Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Merry Christmas

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We do have a wee bit of snow on the ground that will melt during the day, but nothing like this. This was taken last year and it remains the perfect photo for the holiday.

Don and I want to wish everyone who reads this blog a Merry Christmas. Thank you for taking time to read the posts, leave comments, cheer us on, and thank you for being there when we needed support during tough times. As the writer of this blog, I can’t begin to tell you how much you all mean to me. I thank you with all my heart.

This Christmas, I pray for all those who are feeling alone, who are scared, who are ill, who are grieving, who are lost. I pray for those who live in war zones, who live in fear. I pray for all those who have suffered loss due to natural disasters that have changed their lives in a second. I pray for the thousands of children who are being held by our government, who should be with their families. I pray that they are reunited as soon as possible. I pray for all those who seek a new life in our country, remembering that Mary and Joseph were refugees seeking shelter and security. I pray for justice, for a return to compassion and love and doing what is right. I pray for our country. I pray for new leadership, leadership with a strong moral compass. I pray for all those who feel the sting of intolerance, for all those who feel marginalized, who feel the weight of hatred and oppression. I pray for all those families who have lost someone to gun violence. I pray for all the animals who are mistreated, who need a home, who are routinely subjected to the violence of man. I pray for the animals who feel pain and suffer because we continue to see them as sources of food, cutting off their lives in a violent manner so that we can have some veal or a steak. I pray that we can see all God’s creatures as equal.

I pray that everyone feels love and is loved, that we live the lives we are supposed to live. That we send love outward. That we abandon hate. That we never again let someone who is filled with hatred and intolerance hold any sort of public office. We are better than this. Our citizens and the citizens of the world deserve better.

That we realize that love is all there is. All there is.

Merry Christmas, my friends. May your Christmas Eve and Christmas be filled with love and laughter. May you have quiet moments of joy.

Much love to you,

A Little Lamp

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In the “why didn’t we think of this sooner?” category: This sweet little lamp was sitting over on the blue bench for the longest time. We hardly ever turned it on. About two weeks ago, I started thinking that it would look good on the piano. We needed some light on that end of the room.

When I brought the dollhouse home, I put it on the blue bench, and the lamp had nowhere to go. Except the piano. So, I pulled the piano from the wall and plugged it in. We rearranged things on the piano (the two little birds are now elsewhere) and, wow! We have light over there.

It makes an enormous difference. It lights up our Aquitania lithograph. It shows the grain of the mahogany. It lights up the Hymns board on the wall next to the piano. The light from the red shade that I bought a long time ago looks really wonderful. The red is picked up in the towers on the Aquitania.

And, when the piano is repaired and tuned, we will have light to read the music by.

Such a simple thing. But what a difference!

We bought that lamp after we moved out east, probably around 15 years ago. It was the very first of what would eventually be several little lamps that are scattered around our house. I like little lamps. I like lamplight. (I hate overhead lights, except the pot lights in the kitchen.) Anyway, we found it in a little antique shop in Millbrook, NY. We snagged the lamp and the kitchen cabinet/cupboard  from the same shop on the same day.

We were charmed by the boy and girl, walking together, arm-in-arm. Both are carrying flowers. She has a basket of flowers. He has a bunch of flowers that he’s holding up in his right hand. It’s so nice to see  it again.

Don tells me it’s one of his favorite things.

Look at those sweet, happy faces!

Today, I’m going to bake the linzer cookies that I baked last year. Tomorrow, I’ll be baking our annual Christmas Coffee Cake. Also on deck: some present wrapping, some Christmas music and some cleaning.

Happy Sunday.

Full Circle

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Just a short one today as I have to head into the city to coach for a few hours. Then I’ll be done until after Christmas.

I got a bunch of these trees for next-to-nothing at Michael’s the other day. So I added them to the McCoy mix on top of my music cabinet. That’s the only bit of Christmas (besides the decorations in the dollhouse) in the den.

A crazy weather day yesterday: heavy rain for 24 hours, flooding (not here, thank goodness), fog and mist, and a high of 60 degrees. On Winter Solstice. Today it’s windy and colder, as it usually is when a front leaves the area.

Back story: This is a gorgeous all-mahogany Martin guitar that Don had for many years. During a tough time for us financially, Don sold it to an old friend who is a musician out in Los Angeles. He never felt right about it. He missed it. Unbeknownst to me, at one point a few years back, Don wrote to his friend asking her to contact him first if she ever wanted to sell it. Fellow musicians had told him many times what a great guitar it was, what a great sound it had. He was playing that guitar when he recorded his CD with fellow musician, Dan Bonis.

A little over a week ago, she contacted him. She wanted to buy a Gibson and offered to sell the Martin to Don. We talked it over – it’s not an inexpensive guitar – but it was clear to me that Don felt passionately about the guitar, felt regret about selling it in the first place, and now he had the opportunity to get it back. He’d sold it to help us out during a tough time. He deserved to have it back.

And so it arrived yesterday. Full circle.

And I got to hear him play again, for the first time in a long time, last night.

It’s all good.

Happy Saturday.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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