shining egg

twelve months gone by

january

habit :: corolla :: wild horses on the beach :: furniture :: baby shower :: traveling alone with my girl :: painting in the living room :: baking baguettes

february

new york city :: meeting amisha :: making valentines :: yellow week :: the 100th day of school at home :: new york again :: more painting in the living room :: sweet potato pound cake

march

green week :: erin's visit :: gocco swapping (finally) :: globetrotters :: sorting fountain pens :: penuche cake :: molly's book signing :: boston :: a new nephew :: maple syrup :: a finished hat :: sorting paintings :: bench monday :: girl + tripod + remote = 144 self-portraits of a 6 year old

april

thomas run :: paintings delivered to the gallery :: uncle morton's visit :: little league :: passover seder :: israel :: mitzpeh ramon :: hamburgers in haifa :: clothesline

may

mom's birthday party :: 72 cupcakes :: rubber duckies + kazoos :: more little league :: grilling :: another baby shower :: even the horizon :: bonfire :: campfires in the back yard :: make your own sushi :: planting the garden :: b.'s solo in the play :: painting bottles and jars :: painting at stoneworth

june

the school year finally comes to a close :: hail :: dinner with a friend from london :: csa :: stop motion video :: 50 mm lens :: felted rock :: corn on the cob :: monoprinting :: echoes :: hyacinth necklaces :: corolla :: broken lens :: camp

july

outdoor movies :: peach-plum crisp :: farmer's markets :: sagamore :: sleep overs :: swimming pools :: painting at thomas run :: caleb stine :: artscape :: burrow house brunch :: prints of my paintings

august 

sleepout :: brownies :: swimming at molly's :: grilling with coddles + urchins :: cape cod :: kayacking :: counselor dinner :: the beach collection :: kids visit grandparents :: photo shoot :: capture the flag :: state fair

september 

back to school :: weekend holidays :: morning trip to the philadelphia zoo :: cello lessons :: photoshoot :: apple pie :: 10 :: italian food + ice cream :: stoop stories :: breadcrumbs in the stream at the farm :: the baseball game

october

building the sukkah :: twinkle lights :: tomato soup :: painting rachel's dishes :: long weekend in maine :: campfires :: painted toenails :: seaweed :: hiking :: conquering the edge :: popovers :: anniversary lillies :: painting the golden light :: piles of leaves :: lost teeth :: sewing tentacles

november

the golden light collection :: schools :: birthday party :: ice cream cake :: tumblr :: lego store :: artful blogging :: picture parent :: birthday :: guitar strap :: making ravioli :: japanese steakhouse :: thanksgiving :: visit from the z.s :: camp dinner at eden mill :: hiking at irvine :: art market

december

prepping paintings for frames :: dinner party :: safety induction :: girl scouts visit the police station :: hanukkah :: potato latkes :: buying for a family in need :: making donuts :: sleepovers :: new york city :: mary poppins :: cousins :: the pause in time :: more lost teeth :: snow! :: caramel corn :: chess :: dinner by candle light :: stack 'em high :: outer banks

the pause.

i love this last week of december.  it always feels like a pause to me, somehow - as though these days are suspended in time.  i have plenty of things to do, but nothing is pulling to get done.  we can all just be.  i love that.

i like to look back at the twelve months gone-by at this time of year.  i've done that in a variety of ways over the years, and this year - inspired by shari and eirean - i've done it a bit differently.  i'll share that here tomorrow.

i hope you're finding pause this week, where ever you are.  and moments for reflection.  and moonlight, too.  

oh my word.

oh my word.

if you're supposed to be packing today - or shopping or wrapping or traveling or spending time with your family - stop right now and go make this.  it's sooooooo good.  so good.  (truth be told, i have never made a single one of molly's recipes that wasn't so good.  ever.  but this one.  just go make it now and see for yourself.)

i made a batch yesterday to take to dear cousins this weekend.  lots of friends have made it - martha made it, and erin made it (they both packaged it way cuter than i did.) and i've been meaning to make it for days.  

i'm sort of on the other side of the holiday madness.  hanukkah ended last friday night, and it's not that i don't still have 1,000 things to do, it's just that i no longer have 4,737,861 things to do, which is a big relief.  so i had time yesterday - when i should have been wrapping and packing and folding laundry - to make two batches of caramel corn.

the first batch was a royal disaster.  i knew the pan was too big when i started (hey erin, remember when i said the pan seemed too big?  it was.) which meant that the caramel was too shallow, which meant that the candy thermometer didn't register properly, which meant that the caramel got too thick and gooey and didn't coat the popcorn nicely, and it was a big mess.  (of course, that didn't stop me from eating it or taking pictures of it - it was only that i couldn't actually pack it up and give it.)

so i made the second batch - using a smaller pan - and oh my word.  it's tasty and it's pretty and i'm going to have to make another batch next week to take to friends because it is just so good.

and now i'm off to do all that i should have been doing yesterday.

wishing you all joy and love and peace and caramel corn this holiday season.

the 7th night.

