I learned that phrase from cast on, one of my favorite knitting podcasts. It was the title of Brenda’s new year’s episode last year, which was a good one–give it a listen. Brenda explained that the phrase is common in Britain. It’s such a good little set of words to keep in mind if you make new year’s resolutions.

I’ve got a few. I always do. Not that it means anything will come of them, but it’s exciting to write a few down and make an attempt at change.

I thought twice about sharing my resolutions here. They’re personal, after all. But I like hearing other people’s resolutions, so why not?  Maybe making them public will make me more likely to stick to them. 

This isn’t all of them, but here are my creative resolutions for 2009:

* Use my morning “writing time” to actually write, at least three days a week. As much as I love blogging, and following blogs and commenting on blogs, I’m afraid those activities have begun to usurp my “real” writing, which worries me. The blogging will have to shoehorn its way into some other time of day. (You know, all that other free time that I have as a homeschooling mother of three.)

* Read and study an essayist each month this year. Ooh, I’m excited about this one, which is only proof of my eggheadedness. (In junior high, a kid named Raul called me an egghead, and I’ve never forgotten it. He was right, of course.) Actually, I’m so excited that I’ve decided to make a blog project of it–My Year of Excellent Essayists. I’ll lay out my plans in another post soon, for any interested eggheads out there.

* Get more of my work published. I’ve got a few things festering in slushpiles already, but I vow to get out more.

*Knit more often. Even if it’s just ten minutes some days. ‘Cause I started a lace sweater coat in September and the end is nowhere in sight. What was I thinking?

* Improve my photography skills. I have a long way to go, but I’ve gotten so much inspiration from other bloggers out there. Here are a few more with photographs that make me sigh: maine momma. cloth.paper.string. abbytryagain.

So I’m starting as I mean to go on–and posting on a Saturday afternoon instead of during my Monday writing time. Now I only have twelve months of keeping this up!

Care to share any of your resolutions? I’d love to hear them.

The Christmas tree is still lit. ’Cause it’s not just a day–it’s a season. There’s still some glitter in the air.

Time to play with my camera.  Taking photos of food is almost as fun as eating it. That was our monkey pull-apart bread on Christmas morning. Made by Lily and Henry. Yum!

Henry’s on break from school. And was even willing to hike with Mr. T and me yesterday. And while I’m a bit envious of all the white Christmases I’m seeing out there in Blogland–even in Portland!–living in California does have its perks.

New music. If you know my sweetie, you know how he prides himself on staying hip to new music. Well, each Christmas my dad does his darndest to surprise us with some music that will impress even Chris with its sheer hipness. (Now, I love my dad, but I wouldn’t exactly call him hip. His little secret is NPR’s All Songs Considered lists.) This year he gave us Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver. Pretty cool music coming from a 70-year old. Good tunes for thinking and puttering.

Making bubbly water. Yes, we are a simple people here on the wonderfarm. Making our own “bubble water” makes for big entertainment. You see, in addition to great music, by parents also gifted us with a soda carbonator. Oh, we’re having fun with this one! And this is another meager attempt to prove our hipness: the latest trend in Bay Area restaurants is doing away with bottled water. Because it’s wasteful. Restaurants are offering their own chilled and filtered water, both still and fizzy. When Chris and I ate lunch at El Dorado Kitchen on our anniversary trip to the wine country and were served some free bubbly water, we admired their snazzy glass water bottles with clamp-on lids. And shopping the next day, we found some of our own: 

I’m hesitant to admit how much I love serving chilled water from these bottles. And I just found some red ones online! So we’ll have blue for flat water; red for fizzy. Yes, I know: I’m a geek.

New books. When Chris realized he hadn’t got his book-loving wife a book for Christmas, he promised a trip to Diesel. We went, and I found–oops!–two books. The River Cottage Family Cookbook and this one:

That’s Custom Knits, by Wendy Bernard. How is it that I hadn’t even heard of this book? It’s full of knitting-in-one piece projects! Lots of recommendations for adapting patterns to your liking! Great schematics! I won’t put an exclamation mark on the fact that many sweaters are modeled with bathing suits–silliness. But I’m having a good time perusing and dreaming. The Jane (Ravelry link) sweater is calling to me–but without that ribbon bisecting the bustline. Who needs a bisected bust?

