1:09 p.m.

New Years Resolution Generator

via Swiss Miss

9:17 p.m.

Happy New Years Eve Eve

2:48 p.m.

My mother, half an hour after joining Facebook:

I think I've had enough for today. I'm very tired. I'm just going to put pictures of the huskies on there for people's enjoyment. Then, maybe they'll want to hire them for a photo shoot.

9:33 a.m.

Best recent discoveries:

1. The inch of snow outside is the best kind — a cottony powder that doesn't even feel cold, just fresh and soft.

2. New Years Day is, in fact, on Friday and not Saturday, which I had somehow led myself to believe.

3. Because of Fact 2, Nicolas Felton's 2009 annual report will, most likely, be out a day earlier than I thought!

1:55 p.m.

I love this feature in V Magazine. Hike up the skirts, splash on the color and bust a move. It seems that this year's sunny weather looks fit all.

8:27 p.m.

Hooray for nearly a week off work!

7:42 p.m. (The Best Christmas Ever)

Yes every Christmas is great. It's fun to be with family, but this year was different; far less complicated than last (too much trouble to get into the details), and I also wasn't sitting next to a talkative (and deathly ill) German woman on a terribly uncomfortable overnight flight to London. Instead, we ventured out onto snow-covered highways towards our annual Christmas Eve party, and we woke up back at home, in sleepy Parkville, to a very white wonderland.

Here are a few gifts given and received:

Already hooked.

I am so happy I waited and didn't check this out from the library.

The Principles of Uncertainty by Maira Kalman

First Edition. Woop!

Nabokov's novel on pop-out-able notecards designed by my favorite, Chip Kidd

An imaginative and whimsical zine by Rob Matthews and Tom Edwards Roband published by It's Nice That

The cutest Avenging Narwhal set a girl could ask for

We're All In This Together Bears Bowl

Did I mention I'm a lucky girl?

3:02 p.m.

Currently listening to my parents work out the words to Silver Bells in the kitchen. But they didn't realize it was Silver Bells.

"Oh!" exclaims Mike, my father, "It's Silver Bells!"

Now they're harmonizing!

9:13 a.m.

I have seen these on several blogs now, and this swiss-miss post made me think to put them on here. Wish I could get one for T for Christmas. Is that a weird gift? These axes, by Best Made Co., are kind of out of my price range. Who knew chopping would could look so good?

8:56 a.m.

I pulled on a pair of black wool tights today and realized I hadn't worn them for two years. I don't quite know how I knew this, or thought of it, but the last time I wore them was in London. Today, I pulled them on and felt as if I were preparing for the day in another life, in another place. A small, quiet burst of unexplained happiness ushered through me as I thought about how I would get dressed in my tiny flat. When we traveled to Berlin, I layered them everyday under trousers. When we missed the Eurostar home from Paris, I slept in them in our little hotel room across from the train station and went to work in them the next day. Why is so much joy tied to a pair of footless tights? Why do I not have this association with other articles of clothing? More importantly, why haven't they been worn for two years?

12:29 p.m.

More drooling...and wishful thinking about going to this:

12:02 p.m.

Currently drooling over the work of and all things related to MR, a commercial and residential architecture firm based in New York. MW's JP Williams (whose work and blog are equally drool-overable), designed the identity for the firm.

1:02 a.m.

Guh. So true.

4:45 p.m.

Oh, hi.

3:52 p.m.

Things that are pleasing in December:

-Eyelashes clumped with snowflakes

-The crunch of snow on a car windshield as the wipers pack it tightly on the side of a window (this also might obstruct your view, but it certainly sounds nice).

-Watching a cup of water quickly turn the color of Lady Grey when the bag plops in.

-The starchy, fresh sound a knife makes when it cuts through potatoes.

-Reading only by the glow of twinkly lights

10:45 a.m.

1:29 a.m.

Thanks, David Foster Wallace, for inspiring us to look up words such as hirsute.

1:26 a.m.

How does one know when one has amassed enough things? Probably never? It's a silly question, really.

