Week 48

Hi Shanon!
How are you doing? I hope your thanksgiving was lovely.
I really wish you could see what it looks like around here right now. It's been snowing like crazy here for a couple of days so right now everything is covered in fluffy, white snow (I know snow is said to be white but that isn't always the case... I'm thinking about dog pee, exhaust gas and other stuff that can discolour it!). In my photo this week you can't actually tell that there is that much snow but I just liked the warm tones in the background, they make me think of a Hawaiian sunrise somehow :) Anyways, I really like this weather, because it's getting me even more into a Christmas mood and that's where I'm longing to be right now :) I'm really having trouble imagining that Christmas is less than a month away, this fall has just flown by so incredibly fast! I started decorating a bit today, it is the first Sunday of Advent after all. Sometime this week when I feel up to it I'll go down to the basement and haul up our cardboard box full of Christmas stuff and do some real decorating. Since Martin won't be home he can't object to me putting up the vintage peach coloured Advent star (that he thinks is really ugly) in the window :)
Aside from thinking about Christmas I haven't really done that much this week. Martin got sick on Sunday night, right after we'd been to see the new Harry Potter movie. He got some sort of stomach flu that lasted for three days. Just when I thought that I was safe I got it too. I had been waiting outside for the bus in the freezing weather for about 10 minutes and I thought that was the reason why I was so cold when I got home. Then after a few hours when I laid in bed fully clothed with two duvet covers, and a blanket - plus I had a heater thing to warm me up and I was still so cold that my skin hurt, I kind of got that there was more to it than just being a bit chilled... But after a few days of misery I'm all good again :)
All the best to you!
xoxo
Moa

Hiya Moa!
I hope your week was great and that your weekend was as relaxing as mine. =)
Since it was a holiday weekend here in the U.S., we took advantage of the time and got out of town! First there was a birthday party Wednesday night, then lots of eating Thursday (Thanksgiving) at Ben's grandparents, and a little shopping and lots of laying around under blankets on the couch watching college sports the rest of the time. I should add at Ben's grandparents, besides eating, we also watched home movies from when Ben was a baby, up until he was around 7. It was crazy to think that that's all to come again. =)
I think my favorite part of the time away was simply being out of our messy house. Every day I have "clean/organize house" on my to-do list, but so much of the mess is just displaced things from our basement renovation, that I really have to just ignore it all the best I can. But having so much "in the wrong place" gives me crazy anxiety. I hate having big messes. So, it was relief not to see it all weekend!
My postcard is the all the traffic trying to get out of the cities on Wednesday. We meant to leave sooner, but I'm pretty slow and unorganized these days. Haha
Xoxo,
Shanon

Week 47

Hello Shanon!
I hope all is well over at your place. As usual I can barely remember what I actually did during the week :) One thing that I do remember is picking up our new teapot at the post office. Martin discovered that the old one was broken a couple of weeks ago and that actually made me a bit sad, since I've had it for quite a long time and it feels like an old friend. That might sound a bit ridiculous, but since I love drinking tea I have so many pleasant memories connected to it :) The old one was from the Danish brand Bodum and I wanted to buy the same brand again. After much mulling over the different models we picked this pretty, round one called Assam.
On Saturday night we had Martin's sister, her husband and their little boy over for dinner and a movie. We made a delicious taco-pizza and laughed at how their 1-year old ate his little pizza pieces. He actually had the plate on top of his head at one point :) A lot of my friends have little babies these days and it's so much fun to be able to play and cuddle with them. I can't wait to see what your little baby will look like and how he will be :)
Take care!
xoxo
Moa

Happy Week 47 Moa!
I thought I'd share a little gold goodness with you for the week. On Tuesday, before my prenatal yoga class, I stopped at Micheal's (which is a huge craft store here) and indulged in on-sale Holiday decorations. I bought a long strand of this glittered vine and affixed it to a wreath that I also picked up there. I nabbed some huge pine cones, along with a silver reindeer and some other Christmas-y things but I figure I can have this wreath up because the gold and the leaves can also celebrate Thanksgiving. ; )
I took some shots of the making of the wreath for Words To Shoot By, a photo blog that I'm apart of, but I took this extra shot for you because this is the prettiest part-- all the glittery shine! =)
As I'm writing this postcard to you, Ben is putting up our Christmas lights on all the trees and bushes in our front yard. (He's not in a good mood about it, but it's a really nice day out, considering how cold it's been, that I did some nagging, knowing that he'll appreciate getting it done now and not when his hands would freeze in a few weeks!)
I'll have to try not to turn them on until AFTER Thanksgiving. That's a big thing here. People can get quite irritated when Christmas decorations are up before Thanksgiving. But I think Thanksgiving should be earlier. It's usually so cold and dreary here, that we need to look forward to holiday fun asap. It goes so fast the way it is.
Hope you are well and have lots of holiday decorating to look forward to too!
xoxo,
Shanon

