Christmas morning!

Puuuuuullll off that wrapping paper!

Oh Christmas morning in Sicily, I hope you are the start of our family Christmas tradition!  It was a quiet, peaceful morning for the three of us as we opened a few gifts at a time (still haven't opened all of them!) and ate a big Christmas breakfast together.  Although we kept our gift-giving very simple for each other, our family showered us with many thoughtful presents from afar, and their evident love for us made them seem not so far away.  While we loved our Christmas as a little family here in Sicily, we would have given it up in a heartbeat to share our Christmas morning with them!

Later that day we changed out of our pajamas for a Christmas party with friends at Emily and Patrick's... and then of course as soon as we got home the pajamas went right back on and Elliott started a fire in the hearth.  We finished the evening with Skype chats with our family.  

One thing I couldn't forget all day: last year my family was here for Christmas.  I tried to hold Christmas Past (which included my sister Julia) hand-in-hand with Christmas Present, carrying with me the blessings as well as the aches.  There is so much to be thankful for this year, truly, and even more to look forward to both in this coming year and into the future.

Did you come up with any new rituals or celebrations this year that you hope become traditions?  I'm not sure what I think of spreading out the gift opening over four days...!  Have you ever done that?

our book tree + Christmas cheer!

our book tree! 

now with presents... all we need is Christmas morning

Merry Christmas, dear readers!  I've been wanting to share our holiday decor with you for awhile, but... well, until a few days ago we didn't have a tree at all, so that would have been a bit of a bust.  The other afternoon, though, I had an extra hour and decided to surprise Elliott when he came home with another book tree.  We made our first one last year and loved it, as there is no better tree for budget-conscious nerds like us.  (It also completely eliminates the "are we fake tree people or real tree people??" debate.)  This year our tree is elevated out of the reach of little hands on my craft table, and it has made that dark corner of the living room come alive.

(By the way, I scored the cute vintage mitten wrapping paper and the retro stripe paper from IKEA earlier this week.  So pretty!)

And, of course, there are the other holiday decorations for our home, like garlands on the bannisters and bows on the door (although I loved our red ones last year even more than these glittery gold bows).  I also love displaying my grandmother's gift to us: a tiny little tree from Switzerland with its precious wooden ornaments.

I will tell you that I had another tree first.  It was quite beautiful and creative, and I was pleased today when Martha Stewart's Organizing Tip of the Day email had the same idea.  I took two medium-sized tree branches, spray-painted them gold, and put them in a glass vase.  I then carefully hung all our beautiful handmade ornaments (again, thank you, Grammie, for your gift of a handmade ornament every year of my life!) on the branches as well as two beautiful glass ball ornaments that Elliott and I had purchased soon after we got married.

Unfortunately it was a little top heavy, I guess.  It fell over.  The casualty?  One of those newlywed glass ornaments smashed into a million pieces!  I dismantled the tree and took the branches out to the trash heap.  Sorry, honey, I have a long way to go before I'm Martha!

holding them close.

I have been moved to tears more than once over this past weekend after the events in Connecticut.  I didn't use to be this way, but then I had Lena and lost my sister, and now it only takes a few words of a news article or interview to cause my eyes to well up with tears.

There just aren't any guarantees in this life, are there?  You choose a small town in a state known for its decorum and law-abiding citizens.  You settle down, have your long-awaited children, send them to a lovely elementary school, welcome them home each day.  And then one morning you find yourself standing in the parking lot, watching children run out of the school, weeping, and you wait and you wait and you wait and your child never comes out.  

Or you fall asleep on a quiet July Saturday night in Sicily, sleep through your sister driving down the highway, sleep through your sister overcorrecting, sleep through your sister hitting a tree, wake up to a phone call from your dad, and phone calls should never come at 4am.  Never.

I read A Wrinkle in Time yesterday and my heart swelled with the family reunion at the end of the book:

Sandy suddenly yelled, "Father!"

Mr. Murry was running across the lawn, Mrs. Murry running toward him, and they were in each other's arms, and then there was a tremendous happy jumble of arms and legs and hugging, the older Murrys and Meg and Charles Wallace and the twins, and Calvin grinning by them until Meg reached out and pulled him in and Mrs. Murry gave him a special hug all of his own.  They were talking and laughing all at once, where they were strartled by a crash, and Fortinbras, who could bear being left out of the happiness not one second longer, catapulted his sleek black body right through the screened door to the kitchen.  He dashed across the lawn to join in the joy, and almost knocked them all over with the exuberance of his greeting.

Through the achings and the longings of this life, through the griefs and the sorrows, I am holding out in hope and awaiting with eagerness a reunion like this in Heaven, when Booie will come running across the Jordan and we'll all be together again, reaching for each other and falling down and laughing in the shallow water, reunited for all eternity in joy and peace, where there are no more tears and there is no more night, and all the light comes from Jesus.

Advent calendars

Eden and David, two of Elliott's siblings, have given us not one but two Advent calendars this season.  They are both unique and so beautiful, and they really have made this season all the more special each day.  As the chapel services on base do not discuss Advent besides lighting the Advent wreath each Sunday, this is a way to incorporate the anticipation and joy of the season into our everyday lives at home.

David sent us this Advent calendar, which he purchased from JohnsonMade on Etsy.  I hung the calendar with the help of 5 carefully spaced nails on our kitchen wall as well as red ribbon and clothespins.  I love the artwork on each card and the verses and activity suggestions on the back.

