Rom-Coms with Real Mess, Real Magic, Real Heart.
This is why I love flea marketing and gardening: seeing it all come together on our kitchen window sill!
Or, bathroom window sill: I use these lovely Mason Jars (a steal! from an antique store in New Hampshire USA) to store my sea salts, soaps, and bath beads on the sill just above our bathtub. How do you display some of your favorite flea market finds?
I have found a second home here in the blogosphere, with too many benefits to mention.
I started my blog a little over two years ago, but I didn’t get really involved with the blogging community until my book Leap came out in February 2010. I had posted a few of the poems from my 2008 collection Where the Butterflies Go, but I hadn’t tried a poetry rally yet, or done an interview with any other blogger. I hadn’t hung out with you guys yet. Now I have, and I’m hooked. Plus, I’ve had people from 84 different countries visit me in the last three weeks (actual page-view visits of more than five minutes)–how cool is that?
Getting feedback on my work, reading your lovely comments about my poems and photos, checking out your posts–that would be enough for me to keep doing this forever, but wait, there’s more.
Publishers have found me through my blog and bought the rights to my photographs and poems. Young writers have found me through my blog and asked for some advice. It’s very rewarding to be able to help them out as best I can, and I’m looking forward to watching their careers unfold.
I’ve sold more books thanks to my blogging than I have at any public reading (a lot of swapping, not buying, goes on at readings) and best of all, through sales of both books, I’ve been able to donate to Unicef’s Gift of Education project three times. That’s three children who have received an education they may not have otherwise received, thanks to you readers!
Today, as a Christmas gift to thank you for visiting, commenting, giving me special awards, buying my books, and for your friendship, I’ve donated to Unicef (Canada) again. The $18 just bought 900 pencils for an entire school. Can you believe how much just $18 can do? Please do look at the Unicef link if you still have hard-to-shop-for people on your list.
My hopes for my 2011 blogging year? New friends, new projects, and more book sales so I have can get a fourth ($75) education for a child in need–or, perhaps–and this is a big reach but it’s a dream–a $500 water pump for an entire community.
I said it in 2009 to some most excellent friends (who later got me a t shirt saying I can’t rap), and I’ll say it again: I’ll be the very model of a modern networked blogger, yo!
Sometimes my favourite thing to do–while not the easiest thing to do–is letting go of my Superwoman complex. I can’t do it all; I can’t be all things to all people. I’m only now learning to admit and accept that.
I do like to cook, but not when I have to cook. Breakfast for dinner–waffles with blueberries or french toast with strawberries–is a fun change, and always comforting after a long day. My daughter never complains, and it’s the easiest thing to cook.
I usually make fluffy, Belgian waffles from scratch in our waffle maker, but one day last week I was having a particularly busy day, so I took the easy way out and made toaster waffles with blueberries on top. Decaf lattes for the grown ups, and ice cream with sprinkles for our daughter, and everyone was happy.
Go ahead. Pass the maple syrup, and tell your inner Superwoman to go take a hike!
I’m a girly girl.
There, I said it. Sometimes I have problems admitting it, because it seems a little weak. And I’m not weak. I like to inline skate long distances. I love to cardio box. I like to debate a point. I love to win.
But the girly girl in me takes over when there are dresses and heels in my vicinity. I don’t own many: maybe just three good party dresses and three pairs of nice heels. But I love it when I get a chance to wear them.
Dressing up lifts my spirits, and makes me feel youthful (with the big 4-0 approaching–in 2012–feeling youthful is a very, very good thing). I’m not saying I’d happily go grocery shopping in heels–that’s when I break out the running shoes–but fashion can be so much fun. Life is short. Play it up!
When you put the voices of Bing Crosby and David Bowie together with the beauty of Peace on Earth and Little Drummer Boy, something magical happens.
I only like Christmas carols for about two weeks a year, and then I get sick of them. But this song–this one I could play all year long. It calms me, and gives me hope.
You can buy the song on itunes. Go ahead, if you know the words. Hum it out loud. Come on, no one’s really listening. It’ll make you feel calm and peaceful, too. Pa rum pa pum pum…“I pray my wish will come true, for your child and my child too…”
Heather Grace Stewart 