holiday tingle

happy holidaze everyone! i hope you all are surviving.

i'm glad we've really made an effort to take the commercialism out of the holidays. this year we decided to "thin out" an area of our property to help with fire control and better growth of overcrowded trees. we found a congested cedar grove and picked this beautiful baby. cedars are very soft and easy to cut.
we decorated the tree solstice eve and had an impromptu fire party on solstice day. visiting with friends and neighbors and just being together. it was wonderful.sunday we had a nice relaxing family day with a hike as the weather was gorgeous.(sorry all you folks east of the rockies!) what a tree, eh?then we carved and decorated our yule log lit another outside fire and built our traditional family solstice cave in honor of the rebirth of the sun.
it was so magical with the sunsetting and the full moon rising at the same time. i took pictures but they don't do it justice. you'll just have to imagine. it was awesome! we stretch out the gift giving over many days. so it is not just a shark feeding frenzy- with major let down when it's over.

now all of you fiber addicts out there know-that no matter how huge and colossal your yarn stash is you can barely stand the tickle and tingle of excitement-the rush of exilheration of new projects to come when someone bestows upon you the perfect gift-more yarn. yes!!!!!! anne treated me to 3 skeins of rowan kidsilk haze(with pattern for a fir cone stole) and 4 skeins of koigu KPPPM-OH MY GOD! that deserves capital letters. and Birdsong gave me the CUTEST felted bell ornament kit. thank you anne and birdsong for tickling me. sorry for the blurrs-i just couldn't hold the camera still-too damn excited i guess.

jesus mary and joseph! i can hardly stand it! i want to start all three projects right now!!!!!!!!!! simultaneously. now, the big dilemma hits-do i finish my current projects or dig right in. shit. i know what i should do but it's not what i want to do.

now yesterday was xmas eve. we wanted to do something fun. the weather again was nice. too nice.(no, i'm trying not to rub it in -honest) so we decided to head up the road to find snow and cold-after all it was officially winter. we found it!!!!!!
first stop-downieville-we love it there. especially the hardware store. i bought myself- uuhh oops! i mean the family a new toy-don't tell anyone-but it was actually for ME -i've wanted one for years!!!! i guess i'm still a tomboy at heart. wild turkeys look out!!!!! you'll have to wait for the next post to see what it is-no picture right now. any guesses?


we played in the snow and got real wet and c-o-l-d! we kept heading north to sierra valley-no that is not a lake-it's the valley.

we ended up at the sierra hotsprings for a nice warm mineral soak in the outside pool. ahhhhhh!
it was special as it was not planned. we just went on an adventure and ended up there. snow piles around the pool-steam rising with the moon-peaceful indeed.