Oh Winter, Where Have You Gone?

I just turned around and realized that tomorrow is the last day of 2008. The end of a long, complicated, sometimes wonderful and sometimes terrible year. I look forward to 2009.

I just got back to blogging but I'm already taking a break due to the New Year and the celebrations and friends it brings. Chandler and I are going to have a full house through the weekend.

I can't believe that Winter Solstice has passed and the days are getting longer. It already feels like Spring with these days in the high 60s, and those freakish days right before Christmas when we were 4 degrees from 80.

Paperwhites are blooming in the backyard...I wish I had a whole yard full, instead of the random patch that grows in the middle of the yard, as if they sprouted there on a whim.

Image from EasytoGrowBulbs.com

I want to plant a bunch of bulbs and give them as gifts next Christmas.

Anyway, with all these Spring sensations, it sometimes makes me lose track of the fact that it's still Winter for a few more months. In case you're having the same problem, I'll share something that always brings me back to a Winter mindset:

"White Winter Hymnal" by Fleet Foxes:

little tree

I was busy baking, celebrating, playing, etc., and didn't update my blog over Christmastime. But if I had been blogging on Christmas, here's what I would have posted:


from Kathryn Flangan

"little tree" by ee cummings:

little tree
little silent Christmas tree
you are so little
you are more like a flower

who found you in the green forest
and were you very sorry to come away?
see i will comfort you
because you smell so sweetly

i will kiss your cool bark
and hug you safe and tight
just as your mother would,
only don't be afraid

look the spangles
that sleep all the year in a dark box
dreaming of being taken out and allowed to shine,
the balls the chains red and gold the fluffy threads,

put up your little arms
and i'll give them all to you to hold
every finger shall have its ring
and there won't be a single place dark or unhappy

then when you're quite dressed
you'll stand in the window for everyone to see
and how they'll stare!
oh but you'll be very proud

and my little sister and i will take hands
and looking up at our beautiful tree
we'll dance and sing
"Noel Noel"

Stuff and Things and I Love Materialism...

The lastest and greatest Christmas Wish Collage:

Newest Wish List by waitforthesignal


Also, I love yellow.

I love "Yellow"


But I also LOVE the color yellow:

Eva Mendes's Bill Blass Spring 2009 dress is so eye-catching with the great silhouette, the floral print and the jeweled neckline. Besides that, yellow is such a happy color!

Like this amazing headband from House of Telsa:


Doesn't it make you smile?

Can you believe that this woman is the First Lady of France?

I know it's old news now that Carla Bruni is now "Mme. Sarkozy" but I just can't get over it. I've been enamoured of this woman since Chandler made me a mix of French music (I've always been something of a Francophile) when I was a junior in college.

I just think that this is something that would never happen in America (unless it were within the fictional bounds of a chick flick).

Anyway, if you don't know much about Carla Bruni, she was born in Italy (in 1973) and is the heiress to her grandfather's Italian tire company. Her mother is a classical pianist and her father is a classical composer and industrialist. However, it's come out that her biological father is actually a classical guitarist (and grocery store magnate) her mother had a 6-year affair with, who now lives in Brazil.

Her family moved to France when she was 5 years old to avoid kidnapping by the Red Brigades, a terrorist group. She went to boarding school in Switzerland, studied art and architecture in Paris and dropped out of school at age 19 to model. She modeled for all the big names--Dior, Chanel, Versace, Yves St. Laurent, etc...and dated Mick Jagger and Eric Clapton (she likes the older guys) while modeling. She left modeling in 1997 to pursue music full-time. She had a number of dramatic affairs.

Oh yeah, and then she met recently divorced Nicolas Sarkozy at a dinner in November 2007 and married him 3 months later, making her the First Lady of France.

How is that a real life? Lifetime movies have been attempting to create storylines like this for ages, and this woman has lived this way her whole life!

"Let's Get Out of This Country"

I love music that sounds like it could be on a long, long road trip mix. It makes you think of open windows and passing landscapes and a huge stretch of space that could take you anywhere.

I feel like today should be an international holiday.

Image from Wikipedia.

Today is Jane Austen's birthday. It's safe to say that Jane rocks my world.

She was snarky before snark existed and her characters were more realistic than other fictional heroines of the time--they were more than the sappy girls in Gothic romances. If they were wealthy and attractive (like Emma) they had selfish and meddling tendencies. If they were filled with common sense and wit (like Elizabeth Bennett) then they had less money and embarrassing families.

Some great Jane quotes:

* "Give a girl an education and introduce her properly into the world, and ten to one but she has the means of settling well, without further expense to anybody."
* "Good-humoured, unaffected girls, will not do for a man who has been used to sensible women. They are two distinct orders of being."
* "Happiness in marriage is entirely a matter of chance."
* "I do not want people to be agreeable, as it saves me that trouble of liking them."
* "It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage."
* "It sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-nine than she was ten years before."
* "Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery."

Chandler may want to stay out late tonight, because there's a solid chance I'll be parked on the couch enjoying one of these:



What's your favorite Austen novel? Favorite adaptation?

Some things in my brain today.

"What We Want"

What we want
is never simple.
We move among the things
we thought we wanted:
a face, a room, an open book
and these things bear our names--
now they want us.
But what we want appears
in dreams, wearing disguises.
We fall past,
holding out our arms
and in the morning
our arms ache.
We don't remember the dream,
but the dream remembers us.
It is there all day
as an animal is there
under the table,
as the stars are there
even in full sun.

~Linda Pastan

Run, Run, Run Away

My name is Sabrina, and I am an escapist.

When, in life, I'm confronted by difficulties, the first thing I do is run to the world of fiction. I scour Netflix for some delightfully long BBC mini-series, or turn to a stack of books (last year, during a particularly hard time, I read the entire Harry Potter series, start to finish).

I think too much. If things worry me, I play them and replay them in my mind, imagining every possible scenario and trying to figure out how to fix it.

Occasionally, all of us find ourselves in situations where we are simply not in control ( are we ever, really, in control?). In these situations, the decision is not up to us, even though we're involved. Why, then, is escapism so bad in a situation like that? Why not just wait it out, curled up with a book or ten, until the decision is made?

Right now, I want to go back to my "old faithful" writer. Whenever I feel down and need to get away, I crave L.M. Montgomery...the author whose work I devoured as a girl--who brought me Anne and Emily--characters whose creativity, wit and charm made them each someone who you just wish you knew in real life--someone who would point out the upsides of your situation, who'd make you laugh and tell you a story to forget all of your hopeless feelings.





What's wrong with a little escapism, anyway?

Am I the only one who does this? If not, what do you do to take a little mental vacation?

One reason I'm excited to see Spring Breakdown

Today is Rainer Maria Rilke's Birthday

"You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now."

Letters to a Young Poet

(I know these are some of Rilke's most-quoted words, but I can't deny how relevant they are.)

Magnet: "You Got Me"

On this chilly, chilly night, I'm bundled on my couch drinking apple cider, about to watch the film version of this book:







...and thinking the world is full of possibilities...

I haven't updated my blog in almost a week...

...and I'm a little bit ashamed.

Here's what I've been doing since I went missing from the Interweb:

* Teaching my gorgeous 14-year-old sister the glory and addiction that is Polyvore
* Drinking endless cups of peach-ginger tea, apple cider and hot chocolate
* Having fondue parties
* Dressing Maya up in my clothes and laughing at her (and filming it, so I can watch her and laugh again)
* Playing on the beach instead of participating in Black Friday
* Decorating the house with my pitiful collection of Christmas objets
* Mourning the cancellation of Pushing Daisies
* Having staring contests with the giant pumpkin pie in the fridge
* Being really, really thankful to be surrounded by these people:
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Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving too!