 

the spinning slowed the teensiest bit today.  just enough for me to putter for 30 minutes in the morning before setting off on the ride again.

tonight is the seventh night of hanukkah.  i do love this holiday.  i love the celebrating, i love the joy, i love that it goes on and on.  i do.  i love the spinning dreidels, and the music, and the chocolate gelt, and the fried foods.  i love potato latkes, you know.  (any excuse to eat potato latkes.)  i even love the presents - giving them, especially.  (do you know that this holiday is not at all about presents?  not at all.  presents are a recent addition to our celebration of hanukkah in this country.)  but most of all i love the lights.  i love the candles burning, i love how my daughter asks to watch the candles burn down before going to bed, i love how the light grows each night until all of the candles are burning at once on the eighth night.  i love that.

we light a lot of hanukkah candles in our house.  we have a lot of hanukkiot.  (sometimes it's called a menorah, in hebrew it's called a hanukkiah - pronounced han-ooh-key-AH - and plural it's hanukkiot.)  most nights we light them all, some nights we don't.  each hanukkiah requires 44 candles to make it through the whole eight nights of hanukkah (on the first night we light one candle + the "shamash" or helper candle, on the second night we light two candles + the shamash, etc.), and in our family we have five hanukkiot - so that's 220 candles over eight nights.  that's a lot of candles, a lot of lights burning bright.  and i love that.

i've had a fair number of questions about our hanukkiot, and especially about the one you see below.  i'll give you a bit of information here, and if you have more questions, feel free to ask and i'll answer as best i can.

this little menorah is aluminum, it's like a little puzzle, and it was a gift to b. several years ago at hanukkah.  both kids have hanukkiot of their own - l.'s is made of little pewter animals (you can almost see it lined up behind the puzzle menorah in the photo above - we didn't light that one tonight).  i love them all, all five of them, for different reasons and in different ways.  two were wedding gifts, two were gifts to our kids, but i have a special attachment to this one that d. and i bought together a few years ago.

seven nights down, one night to go.  until december 1 next year, when hanukkah begins again.  (because the dates of the jewish holidays are determined by the lunar calendar, the timing of those holidays shifts from year to year.  i'm super glad i noticed tonight that hanukkah falls super early next year.  now i won't be surprised in november!)

spinning

i feel like this month has been like one of those carnival rides - the kind that spin and spin and spin.  and i feel like the kid who wants to get off, but the ride operator can't hear me yelling for him to stop the ride and so it just keeps spinning and spinning and spinning and i can't catch my breath.

so for now, a few scenes from our holiday.  

i'm hoping that the spinning will stop tomorrow and i can sit down and type.  because i have things to say.  but in the meantime, donuts and dreidels will have to do.

bits

it's sunday night.  we had several inches of lovely wet snow yesterday, perfect for building snow people and snow forts and playing outside and general loveliness.  i adore a good snow, and yesterday's was our first of the season.  last night we had friends for a little dinner party - and the only thing lovelier, i think, than a good snow, is a candlelight dinner with dear friends on the evening following the snow day. 

a few things i've been wanting to mention:

* i'm certain you already know (and how ironic that i'm the last to say) that molly and i have invited all 33 of our guests from this past year to post at habit this month.  every time i click over there i get goosebumps.

* inspired by shari, i'm going to try to collect some of my favorite moments from 2009 in this space over the next few weeks.  what a wonderful way to bid farewell to this year.

* i have a feeling that this soup (made with vegetable stock) and this salad are going to be in heavy rotation this season.

* the way grace approaches middle-of-the-nights with a sick little one - that's the perspective i'd like to have on every parenting challenge. 

* i tried the table runner again (can you see through the blur above?), this time with place mats and it was perfect.  

* some books on my list this holiday season.

* alicia and heather have announced that december is the final month for their noticing project.  i'm so sad to see those noticings disappear, and i'll be savoring each pair these next few weeks.

there's more, but it will have to wait.  now it's time to make order around here so that monday morning comes with a touch of grace.  good night, friends.