With What You Have | 68
You know I'm a winter girl. Love snow. Love shoveling snow (true). Love a crisp, snowy landscape. Love the look of windows glowing from dark houses at dusk. But wow. This winter? More new snow. More shoveling. More months before spring. Lately, it's just felt so February. Here's how I'm keeping the enjoyment in it:
+ See your wardrobe with different eyes. Yes, you may be selecting garments from the same wool collection you've been wearing all winter, but maybe this time choose the brighter green sweater? And, instead of the black wool scarf you usually wear, maybe choose the white chiffon with butterflies? My goodness, yes.
+ Get a pedicure. It sounds silly to think that pretty feet will just be buried under layers of socks, but then again, pretty feet under layers of socks!! I've got a pedi gift card from Christmas, I'm booking it.
+ Light a candle, or lots of candles, whenever you need them. The beeswax tapers were lit at the table on this plain Thursday morning. Tiny happy fires glowing there at breakfast. Such mood boosters, they were (except, perhaps, for the boy who complained that they were searing his eyeballs. Candles. Searing his eyeballs. What the...? I don't know. Except, this is also the boy who runs outside, for miles, in the dark, so there you go. He can't handle the light).
+ New houseplants! When we lived in Alaska, we one day ran into some long-lost college friends on an airplane while heading to Valdez, a coastal town on Prince William Sound, where they'd moved and had been living for several years. When I asked our friend how she'd happily survived the winters there (Valdez gets an average of 25 feet of snow every winter!), she said, "I buy more houseplants." My local nursery called the other day to say the creeping fig I'd ordered were in! So excited!
+ Plan the garden. Hello. Flowers, especially, have been on my mind: poppies, sweetpeas, dahlias, pansies, and on and on. Oh, and herbs. Fresh herbs!
+ Sew something. Lots of somethings, actually. I've got fabric, I've got plans.
+ Outside every day! Walking, running, skiing, it doesn't matter. I enjoy the winter even more when I'm out in it.
+ In other words? Do what you can with what you have.