Currently - December '21

Happy Holidays! And congratulations on making it through another year of pandemic. I'm sure it wasn't easy, and things continue evolve with booster shots and the latest variant. Stay safe & healthy, and make time to enjoy your favorite parts of the season. For me, that will mean baking, watching a few Christmas movies, and trying to take in some local sights/events like the model train display at the National Botanic Garden (shown below). This year's theme was agriculture around the world - those are terraced rice fields - there was also a banana/coffee plantation, citrus grove, and olive orchard among others, all made from plant material. If you're local to DC, I highly recommend. It's outdoors this year, and much neater than the tress in front of the Capitol or the White House. 😉

decorating - I always get slightly annoyed by the Christmas products that appear almost as soon as the Halloween stuff is cleared away and usually wait until December to start to decorating. This year though, I felt the urge earlier which also weirdly makes me feel behind since not all of the house is decorated yet. I started small with the porch and bathroom. In the living room, the tree is up and has lights on it, but the rest still needs to be done.

feeling - Kind of restless. I wish we could start planning our next trip to Japan to see Keizo's family and maybe even do some bike touring, but I feel like things are still too uncertain and the restrictions are very strict. Hopefully 2022 will include more domestic travel as well.

sending - We'll be sending out handmade new year's cards again this year. 2022 is the year of the tiger - not exactly an easy animal to draw 50+ times. 

smelling - Like whichever lotion I just applied, which happens in the morning, before bed, and almost every time I wash my hands. The best one is a small tube of French Orange Blossom hand lotion that I keep at my desk and wakes me up a bit every time I apply.

wrapping - I wrapped up 24 little packages of chocolate, mini-coloring sheets with crayons, stickers, Legos, etc. as an advent calendar for my friend's two boys and shipped it all off just before Thanksgiving. It's probably the most on time I've been with anything holiday related in my life. (Those unfinished pillows I wrote about last month haven't changed a bit!)

Best of November

• Thanksgiving in Arizona - Surely there were other good things that happened last month, but whatever they were was eclipsed by 5 days spent in Arizona with my family. The weather was perfect - sunny & 70's - and we had a nice, relaxing time. We played our new favorite board game, Wingspan, a few times, went hiking, biking, and of course ate delicious food and doted on my now 9-month old niece.