Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow. PLEASE!

It's official. I WANT CHRISTMAS!!! Please? But it's still months away =(. Actually the truth is that I want Tree Day.

...

My mum hates shopping, so I didn't know that the day after Thanksgiving is, in most houses "Black Friday". In our house it has always been Tree Day. My favorite day of the year. It's the day when we all pile in the car and drive up the mountain to Apple Hill and Robert's Christmas Tree Farm, and cut down a sweet smelling Douglas fir. The last few years my brother(s) have played football with friends on Tree Day (The Gravy Bowl...silly boys) and I decorated the house and baked Christmas cookies while they were gone, and we got our tree in the afternoon. I don't know if that's happening again this year.

So last night I had an awesome/faintly sad Christmas dream. How can something be both awesome and faintly sad you ask? (see Great Gatsby for best example ever! But that's not at all faint in it's sadness. I digress) I will tell you.

So the sad part was my entire family (and several of my friends families) decided to be jerks and disappear  for a tiny part of November (starting on Tree Day) all of December and a little bit of January. But that's ok! Because some how the chicken coop just down the hill from my house had also done a little bit of deciding, but it had decided to turn itself into an adorable little cottage. So my friends (Julia, Sam, Matteus and Rebekah) all came and spent over a month with me =D. That was the awesome bit.

They were supposed to arrive on December 1st but surprised me by getting there really early the morning of Tree Day so the five of us all went and got our tree and then decorated the whole cottage (there was a fire place!) with tons of twinkle-lights, greenery and paper chains plus the tree and all. We still had like two weeks of school to do but we had the nicest time any way =). We would do our school and then in the evenings someone would play piano and Sam would play guitar and we all sang Christmas carols (and sounded really good. Way better than we would have realistically =P) And we made tons of super yummy food, and ate it all (the wonderful thing about it being a dream is that none of us got fat on all of the cookies, pie, gingerbread, candy-canes, hot cocoa, popcorn and ice-cream we ate. (Not to mention all the savory stuff! Soups and stews and bread and potatoes and stakes and pork-chops and all sorts of other things I don't remember. Oh and breakfasts...yum!) We went caroling in Rebekah's neighborhood, and to Christmas parties at other people's houses. We mixed Christmas traditions and had an all 'round wonderful time. And then on Christmas Eve, just before we were gonna turn out the lights and stuff each-others' stockings it started snowing! So we went out and sang Christmas carols at the top of our lungs =). And the next day it was a white Christmas!

OK so some of it was a dream from last night and some of it was embellishment added this morning. But it was still fun =).

"Your graciousness is what carries you. It isn't how old you are, how young you are, how beautiful you are, or how short your skirt is. What it is, is what comes out of your heart. If you are gracious, you have won the game."

Photo shoot

Last night my mum was incredibly brave and invited four of our neighbors over for dinner (and yes that was super brave. One of the couples is rather...odd and the other although Robin is the sweetest, Gary is a JERK). I am not as brave as my mother so I called a friend and asked if she wanted to do a photo shoot. Well she couldn't go out, but I was welcome to come over there. I ended up spending the night and we did the photo shoot today. It was so much fun! Here's a few of the pics we took.

There was a very creepy looking guy walking up the ally we were in. Rebekah managed to get a picture of my face...=/

Look at this lovely lady! 

Her red shoes.

My red shoes =). 

Wouldn't it be lovely if...

I could spend my days like this?

Except of course when I was riding my beautiful horse that is.

If I could dance like this 

 And people sent me flowers like this

or even better, like these.

If I owned a boat like these,

And dresses like these.

 And a big cozy sweater like this one

and awesome boots like these. 

If I had shoes and mad skills like these

and hair this color

 and a room like this

in this house

on this canal.

But I don't. And I'm happy. Do you know why? Because all these things can be bought. All of them. I could dye my hair. Or buy a meadow and a blue VW beetle. What I have here in my own home can not be bought. I am surrounded by a wonderful family who drive me gloriously mad. My house is not perfect but it is filled with memories. Cracked and broken memories some of them. Of cracked and broken people. Memories of fights and tears and pain. But oh so many more memories of laughter. And love. Dancing and singing. Pumpkin pies with Daddy for Thanksgiving. Long talks with Mum about everything and nothing. Living and laughing and loving with my brothers and sister. These are things that can never be bought. And that is why, even though it would be lovely to have all this stuff, that's all it is. Stuff. And in the end it will be gone. 