Eden knows her brother loves birds, and so her choice of Advent calendar is especially sweet for Elliott.  Every day we help Lena open one of the little windows in the calendar and pull out the tiny paper bird inside.  Then we help her choose a spot on the tree to place it.  Bit by bit, the tree is filling up with a flock of many colored birds.  I wonder what's hiding in the big window for the 25th?

Do you have an Advent calendar, either new to you or filled with family tradition?

My favorite DIY Advent calendar idea this year is from paper{whites}.  Her calendar has 25 pockets that she filled with tiny ornaments; each day her little daughter takes out an ornament and puts it on her very own miniature tree!

why Italian kitchens make me happy

my wonderful Italian drying rack

Let me just start by saying that, despite the incredible food they produce, Italian kitchens are not known for being beautiful, necessarily, or even particularly user-friendly.  Oftentimes kitchens here in Sicily will be outfitted with small, shallow sinks (a pet peeve of my husband's) and very little counter space.

However.

Italian kitchens have at least one design feature going for them that I have never seen elsewhere.  It's called the drying rack over the sink.  It looks just like a regular kitchen cabinet, but when you open the cupboard doors, you see a beautifully hidden away set of drying racks for your dishes.  No dishes strewn all over counters on dish towels, no unsightly dish racks on the draining board, no pots left in the sink to dry.  It's pure genius!  Thus far there has been an over-sink drying rack in every kitchen I've seen in Italy, even in tiny cottages in the Dolomites. 

But I've never seen this feature in any other kitchen in the world.  Why?  Do you have any theories?  My personal theory as to why this hasn't caught on in the States is:

a) dishwashing machines exist there and

b) every American kitchen is designed with a window over the sink. 

But why a window over the sink?  Do you ever look out the window while you're washing dishes?

(See some more photos of our kitchen here and here.)

it's the little things

In theory I like to stop and savor the little things of life that make it sweet, such as Lena's glee when I pick her up out of her crib, Siena's faithful shadow, having just one baby for a little while longer, or waking up beside Elliott each day (something a military wife learns to never take for granted).

However, in the hustle and bustle of life lately, I've taken fewer photos and often forget that we live in Italy, for crying out loud. (One reader pointed that out recently... to my conviction!)  This week I tried to capture some things that have made our lives sweet recently.  Here are a few glimpses into life in our home:

 in the phone booth in town, I love that she's talking with her hands!

& morning light in the neighborhood

main square

& view of our town and Mt Etna, the largest volcano in Europe

running down the hill into the main piazza

& a visit to the little general store where I picked up some of my favorite tortellini for lunch

a pit stop for a drink on a walk

& stairs from the valley leading up to our house on the edge of the cliff... a long walk with a baby on your hip!

Daddy's cowboy hat

& a mailbox in our neighborhood

 dazzling morning light

& looking out over our town

 our first trip to Centro Sicilia mall... which is all of 10 minutes from our house

 making the switch to greener kitchen products

 my little girl

 where did those neighborhood kittens go?
& well, there's one of them

 bella principessa before church on Sunday
& bike on a balcony


Today I'm linking up with Hello Hue and InstaFriday.

flow chart for cleaning

How great is this chat?  I found it on Pinterest when I was looking for printables for my Home Management Binder (blog post coming soon) and feel like I need to tape it on my fridge as soon as I get back to Sicily.  I'm sure the whole house cleaning process as outlined here would take me several hours the whole day, but having it streamlined like this would help me move quickly from task to task.

Since moving to Sicily and having a child, the house cleaning and home management tasks have mostly settled on my shoulders, and I'm always eager for advice as I learn this "art of homemaking."  (I would have laughed at that expression before, but now I am convinced it is an art... and I don't know how to be artistic yet!)

I'd love to hear your favorite house cleaning or home management tip.  What do you do to keep a quiet, clean home?

a picture an hour

I took a picture an hour (or almost) last week, the same day that I filmed Lena "discovering" she was going to have a baby brother by mixing up blue frosting.  I realized as I put this post together what a fun record this is of an ordinary day in our home.  Well, okay, it's not every day that you are celebrating that you are going to have a son!  But in other ways this day was completely ordinary and filled with things that make up the pattern of our lives right now, like Lena's Raisin Bran in the morning (3 bowls, please, with extra raisins), playtime with her new IKEA stacking toy, her nap times while I work on projects around the house, summer afternoons on the porch splashing in her little pool, and lots of play time and meals with our beloved Arthur family.  Someday I will look back on this post and say, "Oh, there is Elliott in his Army PT clothes... back when he was still in the Army!" (although will I say this in 5 years or 20, I don't know) or, "Did that toy really once look that new?"or, "Wow, their kids have grown up since then!  I'm glad we still know and love them."  (Because I truly hope we do.)

Funny to think of the future.  Sweet to savor the present.

Enjoy a few snapshots of the rest of the day, including some more behind the scenes about how those cupcakes came into being... and then were rapidly consumed (by me).

  7 o'clock

  8 o'clock

 9 o'clock (welcome home from running a 5K, Daddy!)

 10 o'clock (time for a nap)

 11 o'clock (putting together my new Home Management Binder, more about this in a later post)

 12 o'clock

 1 o'clock (want to share some frosting with me?)

2 o'clock 

 3 o'clock 

 4 o'clock (admiring my baby boy)

5 o'clock (playtime with friends)

 6 o'clock onwards (homemade Indian spice chicken burgers and chocolate cupcakes with friends)

(otherwise known as: I struggle to participate in conversation as I stuff my face with cupcake... s)

Happy Friday, everyone!