Week 46

Hi Shanon!
How has your week been? I've had one of those fly-by-before-you-notice-it weeks, where things kind of blend into a blur in hindsight. I do remember two things though.
The first is that I bought a pink bicycle helmet. Now this might not seem like such a big deal, but it is to me. I wore a bicycle helmet when I was a kid and up until I was about 12 years old. This was later than everyone else in my class and so it was a bit of a childhood trauma as you can understand :) Now, however, I'm getting older, wiser (I hope) and less bothered about being cool - at least that's what I tell myself :) - I decided that it was time to be a safer cyclist and use a helmet. I won't start wearing it until spring though, because I decided not to use my bike this winter since it's such a stressful thing to bike on slippery ice but I'll let you know how it feels the first time I use it in public :)
The second thing is that Martin and I went to a relax facility on Friday evening. We'd gotten a gift certificate to this place when we got married, but it's not until now that we actually came around to using it :) It was a very pleasant experience I have to say. We sat in a bubble pool, testing out all the different types of water massage that the jet streams gave, eating candy, exotic fruits and potato crisps and drinking some bubbly strawberry drinks. It felt quite decadent I have to say :)
My photo this week is of a pretty wreath that I bought last weekend. I plan on putting it up on our front door, but I haven't gotten around to that yet. I have to hammer a nail into the door first and you know how much work that is - not :D
Take care and I'll see you in week 48!
xoxo
Moa

Hi Moa!
Ta-da! We had our first snowfall on Saturday! It was very warm and nice leading up to it. Like "no coat" warm. And then late Friday night it started snowing. It was the really heavy and wet kind of snow that weighs down tree branches and is hard to shovel.
I found it nice and actually pretty that it was snowing. I had an craft fair on Saturday morning, so we had to load up the jeep during the snow (Well, Ben did it alone to be honest. I didn't want any part of that!) and on the drive over to the lake, where the craft fair was being held, I wished I could have spent some time shooting all the trees. But no such luck.
Funny story, after the show, while I was waiting at the curb for Ben to pick me up, a huge chunk of snow fell out of the tree I was standing under and smacked me in the arm. I thought someone threw a snowball at me! I was shocked! Hahaha With the weight of the snow, you could have probably knocked someone out during a snowball fight. Geesh, no thanks. =)
So, yes, it's finally here. Big sweaters, and winter white goodness. (I think I heard it might all melt this week, but it was the largest snowfall on that date in history for us. Very cool. I'm looking forward to more!)
Hope you are equally well, and that no trees have thrown snowballs at you lately.
; )
xoxo,
Shanon

Week 45

Hi Shanon!
I hope your week was good and that you're finally getting rid of that cold!
My week was filled with fun things. My pupils had their autumn holiday this week, which means that I worked three days with other teacher stuff and had two days off. One of the days when I came home from work I smelled the sweet smell of freshly baked cinnamon buns when I came out of the elevator on our floor. I immediately decided that we should bake some too, so we made lots of delicious cinnamon buns and vanilla buns. They're sort of the same thing, you just make different fillings :) Now we have to stop ourselves from eating them everyday, or we'll be out of them soon! :)
One of my free days I had a visit from a dear friend of mine that also had the day off. We drank tea, ate mozzarella pizza for lunch and watched all four episodes of the BBC version of Jane Austen's Emma that came last year (I think). We both love romantic period drama so it was the perfect day as you can imagine :) I really love hanging out with a friend during the day, it's so cozy.
Take care!
xoxo
Moa
Hello there Moa!
I hope you enjoyed a nice week. It was well above average for temps here, so I've been happy about not wearing a coat or mittens most days. (Now that I think about it, since I still have my cold, maybe I should be wearing that stuff regardless! haha)
This weekend Ben's parents came to help us with our basement remodeling construction. Well, Ben's dad helped him. I don't have any part in that. I'm not allowed to even be down there half the time, which is fine by me! =) Ben's mom and I did some shopping instead. I got to scourer Anthropologie's sales racks, because I had a return to make there. I actually found a sweater I'd been hoping for. It was the last one. Score! We looked at furniture, had some lunch, and went to a giant baby store full of baby clothes, cribs, strollers, etc. It's a tiny bit overwhelming the amount of things this little person will need. But maybe that's just a pressure you feel, and you don't have to get everything that's out there. I'll try not to anyway.
My postcard is a of a handful of 3-6 month old shirts for him. I've been told everyone wants to buy you the teeny tiny clothes, so I jumped ahead to the 3-6 month stage. ; )
We also spent a lot of time during the day looking for a dishwasher and talking to cabinet designers about the part of the kitchen we need to redo to fit in said dishwasher. It was all very tiring and by the next morning I was completely knocked out from being on my feet all day, and my lovely cold turned into a nice big headache as well. I swear, one of these weeks I promise to stop complaining about all my ailments! =)
So on Sunday, I was forced to nap on the couch while Ben's mom did me a huge favor and finished cleaning up my gardens. If I wasn't so stuffed up, I'd breath a huge sigh of relief that it is all taken care of.
See you next week!
xoxo,
Shanon
p.s. Can you believe we are already a week into NOVEMBER?!? Did this year fly by? I can't wait to see your postcards for December. I hope that I end on a string of high notes for you. =)