So, how are you entertaining yourselves this week? (Chris, that’s your cue to finally leave a comment. Something like: Well, I’m toiling away at the office so my lovely family can stay home and have all the fun.)

Stitching up baby hats for Mama to Mama.

Bashing candy canes to sprinkle on top of cookies for kid-friends. (Could there be a better job for a seven-year-old boy?)

Making sets of cocktail napkins for grown-up friends. These were fun. All the fabric-choosing delight of quilting, but much less effort. I got to use my new serger–which I bought with money earned from my first publication. One creative endeavor fueling another. I like that.

One of the elves has been extra busy in the past few weeks. That would be the Divine Miss L, who just finished the 12 Days of Nutcracker–another way of describing twelve days with four dress rehearsals and eleven Nutcracker performances. This year she moved up from “cute” roles–lambs, soldiers, mice–and put some mileage on her pointe shoes. She was a perfectly sassy Spanish Chocolate, and a graceful and lovely waltzing Flower. This besotted mama couldn’t take her eyes off her dancing Lily.

I got lots of chances to watch, ’cause I co-chair food concessions for the shows. Which means about a zillion emails and calls to line up 80 bakers, and 50 concession shift workers. Plus stocking the kitchen and decorating, and working six 5-hour shifts. In the middle of December. On top of all the other holiday craziness.

But am I complaining? Why no, I gave that up weeks ago! And busy as the last few weeks have been, I loved getting to watch Lily dance so often. And it’s always fun to sell hot chocolate and sweets to happy theater-goers. Especially the little girl who brought Joan Baez along to one matinee. (For some reason Chris and I used to love to sing the Tears for Fears’ song Shout, Joan Baez-style. I think we heard her sing it at an Amnesty International concert once upon a time and it cracked us up. We are easily entertained, you must understand.  It was hard to look at the real Joan across the counter the other day without wanting to start in: Shout, shout, let it all out…)

Anyway, the elves still have much to do. So I’m signing off for now.

Now, I could just post a recipe and some photos. But short posts aren’t really my thing, have you noticed? So I must include a story as well.

I found the recipe for these soft glazed gingerbread tiles in a local magazine three or four years ago. I didn’t have the necessary printed rolling pin, but I used some cookies stamps to imprint them, and they were wonderful. With an irresistible chewiness, lots of spice from a big dose of black pepper, and a stunning beauty that came from the imprint and the glaze. I knew I’d make them again the following December.

Until the following December came and I couldn’t find the recipe. I realized, with horror, that I had neglected to clip the recipe, and the magazine had been long ago recycled.

I checked the magazine’s online archives. They’d started archiving the month after the recipe appeared. I called the local restaurant which had provided the recipe, and found out when the pastry chef would be there. I drove down to talk to her. The cookies were that good.

Alas, it turned out that the pastry chef had contributed a different recipe to the magazine. She couldn’t remember which other local chefs had contributed, and she didn’t have a copy of the issue. But she thought the chewy gingerbread cookies sounded delicious. 

Dang!

My local paper seemed to have stopped running its “Lost Recipes” Q and A column, which would have been my next option. I couldn’t figure out what else to do, and I resigned my fate to Christmases without chewy gingerbread tiles.

Then early last December, on a whim, I googled a bunch of gingerbread phrases. It was worth a try. And lo and behold, I found it! The right recipe! I believe I whooped with joy at my computer in the kitchen. I believe I whooped so many times that my family asked me to stop having a cow over a cookie recipe. (A response I’m sure they’re all willing to take back, after having tasted the cookies again.)

Turns out the recipe came from a renowned bakery in San Francisco, Tartine, which has been around for a few years. I haven’t made it there yet, but all reports are glowing. I did receive their cookbook for Christmas last year, and it’s lovely. Gorgeous photos that make you want to start baking immediately, and lots of insiders’ tricks that make it a good cookbook for bakers that already own a zillion cookbooks.

