I'll Be Back Soon & Happy New Year's Too

Dear friends,

The fog is thick across the rooftops and tree branches this morning and, thankfully, my tea is hot and somehow streamlined in comparison. I'm suddenly maintaining a uniform of plaid flannel shirts and dark denim jeans and high leather boots or wooly slippers and often a hat with flaps or, I admit, a bright yellow beret. Cardigans are slung over the backs of nearly every chair in our house and small and large throw blankets too. Today is fog rolling into late morning and a little boy asleep and a handful of photographs between me and you.

I'm going to take a few weeks away from this space. We'll be visiting friends and family and so I'll leave you with a few glimpses into our cozy Christmas morning. The lights on the tree kept us company until the sun peered through and the rest of the neighborhood started to wake. Of course, our mornings start early. Or our evenings run late. Or time is still in short cycles of newborn care but we are finding our way down tunnels and portals and side streets of daily function. His cheeks are rounder. His eyes are brighter. His hands are more like my hands.

Happy New Year, dear friends. And do you want to know a secret? Okay, then. My birthday is New Year's Day.

xoxo,
k.

Happily Winter Merry

Happy Holidays to you, dear friends.

I hope your winter holidays are filled with peace and joy and that pretty winter light. I hope you find a bit of magic tucked here and there and that you drink some champagne and eat some sugary snacks and stay in your pajamas a bit longer than usual. I hope you are surrounded with things that sparkle and twirl and pirouette and otherwise sing. I hope you make a New Year's resolution that feels more like fun and less like function. I hope you have ample time with family or friends or colleagues or neighbors or even kind strangers or otherwise beloveds near and far. And if you live in cold weather, I do hope you catch a snowflake on your tongue.

Happily Winter Merry. That's my wish for you.

xoxo,
k.

December in Oakland and a Red Thread for Mothers

This is what December looks like here in Oakland. It always amazes me that we have flowers at the farmer's market and Christmas trees on the corner. Squash, greens, roots, apples, persimmons, and citrus fruit abound. And a very low December sun makes for very long sidewalk shadows.

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I've managed to find moments in the studio to make a handful of Christmas ornaments for our sweet little tree. The "peace" ornaments might one day become a mobile or a wall hanging or something to hang near our stockings.

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Our little one is 6-weeks old and my heart and head are still planted in my new world of motherhood and also the practical parts of tending to a newborn and being on maternity leave. Not surprisingly, I often find myself thinking about lineage and my own mother and my grandmother and I imagine them tending to their own tiny humans and wondering when they too would return to the things they had nearly forgotten.

And I imagine this is how my mother did it. And how her mother did it. And how the mothers before them did it too. How there is this long red thread of lineage holding us all together over decades and then over centuries. How all the mothers before me held onto that same red thread as they tended to their newborns and contemplated their new identities as "mother".

Their bodies accomplishing amazing feats. New levels of physical pain and tiredness and also reveling in the simplest new joys and holding fast to that thread knowing that all too soon the whir of the world would be back inside their hearts and homes. And how the newborns hold to that thread too, learning miraculous skills like how to turn their heads from side to side and then suddenly purse their lips into a very first smile.

And my heart continues to peel back and open.

xoxo,
k.

Other People's Pretty and Holiday Inspiration

Source: flickr.com via Katrina on Pinterest

Source: stylesncream.blogspot.com via Katrina on Pinterest

Source: flickr.com via Katrina on Pinterest

Source: poppytalkhandmade.com via Katrina on Pinterest

Source: etsy.com via Katrina on Pinterest

Source: moredesignplease.com via Katrina on Pinterest

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Somehow, it is already December. And somehow, the holidays are just around the corner. And somehow, I haven't yet purchased or crafted one holiday present. I haven't hauled the decorations out of the bottom of the closet. I haven't baked one cookie in honor of the merry winter celebrations. This year, I might just dress our newborn in red and white stripes and consider our apartment "decorated".

Instead, it's been warm in Oakland and I've been welcoming the gorgeous warm weather by taking long walks with the little one. I will not complain about the pretty winter sunlight or the warm windy afternoons but my heart is full of lazy silver snowflakes and boughs of evergreen. You can take the girl out of New York but you just can't take New York out of the girl. Le sigh.

I am managing to make a few new ornaments for our Christmas tree and I have holiday cards waiting for best wishes to be written and sent. Little pockets of time here and there and yonder. I've also started a new holiday-themed board over on Pinterest to indulge my wintery visions (complete with the gorgeous found images posted here).

This year, it seems I am amassing a collection of other people's pretty.

xoxo,
k