thin pair of gloves.  They really did do the trick.

    I put on layers on top of my layers when we got up again this morning and my dad and I set out to the sand dunes.  We jammed out to music in the truck all the way there.

    The air was as frigid as we expected, and I was glad for all of the bundling up I did.  We hiked for hours back and forth over the dunes, got very sandy and very tired, but all the little sights we saw were more than worth it.

    We had just recently gotten some rain and frost in the area, and the moisture from it had stayed in parts of the sand, so when the wind blew the dry sand away, the wet sand stayed behind to create beautiful ridges and patterns that were lit up by the morning sun.

    Many of the photos I took today were abstract ones of these patterns in the sand.  Some might find them repetitive or uninteresting, but I couldn't get enough of them.

    One of the places we hiked to was a crater that sits in the middle of all the larger dunes, a place where, for some reason, the sand never collects.  On our way there, we came across a barbed wire fence, but we didn't have to worry about crawling under or over it.  It started out just like any other fence, but then it became engulfed in the dune.

    Looking at it, it made me wonder.  Just how far did the fence go into the dune?  I guess I'll never know.

    Soon we were looking down at the crater in the dunes.  You can't tell from the picture because of how far our shadows stretched, but the emptiness of this space was amazing.  To me, the sides of the crater looked like a landscape from a frozen alien planet as we slid down into it.

    I looked back up at our tracks once we were down in the middle of the bowl.  It doesn't look all that tall in the photo, but that was about 80 feet down the side of the crater.

    We sat down for a snack in all the little rocks that covered the bottom of the crater, and I don't think I've ever had a better place to sit and eat an apple.  You couldn't beat the view of the sun coming over the edge of the crater.

    Coming back up out of the crater wasn't nearly as bad as we thought it would be because the sand was still frozen, so our feet didn't sink into it every time we took a step.  I couldn't help taking one more picture of the side of the crater before we left it.

    One of my favorite parts of going to the sand dunes is seeing the tracks that the animals leave behind in the sand.  I find it strange for some reason how you always see their tracks, but hardly ever the animal itself.  It's as if there are more ghosts then living animals wandering around ( at least that's what I like to imagine ).

    A few plants also managed to catch my eye.

    The last thing I took from this place was rocks.  Lots and lots of rocks.  I told myself when we first stepped out of the truck that I was only going to grab a few.  I'm not sure who I was trying to kid.  I ended up walking out with two bulging pockets full of them and a few larger ones weighing my bag down.  It always ends up like that.

    Once back at the truck, we pulled out some sandwiches and sat down at a tired looking little picnic table that was all by itself in the sand.  Sitting there at that little picnic table, with no one around, and nothing but the barren landscape stretching out in front of us, it felt kind of lonely.  Yet somehow it was peaceful instead of sad.

    As you can imagine, that was only a small fraction of the photos that I took today.

    If you've made it to the end of this post, then you've aged quite a bit since you first started reading it, but hopefully you found it as beautiful and amazing as I did.  The silence and ever changing patterns in the sand emit their own feelings of magic and wonder that I will never stopped being awed by.  It's the quiet and in-between places like this where I feel most at home.

Em

P.S.  None of these photos are edited, so apologies for them not looking their best.

Snow Day

    It doesn't matter how old I get, I will never be too old to throw down all of my responsibilities and run outside to play in the snow.  That is exactly what I did this morning, though it was more "snow" than snow.
    It was only a thin, wet layer that is all melted by now, but it was enough to make something out of it while it lasted.  By no means ideal, but I'm happy there was at least something white on the ground.  Winter is my favorite season, and I can't wait for it to get here.
    Under a beautiful gray sky, I bundled up in an extra large, extra floppy sweater and dove in with bare hands.  With the help of a sister, we cleared the yard of all the less leafy snow there was to find.  Out of this melting mess we crafted two frozen masterpieces.

    Ok, so they may not really be masterpieces, but at least they look happy.  We'll call them "rustic" masterpieces.  Not bad, considering we only had limited "snow" to work with.  They aren't beauties, but they sure were fun to make.

    Being the childish people we are, my sister and I spent some time wandering the yard doing nothing more than breathing out really hard so we could see our breath in front of us, pretending we were dragons.  During our reptilian adventures, we found we weren't the only ones who had been out in the snow this morning.

    When things stared to drip, it was time to come in and eat delicious, warm, homemade egg drop soup.  I followed it up with a cup of hot chocolate.  A small cup, to be sure ( the old tea cup I found at the antique store doesn't hold much ), but a good cup all the same.

    Now it's back to being responsible, but it was a fun, cold morning while it lasted.

Em

Lazy Weekends

    What could be better than having a lazy weekend to work on a crochet project while watching one of your favorite TV shows?  There isn't much that I can think of.
    I went rifling around in my closet and found an afghan that I had started back in the spring and haven't touched since.  With all of the Christmas presents for my family made, I thought it would be a good time to pull it back out.
    My plan is to make it a sampler blanket, using all different shades of gray, and having each block be a different stitch or motif.  In search of new stitches to use, I pulled out a stack of crochet books and set to work.

    The hardest decision I had to make was which show to watch?  Supernatural, Doctor Who, or Sherlock?  I eventually decided on Doctor Who.

    Outside the beauty of the fall evenings continues to amaze me.  The colors that show up in them are beyond compare.  If you want to snap a picture though, you have to move quick.  They go from golden to gray in just minuets before they're gone.

    While I love all sorts of colors in the sky, if I had to pick a favorite I would go with gray.  Most people might think that's a bit gloomy, but maybe they just don't see all the swirling patterns in the gray clouds or how all the other colors pop against an overcast background.

    Plus, when it's gray out, most people don't want to get out and do things.  That means staying at home and having wonderful lazy weekends like this one.

Em

Where the Madness Begins

    Well here we are!  The first post.  Is it unlucky to start on Friday the 13th?  I don't think so.  13 is my lucky number, so I feel pretty good about getting this going today.  I'm new to all this blogging though, so we'll just have to see how it goes.
    I'm nearly half way through my first go at National Novel Writing Month.  I've been wanting to do this for a couple of years now, so I'm really happy to finally be doing it!  It hasn't been nearly as grueling as I thought it would be.  Actually, with my tea, some chocolate, and my music, it's been really nice to turn the sign on my door and click away at my keyboard.

( Yes, I do think I'm hilarious. )

     I've gotten past my perfectionism in the first draft of writing, and I know that is part of what has made this easier than what I thought it would be.  I just have to remember that I'm only putting sand in the sandbox right now.  I can worry about building the castle later.
    Writing is something that I deeply enjoy, and finally making the commitment to a whole novel is something that I'm glad I've decided to do.  So I'm going to dive back into my little world again and get back at it.  Who knows when I'll resurface.

Em