Once I was reunited with the recipe, I decided it was time to invest in my own beautiful carved wooden rolling pin. Sur La Table sometimes has them, but they run out in December, so I ordered directly from the company that makes them: House on the Hill. It didn’t arrive in time for Christmas last year, but we made a batch for New Year’s and gobbled them up before starting on our resolutions.

Here’s a link to a blogger who made them with cutters instead of a pin. They’re lovely as well. You definitely want some sort of imprint on the tops, which she did with a butter knife. It’s the collecting of the glaze in the crannies that makes the cookies so pretty. We learned that with an imprinted pin, you have to really press down into the dough, so the imprint lasts through the baking. (The close-up photo at the top of this post is of some of our first cookies, which didn’t have firm imprints. The later ones came out even better.)

Last week Lily, Theo and I made a quadruple batch and cut them into big 3×3 inch squares. We sold them at our local homeschool make-and-take craft fair. They sold out pretty quickly, probably helped by the bowl of sample bites we put out. It really is an irresistible recipe. We made $38 to add to our Advent Box, to help with the animal we’ll buy from the Heifer Foundation.

Now we have to make another batch this weekend for ourselves and to share. To all those other Christmas cookie recipes out there: Put up your dukes!

That’s a photo of our Advent wreath, taken during our annual raising-of-the-Christmas-tree fondue dinner. Years ago, Chris and I started the tradition of eating fondue on the evening when we put up our Christmas tree. After all the work of decorating the tree, it seemed so easy to slit open a pack of Swiss Knight fondue cheese and squeeze it into the fondue pot. Nowadays we make the fondue from scratch, and there are lots of dippables to cut, so it isn’t particularly easy. But it’s a tradition, and one which Henry and Lily almost always mention when questioned about their favorite family traditions. (Mr. T isn’t so sure. He doesn’t like all that cheese–but he does love the fabulously pokey fondue forks.)

So many cultures celebrate with light during the dark of winter. Candles and lights are an important part of Christmas. They’re also central in solstice celebrations, on St. Lucia Day in Sweden, in Posada processions in Mexico, during Hanukkah, on Diwali in India, during Kwanzaa.

Back when I taught school, my classroom was quite diverse. I had many African-American students, as well as students from Mexico, Guatemala, Afghanistan, India, the Philippines, and Vietnam–to name just a few. Given that diversity, I didn’t feel I should do a lot of Christmas-y activities during December. Instead of dwelling on Christmas in my classroom, we researched the variety of light-centered celebrations that occur around the world during winter. We looked at how those celebrations differ from each other. And how, in many ways, they’re similar.

I liked to culminate our “Season of Light” study with a big potluck lunch in which the students’ families brought food from their own traditions to share. One of the highlights of my teaching experience was seeing the feast that came together from my students and their wonderfully rich backgrounds. We had cornbread and lumpia and a rice dessert from India, and baklava, and chile verde, and–oh, I can’t remember them all.

I do remember the year we had homemade tamales. These came from the family of a Mexican boy in my class. His family was quite poor–as I recall, they lived in a single room. The parents didn’t speak any English, and although I tried to reach out to my Spanish-speaking families with own shaky Spanish, this family seemed too humble to want to bother me. Nevertheless, on the day of the feast this student and his parents brought in two huge trays of tamales. This kid was always a happy kid, but I wish you could have seen him beam as he carried in his tray of tamales. He told me later that his mother had woken up at four o’clock that morning to make those tamales for us.

It’s one of my favorite teaching memories.

This year I’m reading some of the books I read to my students to Theo–and Lily too. And there are so many new ones, sixteen years later! I couldn’t find books on Diwali and Kwanzaa back then. The kids are making some Season of Light accordion books. We’ll learn again what the characters on the dreidel signify, and we’ll play the dreidel game-although we may not get to making latkes this year, with Hanukkah starting so close to Christmas…

Here are a few of the books we’re reading. This certainly doesn’t list all the wonderful books out there; this is just a sampling based on what we own, and what we found at the library.