Matthew 6:19-21 says "Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:

But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves doth not break through nor steal.

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

The last few days I:

Sunday) Went shopping with my mum. Poor woman hates Rue 21 but didn't let on at all 'till we'd left the shop. She spent the whole time browsing through racks of truly repulsive junk (tee shirts saying "want to see my tan lines?" >/) looking for the stuff that I needed/might like. She found me an amazing new pair of jeans and when I came up with four random tank tops that I hadn't asked for and assumed that I was going to pay for she offered to buy two of them for me. Long story short she is an amazing woman! <3 love you mumsy!

Monday) finally got a fountain pump! I've always loved water and wanted a fountain in our yard, but being a lazy rat I never looked into it until recently when I found out that all you have to do is: 1)get a pump from Home Depot ($20.00) 2)use hot glue to close the drainage whole in a shallow terra-cotta pot that has been sitting around our property for years, 3)stick that on top of an old milk can which has also been sitting around gathering dust, 4)stick a bunch of glass "gems" in it and 4)dump in some water (all of which can be done faster in real life than it takes to type out the instructions). So I did all that and now have a fountain.

I got inspired by my new fountain so I did a little more sprucing up of our gazebo so it now looks faintly reminiscent of fairy land at night. All I really did was move some lanterns from the trees framing the driveway to the pergola in front of the gazebo. So now when you drive up at night if all the candles are lit, rather than having a chandelier of twinkle lights shining out on the right

and four lanterns shining around the driveway on the left, we have four lanterns leading you straight up the path in the garden and into the gazebo. It looks really pretty.

I also added some floating candles to the fountain. They are also pretty.

Today) Guess what I got today? A FISH! I really like him. His name is Rory the RoFish. For those of you who don't know what a RoFish is it's like a Roman, but a fish. Get it? I know. My attempts at humor are funny for all the wrong reasons. The point is that there is a character on Doctor Who named Rory and his nick-name is Rory the Roman so I named my fish after him. Any way. My fish is cool. He's a betta fish, the kind that need to be all by themselves because they will fight and eat (or be eaten by) any other fish who try to co-habitat with them. The lady at the pet store said they are "Chinese fighters" which I think is just a little bit awesome =).

Any way.  

                              Meet Rory the RoFish!

He is actually blue with pink, but you can't really tell 'cause the lighting is a little wonky here. He's very awesome. He's the first pet who is really and truly and indisputably MINE. I have a cat too (not sure how well those two will get along) but she was a stray who likes my parents better than me =(. Rory doesn't like anyone more than me...although I'm not at all sure he likes me either. It's a little tough to read his emotions. But I'm sure I'll get better at it as the relationship develops.

I think I need sleep.

"WE ALL HAVE TWO LIVES. THE SECOND BEGINS WHEN WE REALIZE WE ONLY HAVE ONE."  

                                     - Tom Hiddlston.

A lovely day

My dad and brother left this morning to go camping. I had coffee with a friend and when I got home I found my mum watching Foyle's War one of my favorite TV shows - it's about a detective named Christopher Foyle and his life through WWII. It's based in England - in a coastal town called Hastings that I now want to visit. His son is in the RAF and he is one of the best detectives on the south coast. He's really wonderful. We spent pretty much the whole day watching that. We finished the whole thing up actually - we'd been watching for a while we didn't watch all six seasons in one sitting. Then I went and got us both take out from Panda Express and we watched a movie called The Inheritance. It's probably one of my all time favorites. It's admittedly rather cheesy...ok quite cheesy, but it's wonderful! The father in it is one of my favorite characters from any movie ever, he's so funny and kind. And the love interest - James Percy (see what I meant about cheesy? Oh well) is a really wonderful man. It's based off of a book with the same title but - and it is highly unlikely that you will ever read these words on this blog again - the movie is so much better than the book. Louisa May Alcott wrote the book when she was either 18 or 16 - I don't remember which - and you can definitely tell it was written by an overly romantic teen-age girl. The father is not in it. It's set in mid evil times. The love interest's name is Walter Percy =/ and the whole thing is rather ridiculous and quite unbelievable. The movie changes the time period to Alcott's own time, tones the characters down a bit and adds a few things that only a really good movie can add. Great acting, wonderful music and beautiful cinematography. It's not perfect and there are several tear jerking scenes but I would definitely recommend it as a delightful way to spend an evening.