The amazing Helen is not only an incredibly efficient packer-upper, but she is also pretty nifty with a needle.
So mirrormirror is now delighted to be able to offer a gorgeous handmade organza and silk brocade Christmas stocking as an alternative way of presenting one of very popular themed gift sets. And if you manage to persuade someone to buy you The Ultimate gift set we’ll even throw a stocking in for free (together with our undying gratitude).
Today we went to the Farmers’ Market in Ballard – a rather funky neighbourhood to the north of downtown. It looks like it would be a really cool place to live with some great shops, lots going on and plenty for the Minx to do – unfortunately, though, the Husband’s commute would be pretty gruesome.
Am not entirely sure what this shop was all about but the Minx and I both loved the window for different reasons.
Somewhere along the way, I appear to have created a mail order company.
Helen is doing the most UNBELIEVABLE job.
And still seems comparatively sane.
The Christmas decorations are starting to appear all over town, and I’m starting to regret the fact that our Christmas decorations are currently somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic.
Tomorrow is the 1st December and we don’t even have our Advent calendar with us. I was toying with the idea of buying or even making one – though the Minx really is too young to understand – and came across this fabulous idea on the awesome Kiddley.com. Instead of chocolate, the child is given the gift of a different fun family activity each evening – ranging from eating dinner in fancy dress or going out for sushi to writing letters for Santa.
Each activity is attractively ‘wrapped’ (Claire’s idea is to make little envelopes out of origami paper or a jar of prettily covered matchboxes) and a new envelope is opened each day.
Check out the link for the full list of activities Claire planned. Her readers and those at Little Birds (where I believe the idea originated) also came up with some wonderful ideas.
I’m not going to do it this year as I think it will be wasted on the Minx, but I’m posting this now so that I can find the link in future years, as I think it would be a wonderful family tradition to start.
10pm and the blizzard we’ve been waiting for all day finally hits Seattle.
The Husband suggests that I rename this blog ‘the Seattle Daily Weather Forecast’ but in my defence I would point out that it has been a meteorologically interesting month.
Note how festive the Space Needle is looking.
or it never rains, but it snows.
When we first got here and I was complaining bitterly to all and sundry about the rain, everyone told me ‘but at least it we don’t have snow here’.
Lo and behold, three and half weeks after our arrival, and after record-breaking quantities of rain, temperatures have now plummeted to record-breaking lows and massive snowstorms have been blowing in from the Arctic.
We even got a couple of inches in downtown Seattle, which is icing up nicely as temperatures haven’t been above freezing all day.
Out in the sticks things are a lot worse. Amazingly Washington state appears to be even more laughably unprepared for snow than we are in the UK, so lots of tales on the news of abandoned vehicles on the treacherous freeways, power outages and ridiculously difficult journeys to cover only a few miles.
The Husband was pleased as the Microsoft campus was closed and he got to ‘work from home’. I was pleased because we had the most gorgeous crisp blue wintry day. And the Minx was pleased because she got to wear her new wellies all day (and I mean all day, from the moment she woke up, to the moment she went to bed). They’re currently neatly arranged next to her cot.
The tree above is not real, but made of stainless steel, and is one of the exhibits in the soon-to-be opened Olympic Sculpture Park, which is being created across the road from our apartment. Unfortunately I just couldn’t capture its wonderful shininess in a photo.
Calorie free!
I’ve got lots of ideas bubbling around my head for when we’ve got through the Christmas rush, and one of the first big projects for next year will, I think, be introducing a new collection of kids’ stuff.
I’d love to include these wonderful knitted creatures by Donna Wilson (found via Lola is Beauty. Which are gorgeous and cuddly but not too cutesy-cutesy.
I’m also rather taken by her knitted foodstuffs, but not entirely sure what you would do with them after the initial excitement of having calorie-free doughnuts has worn off.
One of the people we were lucky enough to spend Thanksgiving with was Roddy Scheer (the Husband’s colleague’s husband) who is an (entirely self-taught) photographer, journalist and stay-at-home dad.
If you want to see some really inspiring photos of Washington state and beyond, take a look at his website. Don’t they make you want to grab a camera and head off into the sunset?
