As you’re about to see, Girl Kitty is thinking out loud this morning, and she has a lot to say. When she’s finished venting, I’ll show you a little crafty project I just finished. But first, of course, musica (darling, from Love Actually) . . .
Ahh yes, she’s thinking, I know what I want for Christmas, I want it to be the good old days. When it was just me.
Because now, every time I turn around . . . He’s there.
I sit on a pillow on a chair, HE sits on a pillow on a chair.
He thinks he’s so cute! With those goo-goo-googly eyes.
But I’m beautiful too, aren’t I? Aren’t I just as beautiful as HE is?
Yes, my darling cat girl, you are. You will always be my number one. All I want for Christmas is You. ♥
This photo of hearts really hasn’t much to do with anything, but a couple of our girlfriends were asking (in “comments”) if I would put up photos of the heart-shaped rocks we pick up when we’re out on our walk, so before I tell you about my project, I thought I’d do that . . . here are some of them, arranged on the window sill in our upstairs guest bathroom. The light blue one is actually beach glass. The red one is a worn-down old brick. The white one is a seashell. I think the black one might be from old blacktop. These little treasures are all natural, this is how they were when we picked them up, washed up from the sea, in the sand.
Now on to the project. It’s not really a Christmas project, but so easy and definitely something I wanted to get done before Christmas. Here’s a picture, below, of our downstairs guest bathroom:
It’s a small room, but it has high ceilings; it’s where we’ve always hung old family photos along with things we find in antique stores. We like to have an entertaining bathroom — and I wanted to take it one step further.
I love looking at photos and mementos; that’s my great-great grandmother in the round frame, and below it is a thank you-for-dinner note from Peter Mayle (who wrote A Year in Provence and came for dinner once!! Of course I had to frame his note!!). I thought this narrow wall between the window and the bathroom door might be perfect for a real picture wall.
So I pulled out some favorite old photos of us with our friends and families (and kitties) . . .
And on a sheet of foam core, using a metal ruler as a guide, I cut around each photo with a sharp exacto knife, protecting the table top by turning my blotter calendar upside down and using the heavy cardboard back as a cutting surface.
I put down newspaper to protect the table cloth, and then sprayed acid-free photo-mount on the back of each photo and, as carefully as I could, attached it to the foam core.
So now the photos are more substantial and will stand out from the wall a bit.
There’s me when I first started painting, us at Joe’s 40th birthday luau, Joe out sailing when he weighed one pound, John with his girls when they were babies, the girlfriends singing on the porch of my old studio (♫You don’t own me, don’t say I can’t go with other boys . . . ♪), Joe and I when we first met, Margot’s children. Good old memories. To the back of each foam core photo, I attached a sticky double-sided foam mounting square . . . so I could hook the photos to the wall. The mounting squares are removable — just in case this turned out to be a terrible idea!
Then I started sticking them to the wall, one at a time, years of wonderful memories and our favorite people. Sooner or later everyone passes through here and now they will find themselves on our wall.
There is only one “seat” in this room (unless you’re Jack!), and it’s directly across from the picture wall. (A very long time ago this bathroom, which is at the far end of the house, in a corner off the pantry, was called, according to papers that came with the house, a “three holer.” Those were the days!)
And that’s my excitement for today — it’s done!!! Right now we’re about to trek up to the attic, me and Joe, to dig around in the boxes, and bring down the Christmas decorations. We’re bringing in the tree, although we have huge fear of this (Thank you Mari!). Below is a photo of our house last December . . . the way it’s going, I think this snow may be all we have, just in a photo, because in real life, we’re about to get the yard furniture back out of the barn where it was put away for the “winter” and maybe plan Christmas dinner around the Barbecue!
I hope I am speaking too soon, tomorrow a blizzard will fly in!! It’s so beautiful here in the snow, I can dream can’t I?
Our Cookie Jar starts going out to you Willard Girls next week . . . with all my favorite cookie recipes! When you get it, just click on any recipe in the jar, and it will come up so you can print it out. Here’s one right now . . . if you’ve never tried these chocolaty-chewy delights, they are delicious and always a big hit at the cookie exchange parties. Bye for now girlfriends, our Holiday Screensavers are UP, help yourselves! . . . And have a wonderful day!! Go to the top, play that song again!!!
The weather was beautiful all weekend, unseasonably warm. I’ve never been able to hang my Thanksgiving napkins out to dry; they would normally freeze stiff in the late November air. But it was balmy and breezy yesterday; I filled my laundry basket with napkins and dishtowels and took them outside. A very tricky form of procrastination, masquerading as house work, because I love to do this, it’s not work at all 
Even Girl Kitty, that little black and white speck over there next to the house, was outside; enjoying a good roll in the dirt driveway.
While we were doing this, Joe was up on the ladder, fixing the gutters on the house. Each of us with reasons to be outside rather than indoors.
The leaves are off the maples and linden trees . . . no noise on the streets, all the Thanksgiving revelers have gone home, leaving the island to us again, quiet and drowsy, a little paradise; just the long wail of the boat whistle as the ferry pulls out of the harbor, and a few lonely crows cawing in the trees. And wet-napkin flapping noises. And my voice piping up, “Honey, do you feel like going for a walk?”
So “off to the woods did the merry men go” . . . we grabbed our jackets and went out to our favorite place, our walk out a long dirt road through the woods, the walk we’ve taken almost every day for the last twenty years . . . kicking up the piles of leaves as we go . . .
. . . to the end, where the woods stop. Past the pond, the road becomes more sand than dirt, to the sound . . . then along the beach, the long way, to search for colored glass and heart-shaped rocks, listening to the waves lapping on the shore, the seagulls calling, breathing in fresh salt air, bathing our faces in cool sunshine. And then, back again, through the woods . . .