Children Just Like Me: Celebrations, by Barbara and Anabel Kindersley–beautiful DK book with photos and stories of real children celebrating all the holidays I’ve mentioned (except Kwanzaa), and many others.

The Whole Earth Holiday Book, by Linda Polon and Aileen Cantwell–overview of many holidays celebrated throughout the world.

Las Posadas:

Las Posadas: An Hispanic Christmas Celebration, by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith–photos and stories of actual families celebrating La Posada.

Pedro, The Angel of Olvera Street, by Leo Politi–sweet picture book about a boy and his Posada. A favorite.

Nine Days to Christmas, A Story of Mexico, by Marie Hall Ets and Aurora Labastida–another classic for younger kids.

The Night of Las Posadas, by Tomie dePaola–nice book which highlights the religious story behind Las Posadas.

Diwali:

The Story of Divaali, retold by Jatinder Verma–beautifully illustrated book retelling the story of Rama and Sita.

(edited to add: After reading this book, Lily and Theo watched the gorgeous 1995 version of A Little Princess, directed by Alfonso Cuaron, which has scenes from the Rama and Sita story interspersed throughout.)

Hanukkah:

(There are lots and lots of Hanukkah books–we read different ones each year. Here’s a list of ten good ones. The Trees of the Dancing Goats sounds wonderful! I’m ordering it from the library…)

Herschel and the Hanukkah Goblins, by Eric A. Kimmel–my boys in particular have always loved this one.

Kwanzaa:

(Another list of 10 great books.)

My First Kwanzaa Book, by Deborah M. Newton Chocolate–nice book for younger kids.

Seven Spools of Thread, by Angela Shelf Medearis–I’m looking forward to reading this one.

Are there any other light-filled celebrations that I’m forgetting? Books you’d recommend? Special ways that light figures into your traditions? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.

The comments have been interesting lately. Take a look.

Did you see the comments from DR, my oh-so-positive friend who inspired my attempts at a complaint-free Advent? He linked to some fascinating research published last week, which shows how one person’s happiness affects his or her family and friends. According to the article, “A happy friend who lives within a mile, for example, boosts your odds of being happy by 25 percent, researchers found.” And, “…even the happiness of a friend’s friend boosts your chance of being happy by 9.8 percent. Even more surprising, the happiness of a friend of a friend of a friend boosts your chance of being happy by 5.6 percent.”

Wow. Proof that happiness radiates and spreads. Like light. What a great gift to give others this holiday season. Happiness. And all you have to do is be happy yourself.

A couple of years ago, in an attempt to make the purpose of Advent tangible to the kids, I came up with the idea of an Advent box. We talked about specific ways we might make ourselves light-filled people. What little acts could we do that might bring happiness to others? We decided to put slips of paper beside the box, and when any of us did something kind for someone else, we could secretly write it down and put it in the box.

At the end of Advent we would count the slips of paper in the box. We would give each a monetary value-I think we made them worth $1-and we would use the money we “raised” to buy an animal for a needy family through Heifer International.

Of course, we aren’t really raising money, so any money earned comes from the family account. But I like the idea of having our actions be the basis of our donation-and the kids are always able to pitch in some of their own money in the end, if they choose to.

If you read my last post, you’ll remember how I was touched by our friend Dave, and his positive attitude. How he didn’t begin his day of driving by complaining, as I think many of us might be inclined to, but instead he recognized the beauty in the morning.

I thought about that for the rest of my morning, and knew what I wanted to work on for Advent: I want to be a more positive person. I want to give up complaining.

I’ve reserved Complaint-Free World from the library. It hasn’t come yet, so I haven’t looked at it and don’t know much about it.  Plus, I’m not really a self-help book kinda gal. But I figure it’s worth a skim. I’d like to get the author’s take on how complaining affects us.

