BAD BLOGGING WEATHER

 
I must apologize for the sparsity of new posts coming from Seasonality of late. I blame it on the weather, which seems to be stuck in an endless loop of gray, dreary days, including several with pea soup fog. Not that I'm complaining, really. It was the perfect opportunity for getting Christmas put away, reorganizing several closets and cabinets, and getting my art table cleared off and ready for new projects. Plus I gave myself a snow day, even though it never actually snowed, and stayed in my jammies one entire day, plus half the next! Which is how I've managed to finish almost all four books in the great little young adult series I found under the tree this Christmas. If you liked Hunger Games and Divergent, you'll love Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series.

No, my only real complaint is that this weather makes for the world's suckiest photos, both indoors and out. And without good photos, well, it's kinda hard to have a good blog post, ya know what I mean?

OUR BIGGEST ADVENTURE YET

As you know, we just finished up with one child's wedding, and now we're on to the next one!  Well, make that next two. Austin and Areej have already set a date in early October, booked a country venue between Dripping Springs and Austin, and started interviewing caterers (they are leaning towards Middle Eastern food), so I was feeling pretty laid back about it all. But then Areej got word through a third party that her maternal relatives, who all still live in Sudan, were a bit distraught over there not being a traditional Sudanese wedding first. Soooo, it was decided that there would be two weddings -- one in Khartoum this summer, followed by one here in Texas in October. With that bit of news, my anxiety level zoomed from negligible to off the chart. And, it's not just my hubby's health issues, the difficulty of air travel in general, much less traveling to a place that even Lonely Planet is warning people away from, and obtaining all the necessary visas and immunizations. No, it's mostly the fact that I love my daughter-in-law to be, and want to be the best guest possible, not doing anything to embarrass or horrify her and her family.

You see, I'm a firm believer in that old adage "when in Rome, do as the Romans do." But, one must always remember that it's a two-way street. It doesn't just apply to visitors and immigrants coming here to the U.S. You can't demand that everyone here try to speak English, and adapt to our customs, if you're not willing to put forth that same effort when you travel abroad. Believe it or not, the American way of doing things isn't the only way, or even always the best way. It never ceases to amaze me how many Americans claim that "French people are so rude!", when they've never been anything but friendly and helpful to us. On our last trip there, however, it finally clicked.  On more than one occasion I saw a belligerent American in a French restaurant getting disgruntled because the food wasn't done the way he was used to back home -- the salad had some "weird" lettuce in it other than iceberg, or they brought him sparkling water instead of flat. To make things worse, "that stupid waiter couldn't even understand plain English!" This person's solution? Just get louder and more obnoxious until the "moron" finally figures out what you want. But it's the waiter who was "rude and haughty", right? In my humble opinion, if you want everything to be just like it is back home, then Just. Stay. Home!

Me, well, I try really, really hard not to be "The Ugly American", which is why I've already started doing research for our trip to Sudan. When I was having lunch with the muses the other day, I was stressing out over what kind of clothes would be appropriate for the trip in general, but most especially for a Sudanese wedding, which can go on for several days.  That's when Fiber Woman asked "why don't you just google 'what to wear to a Sudanese wedding?'" Hmmmm, why didn't I think of that? Well, I did that just this morning, and not only did I find a plethora of photos, I also found myself checking the source of each photo, which led me to at least a dozen blogs which might hold helpful information. I already found this one link which had a marvelous description of a traditional Sudanese wedding celebration.

In the meantime, I was killing time just walking around the mall in Austin the other day, waiting for a movie to start, when out of the corner of my eye I spotted these.

It was the luscious colors that grabbed my attention, but when I went over for a closer look, it got me to thinkin'.

What better to cover my bare arms and hair with, in the heat of an African summer, than a whisper-thin scarf/shawl like this? Especially when you consider that I already own a long black sheath dress, almost identical to the one upon which these were displayed!

And, just like that, I'm suddenly breathing just a wee bit easier, feeling a tad less anxious about this whole "adventure." Baby steps, right?

But wait, there's more! On the way home it occurred to me that maybe I should have a special journal for this very special adventure -- not just for a record of what happens once we get there, but also for all my thoughts, worries, and research leading up to the big event. Well, guess what I spotted as soon as I walked into the house, sitting atop a small pile of Christmas gifts that I hadn't yet found a place for?

This!

Ah Synchronicity, how I do love thee!

WORTH THE EFFORT

I am so, so glad that I went to the trouble to dig up several of my best succulents from the Cantina Garden this fall, and bring them inside for the winter.

For one thing, I'm just lovin' the way they look in my house.

Plus they go so well with the artificial succulent arrangement on the dining room table, which sweet Lexi gifted me with a few years back.

I don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm guessing they like to go semi-dormant in winter, so I potted them up using a cacti soil mix, and put them in some cheap plastic containers with built in reservoirs, so they will never sit in water. I've been giving them just a quick drizzle of water about once a week, but if any of you have experience with this and know better, please advise!

On the down side, the house sure is going to look sad and empty when I move them back out to the garden come spring.

On the plus side, each of those big mommas has several babies nestled beneath her leaves. So, instead of having to start completely from scratch each spring, as I always do when I leave them outside to die in a hard freeze, I could be starting out with double, if not triple, the number of plants I had last year.

Bazzinga!

