new years's musings

Today I went and bought myself a plant. A nice trailing plant, which I put in my bathroom on the edge of the tub. A humble little guy, who despite it's meager origins, has cheered me immensely on this cold, dark winter day. Maybe this sounds neurotic, but I have gone into the bathroom several times, under various pretenses, just to check on my plant. A living plant inside, while everything outside sleeps.

This quiet time has been restorative, yet I am now finding myself in a strange duality of fully enjoying the season and also looking forward to the coming of Spring. I am, and will always be, a warm weather girl.

I have been spending alot of time in the kitchen, trying new recipes, pouring through cookbooks, going through websites like allrecipes.com. One cookbook which we have particularly enjoyed the results of is Food and Wine's Italian Cookbook. It is not a vegetarian cookbook, although it does include several non meat dishes. It is a very health conscience book, however, which I appreciate. Several recipes can be modified to vegetarian very easily. The meat eaters in my family equally loved the dishes with and without meat... something of a rarity in this house to please everyone. I will post some of my experiments in the next few days.

Besides cooking I have spent alot of time at home with my family, going to movies with my husband, reading, and at the gym- running, doing weight training, and tons of yoga. I finally got window treatments put up, and am still loving the effect. So cozy!



I feel myself readying for the oncoming semester (14 hours) and more time up at the salon. I am beginning to feel that familiar old anticipation coming over me, and I know in a few weeks I will be guns ablazin'! But, in the meantime, this quiet time has been lovely and necessary, and I try to embrace every second of it.

Greg booked our 2010 family vacation a few days ago. It's in June. We are going on another cruise. This one is 5 days and will be in the Caribbean. Everyone is all excited about getting in shape and being in a bathing suit, but I am in shape now but will probably be pregnant then, lol!! Talk about irony!

I took this picture of a corner of my house yesterday when the light seemed just right. It is some of my pottery, some of a friend's, and a still life I did a few years ago while on a sunflower kick that lasted far too long: