A small tradition: baking Czech Christmas cookies
I'm so excited to have my older children and their families here for the Christmas holidays, and, since I don't usually have such a large crowd I rarely bake the kinds of traditional Czech Christmas cookies my grandmother (babi in Czech) used to bake.
But this year I have the best opportunity to bring my babi's cookies back to my family.Babi's cookbooks are so well used and fragile and I love them. I'm so lucky to have them. I also have her hand written recipes which are a little more difficult to translate.
Most of the dough has ground nuts as part of it. Almonds and walnuts are my favourites. Some of the dough is rolled and cut out with cookie cutters, some is shaped by hand and some is pressed into forms.
Traditional Czech cookies are not overly sweet and so are perfect with afternoon tea, breakfast, any time at all. I like that.
And they last through the whole season. More about these cookies later.Now I think it's time for me to test one of my creations with my cup of chamomile tea. :D
All is calm
Hi everyone,This post is long in coming and I've been looking at it for several days now, but the truth is that I'm finding Christmas very hard this year.
Ok, I'm just going to stop writing about that now because it's been two more days of writing and deleting and writing and deleting since I started this post, and if I keep on trying to, and failing so spectacularly to explain myself, it will suddenly be New Year and this post will still be in the draft stage, so nuff said.
This year, although I cannot have Robbie with me, I do have my two oldest children and my four grandchildren for Christmas day, so I'm thrilled and looking forward to seeing their shiny faces. I've never had Christmas morning with my grandchildren since they were born, so that's wonderful for me.
I usually get my tree on the 15th of December because it has to stick around till the feast of the three kings (January 6th), but this year I just couldn't get my act together and so didn't get it till the 17th!By that time, my favourite charity tree lot had about four trees left, and they were all 8' tall. Perfect for me and for my house.
I put the tree in the stand...with the usual help from my crew...and set about decorating it.
I'm up to four crates worth of vintage and Czech glass ornaments and it took about four hours to get them all out and on the tree. Then I decided to repair last year's broken ornaments and get those on the tree as well. Then I decided that I hate the screen behind the tree, and also that the mantle is still full of hydrangeas and autumnal birch paintings and needed redecorating, so a massive project ensued. Project Get Christmasy With It!
Most of you know my aunt was an amazing artists and most of you know I owe part of my talent to her tutoring and guidance, but I don't often show you the legacy of paintings I have from her.This painting of the Madonna and Child, the Sistine Madonna, is one of her paintings which she painted for me over 30 years ago. She used to practice by replicating great masters and I was newly married to a Roman Catholic, so I asked her to paint me the most beautiful religious painting I could think of. I'm lucky to have it. The angels at the bottom have always symbolized home to my children.
I cleaned off my mail on my marble desk. This desk is right beside the front door and a catchment for my purse, keys, sunglasses and all papers which come my way.
And I took the hydrangeas and autumnal aspen paintings off the mantle piece and replaced them with more Christmas appropriate decorations.
I also brought back this painting which I did as part of our art challenge last year.I love living with my art and love to cycle it around as I feel like it. The time for this little misty painting seemed right.
And joining the painting are my two nutcrackers, one bought in England and the other in Austria, symbolizing the two parts of my family.
And there you have it. One half of the Christmas living room...
...and the other.
I did make a vlog recently...at least I did take loads of video footage for a vlog but haven't got my act together to post it. I'll try to get to that soon otherwise we might just miss Christmas altogether, and that would never do.
My over-wintering hummingbird and a new morning chore
There was a bit of daylight already when I walked into the kitchen to make my second cup of tea.
Some of us were resolutely still in bed,
but the little over-wintering hummingbird was out sitting on his feeder outside my kitchen door trying to lick his Popsicle frozen nectar.So I opened the door and took the feeder out from under him. He lifted off the feeder at the last minute and hovered at the kitchen door trilling at me.I nuked the feeder for 20 seconds and hung it back out.
Then I made my tea, and used more of the boiled water to make a fresh batch of food for my little hummingbird.
And after a few minutes I hung the feeder with the fresh food up for him.And he came right away and had a good feed. I think I have a new friend.
Meanwhile, the sun started reaching in.
There you go, my new morning chore while it stays in the minuses. First thing in the morning hummingbird food defrosting with my first cup of tea.Hopefully the second feeder in the front garden will be thaw out in the sun. I don't really feel like traipsing into the garden in my jammies.Anyone else have an over-wintering hummingbird? I know that they really do take care of themselves, but this guy loves to get in my face and ask me for help.
Teaching the therapy journal
Hi everyone,Today was my monthly therapy journal session at the wellness centre.
Today I worked with nine wonderful women all dealing with coming back to health after cancer.All of us coming together with art.
You know, over these two years since my actual therapy journal and my whole journey with overcoming a devastating illness, and over this year and half of offering my therapy journal method to the world, I've met some amazing people.
Many of whom say, "Oh, I can't draw" or "I used to draw but haven't picked up a pencil in years" or "I don't know where to begin!", but given an old book and some inspiration, anything's possibly!
And look at the wonderful art.I'm so happy when I hear that the journal has helped someone come back from a nuclear meltdown in the middle of the night, or when the therapy journal has meant that someone has connected with some form of journaling after trying and failing a million times, or that someone who hasn't picked up her art since a devastating diagnosis has finally found her art again...after four years...and is ready to unpack the art supplies.
