Holidays in the Office

With the great room swap of 2018 I ended up with a new desk. (we purchased a new mattress which wouldn’t fit up the stairs, which meant my downstairs office moved up to what was our bedroom and our bedroom went downstairs). The room is finally getting organized and settled, which means I’m finally able to find what I’m needing within a few minutes. Since I spend so much time in this room, I decided to add a Christmas tree to the corner and a little decor on top of the cabinets.



It’s not a perfectly festive room which I’m thoroughly enjoying. I even have a little speaker in there with Christmas jazz on most of the day. This room doubles as my sewing space, so it’s nice that I get to enjoy the decorations all day and in the evenings as well. This is one of those times when having access to thousands of little trees on our property is a benefit. They need cut anyways, so it’s nice to be able to get some enjoyment out of them.

Do you enjoy an artificial or a real Christmas tree?

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Friday Favorite: Agatha Christie

I’ve been reading Agatha Christie books since I was a girl. My mom had copies that she had been given by her aunt when she was a girl. I read, and reread those copies. In the last few years I’ve been reading through her books again. Most recently, I found this lovely set of vintage books published by Heron Books back in the 70’s. I was able to find an almost complete set, there are only 3 volumes missing as mine contained 38 volumes with 2 books in each one. I’m only missing 3 volumes to complete my set.


I decided to start with the Miss Marple series, so I’ve been reading through the books in that series. I’ve picked them all out from the volumes that I have. No doubt this will keep me in reading throughout the winter.

I’ll be looking through an noting which ones I’m missing then be on the lookout for those. Until then, I’ll be reading through these beautiful books and enjoying every moment of it! If you’re a fan of mysteries and haven’t read any of her books, I highly recommend them!

What are you reading this winter?

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That Fleeting Moment

Yesterday evening, I ran out to look for something I thought I left in the sauna. Right as I rounded the corner of the house I stopped dead in my tracks because of this:

Naturally, I ran inside and grabbed my camera, which didn’t have quite the right lens, but I knew I didn’t have time to change it. It had been foggy all day, not just a bit of fog, thick, pea-soup style fog. Right as the sun was setting, the fog started to blow away and the sun was able to peek through in all its golden glory.


This moment lasted for just that, a moment, it was gone just as quickly as it came as the sun lowered beyond the horizon. This year I’ve really been trying to notice and soak in these moments like this, especially the fleeting ones.

Do you notice the sunsets more this time of year when the sun is setting earlier?

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Still Harvesting

On Monday I harvested that last of the vegetables from the garden, it was a mess of lettuce that I had under a plastic low-tunnel with an additional layer of remay on top of the lettuce itself.

The ground inside the low tunnel isn’t frozen at all, in fact it’s still soft. We’ve had a lot of nights in the teens and a few nights that were only 3 degrees, which means this lettuce did a great job surviving such cold temperatures.


I ended up with quite a harvest, at least a week of salad for dinner. Some varieties did better than others, I didn’t specifically plant cold tolerant varieties for this experiment, I just used seed I had on hand. The variety that performed the best was ‘Alkindus’ from Johnny’s Seeds. Next winter I’ll most likely try to find a cold tolerant variety or grow mostly the one variety that did really well in my garden.

Are you attempting any winter gardening?

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Handmade Holidays

I’ve always been one to make lots of gifts, this year is not exception. Over the coming weeks I’ll be showing you a few of the things I’ve been making as I finished them up.

This beautiful green wool afghan was made with yarn from my mom’s stash. I found a pattern for a Finnish Granny Square on this blog and decided it the was the one I wanted to use. The edging I made up as I went along.


I’m pretty excited to gift this beautiful afghan, in fact I love it so much that I’m thinking of making one for our bed as well, perhaps with a thinner yarn of linen. That won’t happen until after the holidays of course, as now I’m on to quilting a quilt for a gift and then I’ll move on the making reusable shopping bags from vintage sheets. Stay tuned, I’ll show you lots of the beautiful things coming out of my craft room.

Are you a crafter? Do you enjoy making gifts for people?

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