Amy and I had such a fantastic time in Seattle! Thank you to the sweet people who came to chat and gaze at pretty fabrics and get your books signed.
Things have been wildly busy around Black Apple dollhouse - so much so that I was concerned we might forget to get a Christmas tree! Happily, we did manage to carve out the time last week. We got a pizza, hauled out the ornaments, hung the lights and had a good old-fashioned decorating party to the sound of the Charlie Brown Christmas soundtrack.
I had some new/old things I'd squirrelled away from recent trips to the antique store:
Josiah and I both had secret/semi-secret ornaments for each other. This is a tradition from my mom, and I love it so. Unrelated to that sweet tradition, but we also realized that we have a grove's worth of mushroom ornaments.
Finally, we cozied up with a quilt and do what is perhaps my favorite thing to do at Christmastime - we turned off the other lights and just stared and stared at the twinkling tree.
Happy as a little bear and fox who are well fed and easily bewitched by tiny glowing lights.
Speaking of foxes, we saw finally saw Fantastic Mr. Fox this weekend. How wonderful! The perfect December movie-date. It was beautiful (the tiny artwork! the clothes! the wallpaper!), funny, and much more emotionally resonant than most movies I've seen about humans lately. It also had an unexpected layer of subtle cultural commentary, about the way we live with our modern predicament and the struggle to make things, well, fantastic in world that sometimes tries so hard to squash that impulse. An excellent and heartening film from Mister Anderson - much more a Tenenbaum than a Zissou.