We have snow. Again. Lots of it.
I went to take some photos out the back door and Bucket got curious.
She’s usually not the curious cat type, so I was impressed that she actually took two whole steps before retreating back inside.
More snow photos over on Flickr.
You may have seen me on Twitter bemoaning the fact that I only received one book as holiday giftage. (Technically, I got two. I received one after the bemoaning.)
Obviously, two is still not enough books. So despite the sorry state of my to-read shelf, I bought myself some pretties.
I have coveted the Coralie Bickford-Smith-designed Penguin Classics since I first saw them, so this is the beginning of what I’m certain will end up being a fairly large collection. They are so pretty, and there are so many classics that I’ve really wanted to own but lost the beat-up high school English class copies years ago. These are much better.
(Also featured in these photos is one of the marvelous bookends my sister gave me.)
I already want more because they don’t fill the whole shelf, even though the elephant is doing an admirable job of keeping them upright. And I’m annoyed that the Fitzgeralds don’t seem to be easy to find in the US, because they are swoon-worthy.
I had been planning on posting these today, so I was amused when they turned up on Doubleday’s Tumblr today as well. And then I turned up on Doubleday’s Tumblr, too. Hee.
On Friday, we baked cookies & tartlets & listened to absurd amounts of holiday music. I still find the “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” song mildly disturbing.
And we made peppermint bark. I’d never made it before, but I wanted to try something not-cookie, and my Martha Stewart holiday cookbook had a recipe that seemed fairly simple, so we gave it a whirl.
We couldn’t find candy canes (craziness!) but we substituted giant peppermint sticks which were probably more fun to break.
We melted absurd amounts of white chocolate.
We mixed the two together with a bit of peppermint oil & chilled it in a pan & then broke it into pieces:
It is delicious.
We were intending to bring it along for holiday visiting yesterday.
Then we had a blizzard.
And holiday visiting was canceled.
So we’re snowed in with over 2 pounds of peppermint bark. I’m going to have to freeze it or something, we can’t possibly eat all of it between the two of us.
(Besides, I also have chocolate-covered, sea salt-dusted caramels. Those are getting eaten. Savored one by one.)
We had our first snow of the season, finally! Started yesterday & continued overnight, which meant no late night lunar eclipse watching for us, sadness. Still, it’s nice to have the snow.
I always love the first snow, when everything’s all bright & white & quiet. After it turns slushy, not so much love, but that initial snowfall is always kind of lovely.
It was especially nice to have snow just in time for the winter solstice today, snowy snowy solstice!
The boy got me solstice roses, which are a long story that we do not have time for, but they are tinted bluish-black & marvelously gothic, I’ll take better photos of them tomorrow when I have proper light, but here’s a peek:
It’s feeling very holiday-ish around here, suddenly. Festive & wintery & Carol of the Bells-y. And cold. And snowy.
Trying to hold on to this last week or so before the year falls away from me and December turns into January. Busy, but good busy.
I like books. A lot. This is likely obvious.
I recently bought myself a book that I’d had my eye on for awhile. I wanted it based on title alone (Magic 1400s-1950s!), but then I saw pictures and made grabby hands at my computer screen and then I kind of had to have it.
I think I can safely say that it is now the biggest book I own.
It is the only book I have ever purchased that arrived in its own case, complete with convenient handle for carrying.
Here it is out of its box, with some regular-sized books for comparison:
And open:
It is gorgeous and I haven’t had the time to go through it page-by-page yet, but I’m very much looking forward to it. I kind of want to get a podium for it to sit on, like in a library. When I have the space for a podium. And a proper library.
I also got the not-quite-so-large but still rather big The Circus Book. I’m going to need more shelves.
