This is technically a photo of a woman painting, not of a woman doing drywall.
But strangely enough, when you google "woman doing home repair," what you get is mostly...porn.
So here is a photo of a woman painting. (I like her sneakers.)
Hmmmmmmmm.
My favorite meal on the planet is the "Trust Me" menu at Sugarfish, a sushi place with a couple of locations around the Southern California area. The menu has some a la carte options, but really you have three choices: the "Trust Me," the "Trust Me Lite," and the "Nozawa" (a.k.a. "Trust Me Mega"). You tell your server how hungry you are, and then you sit back, trust, and allow the joy to happen.
That is what I need you to do here. Trust, and allow the joy to happen.
I always have a little trouble accessing my Christmas Spirit. It was easier when I lived in New York City, I think, because I was always out in the world, wandering through subway stations filled with shoppers and down streets past Santa after Santa. I actually left the house at night, and saw Christmas lights everywhere I turned.
Leaving the house after dark isn’t a thing I do very often these days; once we get back from our afternoon activity and start dinner, that’s usually it for me. And it’s for a good reason: there is literally nowhere in the world I’d rather be than in my own living room (which is usually the case, but especially at this time of year). We’ve been decorating, and cooking, and lighting a fire every single night, and watching Christmas movies and making forts and baking cookies. And with each night that passes, I get just a little bit more into that lovely-but-elusive holiday state of mind.
Did I mention that my efforts to make our home feel all Christmassy are also resulting in considerable cookie consumption? Oh my goodness so many cookies. The problem, of course, is that one type of cookie just won’t do: we have to make sugar cookies so that they can be decorated, and we have to make chocolate chip cookies because obviously, and we have to make Santa’s Favorite Cookies because even though Santa may not technically be on his way yet, practice makes perfect, right?
Remember the crafting afternoon disaster I wrote about last week? It wasn't entirely unsuccessful. There was one craft that turned out so beautifully that we're actually planning on going back and revisiting it tomorrow, because pom-pom pinecone ornaments are so cute that I kiiiind of need to make baskets of them.
A couple of weeks ago, my friend Erin asked if I wanted to set up a crafting afternoon for our kids, so they could make gifts for their grandparents (and anyone else who might prefer a fingerpainted snowman to, say, a Dyptique candle, which would be no one, but that's besides the point). We started a Pinterest board to find projects that seemed doable without looking too much like...you know...crafts. Our goal was to make things that the recipients might actually enjoy, as opposed to things that they feel obligated to display in perpetuity because said thing was made by a child.
This entire post is going to come with a massive caveat, and the caveat is this: If you have children under the age of...I don't know, I've only been a parent for five years. At what age do children start sitting still? Five-year-olds don't, in any case. So here's the caveat: if you have kids aged five or under and decide to make a fucking wind chime, please be aware that you will end up being the one making it. (My five-year-old did, in fact, bead his very own wind chime strand...and then picked it up to show it to me, at which point all the beads fell off, transforming a happy crafting afternoon into a trauma likely to halt further beading experiments for two years, at minimum. Because that is what happens when you try to force a five-year-old to make a fucking wind chime.) (My two-year-old, in contrast, applied herself with spectacular concentration and perseverance. Except what she was concentrating on and persevering in was ensuring that every single piece of berry bunny cereal, including the ones she dropped on the floor, were eaten.)