They say that in our lives the best feeling is to give and to give freely from our hearts. They say there's no other feeling like it.
I must say that I agree wholeheartedly.Giving this method of journaling to the world, to anyone who wants to learn how, taking my art supplies to classes so people can discover how watercolour pencils work, or what mat medium is, or that you can buy brushes with their own water supply in them, or that you don't have to be an artist to make meaningful art, that you can leave a legacy of beautiful work. That is what matters to me.
So once again we came together and made a beautiful mess.
I'm feeling very lucky tonight.Can't wait till next time.This IS how we do it.
Linens and Vancouver snow
Well, what a turn-up for the books!Our rare and lovely light dusting of snow was scheduled for a change.
Driving X-town listening to CBC, the words "Vancouver" and "Snowmageddon" were being brandished about on the radio.OMG everyone take cover!
Now the good thing about West Coast snow is that it knows its place...right on the mountains where it belongs and not in the city, so the six or so inches which fell turned into slushy rain, turned into proper rain overnight. I guess the Snowmageddon storm got thoroughly embarrassed after seeing what it had done.
So what do we do when it snows in Van?Well, we stay off the roads and do something at home, like turn the Netflix on in the library and pull out the linens and sort them out.
I do have to tell you something.I grabbed a tensor bandage to brace up my swollen ankle, looked outside about mid-day and thought, "that sidewalk isn't going to shovel itself", and and just as I did, my wonderful neighbour Gary was just finishing shovelling the sidewalk for me.
Then, in the afternoon, my wonderful neighbour Nick came round and shovelled it again!How lucky am I to have such amazing neighbours?
And now it's raining, the linen is all sorted, and I have a sneaking suspicion that that may have been the worst of winter round here. Just like that.Goodbye city snow.You've been lovely while you lasted.
Vintage us
Just before Robert's return to OXON, we ran out to the country to pick up a specialty tool for him. And while we were out there, we kept going.
We ended up in the quaint little town of Fort Langley for lunch and a good mooch around the vintage stores.
And then we drove back home.
Vancouver snow and work stops
Sunday was so beautiful here in Van that Robbie and I drove down to the local lumber yard and bought some wood for some new privacy pergolas around the edges of the gardens.Then we got to work digging a few post holes.Well, I say we and what I really mean is Robert,
while I pinned raspberries out of his way and generally mucked about pulling up weeds and trimming plants.
But the garden soil is rich and easy to dig, so he had the post dug in no time.
Actually, it was so warm that sweaters and scarfs came off.Morgan supervised as usual.
We worked until the sun set and then planned on doing the same on Monday.
But Monday had other plans.
Now I know that our weathermen lie like a rug and you can't trust the weather report for two seconds, so when they said "snow", I said "yeah, right."I figured we'd have the same nonsense of a bit of wet snow which will turn to rain by the afternoon and the snow will stay on the mountains where it belongs.
Not quite, as it turns out.
So work has stopped and we piled into the family room and cuddled on the sofa and watched movies almost all day.
A morning in Puerto Vallarta town...and straight back out again.
OK, we’ve been putting this off and putting it off, but today we relented and headed into Puerto Vallarta town to do some shopping.This was torture for poor Robbie who just wants to blast into town to get whatever it is bought, and get out of there again as fast as possible, but that only works when you know what you want. The problem is when you don’t exactly know what you want and don’t exactly know where to find it...you see the dilemma?Happily, I know this little town and so headed to my favourite spots and got the shopping over with as soon as possible.Oh my lord guys. The sellers here are relentless! In fact, at some point Robert turned to me and said, “Veronica, if you ever want to wind me up, just call me ‘amigo’ a few times!”We stopped to find our favourite artist Xaime and bought another one of his little painting. That makes a small collection of four paintings for me and two for Robert. I’ll photograph it for you in a day or two, but you can just see it in a plastic bag behind R in one of the market photos. You’ve read about this amazing artist on my blog before here and here. He doesn’t have use of his hands and paints with his mouth. I’m always so humbled by him and his work.That was our morning. We had enough of town within an hour and headed back to the safety and calm of the resort where we had some lunch and jumped in the pool and sunbathed till supper.
Resort entertainment, a bizarre production
Last night, after supper, Robbie and I walked thru the resort and saw some people hanging ropes, testing laser lights and puffing out clouds of smoke from a smoke machine. And we thought, “A SHOW!”
So we pulled up a chair and waited.
We kept trying to guess what would be going on. R said pantomime, I said variety show....with pirates.
It turned out actually to be the funniest thing ever.Part pantomime, part concert, part acrobatics, part history lesson in a rambling Spanish dialect of which we couldn’t understand a word.
There was an Aztec princess, some pirates, a conquistador or two, a random father dragged on stage who Robert swore was a plant, I didn’t think so, but it was a bit curious how he managed to dance the Gangnam style in sync with the comedian guy in leopard print.There was a charming little something-oodle who chased and jumped and barked and played dead on key, and some amazingly strong acrobatics.
We really enjoyed ourselves, even if the Aztec princess sang like Minnie Mouse on helium. By that time the experience was so completely bizarre that it probably wouldn’t have mattered.