I enjoy collecting interesting books with interesting covers so that they are not only interesting to read but interesting to gaze upon and talk about from a couch or chair in my living room when certain conversations with guests stray or become dull. I also take great satisfaction in creating small vignettes of books and magazines and little devices. When I grow tired of a particular scene, it's easy to rearrange things to construct a different stack of somethings or an entirely new setting.

The small number of wintry Christmas decorations I borrowed from my mother have provided new ideas, but mostly a lot of unnecessary glitter.

I am also a nail-biter, and it might be possible to equate these mindless acts of moving things as artful fidgeting. At least my cuticles aren't suffering.

11:16 p.m.

Every year, a man named Will Treelighter covers every millimeter of the crab apple tree in his front yard with strands of Christmas lights. It's called the Magic Tree, and we visited a couple weekends ago. One can see the orb of color from quite a distance, and although the road to Will Treelighter's home is not very well lit, it's easy to find — just follow the cars that make the pilgrimage down Old Plank Road each year at Christmas.

From the pictures I had seen, I imagined the Magic Tree to live by itself in a quiet, snowy forest. I guess that doesn't make much sense though, as it requires 16 power cables to keep the crabapple lit. In a forest, that would be one very long extension cord. Even though the tree is in the front yard of its keeper's house and in the middle of a neighborhood, there isn't a lot of light pollution. As long as the cars that park across the street in a frosty soccer field switch off their headlights, you can still imagine yourself away to a dark, wintry wood that explodes into a painting of light and color right before your eyes.

1:58 (or what has turned into my annual Winter read)

“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their latter end, upon all the living and the dead.”

-James Joyce, The Dead

10:17 a.m.

Strong, light, frothy, creamy, fragrant. Cappuccinos are my favorite, and That's A Cappuccino might be one of my favorite drink-related sites. Users can review cappuccinos they've had at different cafes and venues, and post a thumbs-up or -down regarding their experience. Unfortunately, it's only in London, but hey, I can always take notes.

10:37 a.m.

I think I could be an engineer as long as the profession is synonymous with poetry.

The work of Natan Sinigaglia.

9:22 p.m.

Since T has been here, my diet is less homemade vegetable soup and fishees and more homemade cottage pies, chicken & bacon pasta, stuffed pork, BLT's and homemade french fries, or what I like to call, Man Food. This is not a bad thing. Oh, no, not at all. T is an amazing chef, and as I've noted before in this blog, he's taught me a lot about cooking. Man Food might require slightly more sweatfests at the gym, but I figure it's good training for the damage done at Christmas.

Plus, I get to counter the savory with these little White Chocolate Cranberry Macadamia Nut Cookies.

Flour messes, scoopfuls of white chocolate, the warm fragrance of brown sugar, heaping measuring spoons of cranberries and T, the best egg-cracker in the world.

4:13

Lusting after this.

1:19 p.m.

Inspiration as of late

Looking

Photos by The Sartorialist

The work of Jean-Philippe Delhomme, aka The UnKnown Hipster

Reading

Photo: New York Times

Article: Is it Art or Their Homes?

Book: Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl

Photo courtesy of Victoria and Albert Museum via NY Times

Alice Rawthorn

Article: London Portrays Past and Future of Digital Art, NY Times

Headless Outfit Series: Knit Layers

Every weekend I look forward to watching fashion editor Jess Cartner-Morley's 3-minute fashion how-to over at the Guardian. Typically I find that I can make something out of the clothes in my closet that is somewhat relevant to the weekly fashion lesson. Despite the fact that a girl can never have enough wooly sweaters and knits, I knew that this week's would be a cinch:

5:52 p.m.

The new issue of BodyTalk launched on Friday. The content focused on medicine and sexuality, which proved to be a bit of a challenge image-wise (all I can say is thank goodness for Flickr Commons and Wikimedia Commons), but overall I'm thrilled with how Issue 2 turned out. Even better than the last! We had some excellent guest illustrators too. Yay and thank you toBen, Marcos and Tom for all of your help.

Check out a few of the pages, and then click the here to read the issue. Get your meds on.