COLOR-MAD CANDY

 
Have you ever had a Toblerone candy bar? I hadn't had one since we lived overseas, but our niece Megan tucked a giant one into our Christmas box this year, and yum! I had forgotten how good they were. They are the Euro-version of a Nestle's Crunch, but the crispy bits are both crunchy and chewy.

Know what I liked even more than the taste? The package...

which doesn't seem to be the same one I remember from back in the day.

I'm not sure whether it's the clever graphics, the vintage look, the color combo, or what, but there is just something about that box!

All I know for sure is that every time I walk through the kitchen and see it perched up there near my teapot, it gives me a little thrill, and I just can't seem to throw it away. Well, there's also the fact that we still haven't managed to finish eating it all, even with two of us working on it. It's BIG, I tell you!

Hmmm, perhaps I could use the package in my art journaling somewhere...

ENCAUSTIC CHRISTMAS

In case you are wondering what the most surprising gift I received from Santa this year was, well, it was this...

a tool kit containing everything I could possibly need to do some encaustic, or hot wax, painting. Which is kind of interesting, seeing as how I never put that on any Christmas list, or even mentioned it to Santa. Oh, it's not that I'm not interested in encaustics. I think it's a fascinating technique -- one that's been around since the early Egyptians. And I love the smell of beeswax. No, it's just that it's, well, dangerous, and I'm a great big ol' ninny! The first three things on the supply list were "ventilation fan, burn kit, and fire extinguisher", and I remember all too well that time Mom and I decided to make candles on the kitchen stove.

That kit might well have spent its days hidden away in a closet, were it not for muse Artsy Woman, who went absolutely bonkers when she heard what I got. Apparently she's been dying to give encaustics a try. When I suggested that we all get together for a play-date, to see if we can figure out how to do this without burning my house down, she insisted that we do it at her studio, which is separate from her home, and has proper ventilation. I feel much better knowing that at least one of us has experience dealing with toxic vapors!

In addition to everything in the kit -- the heated palette, surface thermometer, brushes, carving tools, heat gun, soy wax for cleaning brushes, encaustic medium and a variety of paint sticks -- he also brought me a bunch of books about encaustic...

and a variety of boards and panels for us to paint on.

I
Now, if only he weren't feeling quite so smug about managing to knock my socks off, yet again!

 

THE URGE TO PURGE

There is something about putting away the holiday decor that always sets off a chain-reaction for me. When we first set up the tree and get out all the gee-gaws, I just love, love, love them! But once Christmas is over, and you've added in all the new loot, the boxes and bags, the leftover food and candy and cookies? Well, all that clutter starts givin' me a major case of the heebie-jeebies!

So this week I worked on whipping my house back into shape, and it got me to thinkin' -- about which decorations I truly loved, and which were just adding to the clutter. That, in turn, started me thinking about how best to store them. Originally they all went up into the attic, and it required two people to get them down. Well, I don't like waiting around for my hubby to get in the mood for that, so I made room for them all in a downstairs storage closet. This year I decided to go one step further. I thought, what if all the Christmas teapots that I usually display on this kitchen hutch...

got stored in one of the cabinets right below?

And, what if all the snow babies and such that usually get displayed on this Chinese medicine cabinet...

could be stored in that center cabinet just below?

Simple enough task, to clear a little space here and there, right?  

WRONG! Next thing you know, the dominoes are falling, and you find yourself doing a major purge on every closet and cabinet in the house!

Next up is the bedroodio.

I was gifted with lots and lots of artful goodness this Christmas, including everything one needs to experiment with a whole new medium (more about that later). But, as you can plainly see, the cupboards are anything but bare! So where shall I put it all?

Guess I could start by moving the rest of my gardening books down to the Man Cave, since the gardener's mantle has now been shifted firmly back onto Hubby's shoulders, where it rested for the first 20 years of our marriage -- until I stole it away, temporarily, in my desperate search for a creative outlet.

Then perhaps I can figure out how to make better use of this lower shelf.

If worse comes to worse, I suppose I could get rid of a few cowboy hats and purses, to make some room in my miniscule closet.

Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

THE PEOPLE WILL PARTY ON

Well, city officials may have decided to cancel the New Year's Eve festivities in Austin this year, due to inclement weather, but it would seem the people of Austin did not get the message. We ourselves chose to ignore the message, for we had a birthday to celebrate! We began by checking into our hotel in downtown Austin. Not the one we really wanted to stay in, which had jacked its prices up to triple what we paid last time, but hey - this view was none too shabby!

Plus, it was still in easy walking distance of Roaring Fork, the restaurant where we met up with all the kiddoes to celebrate Hubby's big day.

And, even though we weren't staying at the Driskill this time, that didn't mean we couldn't go hang out there after dinner, right? They have a great little bar on their upstairs mezzanine, and the original plan was for the boys to go there and the girls to go to their precious bakery/cafe, Cafe 1886, so we were kinda surprised when the boys showed up in the cafe about 5 minutes later.  Turns out the bar was charging a hefty twenty five bucks each cover charge that evening!

The walk back to our hotel took us straight down 6th street, which is to Austin as Bourbon St. is to New Orleans.

Like I said, I guess no one got the message about New Year's Eve getting cancelled. And, from the way most of those young college cuties were dressed, they must not have heard it was going to be cold enough to freeze your winnebago either! That, or they just couldn't bear to cover up their short, snazzy outfits with a big ol' coat.