But you don’t need a book to give up complaining. You just need to stop complaining. I’ve been trying for four days now, and it hasn’t been too hard. One morning as we tried to rush out the door, and I pointed out the mess that would be waiting on the kitchen table when we got home, Lily said, “That’s complaining.” She was right. Typically I might have responded with a snarky, “I’ll mind my own complaining, thank you very much.”  But crazy as it sounds, I appreciated having her point it out. Because I want to be a successful non-complainer.

It feels good not to complain! I think we believe that complaining releases frustrations and makes us feel better, but willingly refraining from complaining is an even better “feeling better”. That said, I haven’t had to work too hard to restrain my complaining the last four days. They’ve been an easy, positive few days. But have they been positive merely by chance? Or positive because I haven’t complained?

Either way, there are at least four more slips in the Advent box than there were on Sunday. And each says, “Today I tried hard not to complain.”

Each slip gets us closer to a chicken, or a goat, or a llama for a family somewhere in the world. A little light from our family to theirs.

Since then, we see each other every few years–in the last two years or so it’s been more often. And what great times we have.

The kids have gotten in the habit of filming a movie each time they’re together. I think they’ve done five now. It’s fantastic–instead of vegging out on Guitar Hero World Tour on the Wii, they’re coming up with plots, filming scenes, editing. This time, perhaps to keep Mr. T from being a bother, they gave him the lead role.

As James Bond.

They actually convinced a bartender at the Palace Hotel to take his order and serve him a fake martini on film. Shaken, not stirred, of course.

There was also a brotherly fight scene on the Golden Gate Bridge which may have slowed city-bound traffic temporarily.

And no, I’m not thrilled to see my seven-year-old swigging martinis, punching his brother and wielding a machine gun, but I guess he’s pretty much ruined anyway. And he does all those things with such style…

He and Dave got to play in an interactive art installation at the SF MOMA. And we posed in front of the Union Square Christmas tree like good tourists. (No fighting or machine guns involved.)

Dave and Janet are some of the most positive people I know. I always end up feeling inspired after spending time with them. Janet teaches at a wonderful private school in a farm-like setting outside of Portland, and I always get exciting homeschooling ideas based on what she’s doing in her classroom. The four of us love sharing recommendations for good books, recipes, vacation destinations, films. (This time they brought down King Corn. Fabulous!) And we love sharing bottles of wine and Zachary’s pizzas.

On Sunday morning before they left, I came downstairs at 6:30 and found Dave in the kitchen, filling up water bottles. He didn’t complain about having to be up at 6:00 a.m., or about the 10-hour-if-you-don’t-stop drive home, or at the fact that he was schlepping bags down our stairs and out into the morning cold. Instead he looked at me and smiled and said, “It’s beautiful out there today.”

It was just a typical line from him, but it made an impact on me, especially on the first morning of Advent. I’ll say more about that later this week. 

Good friends are gifts. But friends who also inspire? They’re gifts with a ribbon on top.

In Carmel a few weeks back I picked up eucalyptus leaves and pods. I was so glad I had them when I happened, for the first time, to Prickly Pear Bloom and read her post on missing the California of her childhood. I couldn’t bring her back, but I could send some fragrant bits of California to Wisconsin. Check out her beautiful photo of the bits in their new home. Even the squirrels can’t transport them that far.

Mr. T and I did a little classifying of our collection. It took some research because there are all sorts of mislabeled photos on the internet. 

It occurred to me that our collection might look lovely strewn across our Thanksgiving table. Lily helped me with the artful arrangement. She’s quite adept at artful arrangement.

After reading about Three Girl Pileup’s Thankful Tree, I got the notion to cut little fortune-cookie fortune slips of paper for us and our guests to write down what we’re grateful for.  To tuck among the leaves, pods and cones.

I’ve grown so fond of my collection–the pods and cones especially–that now I’m thinking I’ll save them after Thanksgiving, and give them a glossing of fine glitter and glue. For the Christmas tree. 

But stop me from getting ahead of myself–for today it’s still fall and Thanksgiving. I hope you have a day abundant with food, family, and friends. And gratitude.