bright ideas.

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I think everyone who journals or blogs or writes in a Diary has a favorite spot or two they enjoy tippity-tap typing or placing pen to paper at. I know I certainly have a few comfy spots that I retreat to which help me to let all the thoughts dancing in my head out to play.

Many great writers have found creative comfort while sitting at a desk. (Charles Dickens was so attached to his that he had its contents shipped to his vacation home!) But a surprising number of literary luminaries have ventured beyond the traditional perch to create their ideal writing spots, whether that meant stepping into a bathtub or trekking into the wilderness. Here are a few of the most memorable:

Virginia Woolf, every morning, walked down to the basement and strode past the family’s printing press and into a storage room with a cozy old armchair. Her pen would fly while the press whirred in the next room!

Agatha Christie had two important demands for the renovation of her mansion. She informed her architect, “I want a big bath, and I need a ledge because I like to eat apples.” Christie constructed her plots in a large Victorian tub, one bite at a time.

Instead of hopping in an actual tub, every morning Benjamin Franklin took what he called “tonic baths” in the open air of his bedroom—he’d shed his clothes and work naked, for up to an hour. (Oh, my!)

Maya Angelou wrote in the isolation of a hotel room. To ensure there were no distractions, she requested that everything be removed from the walls. Her own essential tools, which she brought into the bare room, included yellow pads, a dictionary, a thesaurus and a Bible. She used to also bring sherry and an ashtray!

Mark Twain was often found writing in his bed.

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Mark Twain writing in bed.

Ernst Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, and Philip Roth, these great thinkers have been inspired to pen their finest pieces while standing! (Most times at their make-shift desks.)

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Hemingway wrote standing up!

 

 

 

 

 

And even though I am not an aspiring (mid-life) writer I do myself enjoy a few writing spots where all my ideas can bubble out and dance about to play as I journal away!

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My office play-space.

 

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Word.
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At the foot of our bed.
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A favorite window spot.

Where is your favorite space to write?

hugs n’ happy space blessings!

january’s last bite!

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Is it time yet?
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How about now?
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Is it finally time?
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Can we PLEASE do it now??

Yes Helen,

now we can bake.

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January’s Cookie will be:

The Pepparkakor!

The Pepparkakor is a Swedish Cookie we learned to bake when our daughter, like many other young girls her age, was an admirer of The American Girl Doll Collection.  Always inquisitive our daughter was more obsessed with trying to learn as much as she could about each of the dolls in the collection, than her desire to own one! (Although she did, after two years of deciding which was the ‘one for her,’ place Samantha on her birthday wish list.)  Through her searches in libraries, book stores, and The American Girl Doll Catalog she discovered so many wonderful historical and cultural things, even the foods they would have eaten in their time period and world location.  And this is exactly how we discovered the Pepparkakor cookie, where the recipe was tucked into a cookbook of an American Girl doll!

Pepparkakor Cookies

1 cup butter, 3 1/4 cups flour, 2 tea baking soda, 2 tea cinnamon, 1 tea ginger, 1/2 tea ground cloves, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1 egg, 2 tab maple syrup, 1 tab water

  1. Soften the butter.  Measure the flour, baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and cloves into a sifter.  Sift ingredients into a medium mixing bowl.  Set the bowl aside.
  2. Put the sugar and softened butter into a large mixing bowl.  Use a wooden spoon to press together & stir.  Add the egg, maple syrup, and water to the butter & sugar mixture.  Beat until fluffy.
  3. Stir the dry ingredients into the mixture 1 cup at a time.  Mix well after each cup.
  4. Cover the bowl with a plate, and chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least an hour to make the dough easier to roll out and handle.
  5. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Have ungreased cookie sheets ready to use.
  6. Sprinkle flour onto a table or counter.  Divide the dough into 2 balls.  Try to make the piece about 1/8 inch thick.
  7. Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes .  Put the cookies 2 inches apart on the cookie sheets.  Bake the cookies for 8 to 10 minutes, until they are lightly browned on the bottom.  Watch the cookies carefully.  They burn easily!

What shape to choose?

nibble, nibble, nibble…

crumbs on the plate.

nibble, nibble, nibble…

it’s almost too late!

Hurry-Up!

Or you’ll miss the last bite

of something that is great!

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It is exhausting to sit around and wait all day!

 

hugs n’ blessings are being sent no matter what shape you are!

Pesky & Persistent!

it’s the monday giggles…

 

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Photo courtesy of Pinterest

The mail comes routinely at 4:30pm every afternoon.  And no matter where we are in the house both Helen & I can hear the mailperson deposit the daily delivery through the mail slot; which then is quickly followed by the sound of each item slidding across the top of the still present 1950’s milk-box, before they then cascade in a stream onto the floor below.  The clink-clunk of the brass mail-slot cover closing behind the mayhem, now puddled all together, is a call for us to discover what has been left for us today. Somehow though, when Cuppycake is home, he never hears any of this. (Hello???)

At some point in time, I believe around the mid 1980’s, I became the unofficial unsolicited poster child for: Catalog Queen!  Oh, lucky me!!  I know there must be some perpetual list out there where my name may never be removed.  Truly….it is as if I am at the top of every catalog distribution list.  And if it were ever to be permanently erased I do believe a complete collapse of Catolog distribution would occur.  TRUST ME! No matter how many times we have moved…the catalogs follow me.  Phone calls and on-line opt-outs help for a period of time to slow down the delivery traffic; however, some anxious, antsy, higher-catalog-power relents under pressure and I am somehow back on the distribution list once more, so that balance may be restored.

I always feel sorry for our mail delivery person too and frequently find myself apologizing for the large bundle they must lug around in their mail sack until they at last approach our door. I’ve left Massage Therapy gift cards as a means of Care & Concern. I absolutely hide on the day the thick enormous Restoration Catalog is delivered!!   Some days they relent by rubber-banding the large pile together to be left lumped outside on the ground below the slot or have, on occassion, opened the exterior door to the milk-box & slid the 8 inch high pile inside.  (It only took a 3 day supply to fill the box!)

I am sure you are curiously wondering, “Do you look through all these many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many catalogs each day???”

No.

Well…not all of them.

Just a few.

Especially the thin ones.  It’s easy to flip through those while I’m standing over the pile and Helen is sniffing through the puddle, sorting them for me down below.  OCCASSIONALLY, in one of those flipping through moments, my attention is caught.  I may put that catolog aside & dog-ear the page to look at more closely another day.  And then of course there are those times, where as I am flipping through, suddenly….the world stops spinning for just a brief second…and everyone can hear my squeal of delight!

I’m sure you ALL heard that moment when it happened yesterday, right?  Please, oh please, I pray at least my Cuppycake did!  (Hello????)

This would be the moment I discovered, in one of these cursed Catlogues, that…

LONG JEAN JACKETS are COMING BACK in Style!!!!

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The most PERFECT gift for someone turning 50 this year, don’t you think!!! 

The long jean-jacket was my most coveted piece of clothing in my late teens!  I worked 3 retail jobs when I first became of working age.  Most of my earnings went to savings, gas for my beloved rust-bucket car, and auto-insurance.  But I will never forget the day while working my shift at a popular clothing store in our local Millcreek Mall, Foxmoor’s, when I was unwrapping  the day’s inventory boxes which contained…the Long Jean Jacket(s)!!!!  I had never seen anything so cool and chic!  I wanted one sooooo badly.  I knew with some over-time at one of my other jobs and some penny pinching in other areas I could manage (what was for me,) a splurge-purchase.  My retail manager gave permission to put one in my size aside and it took me 3 pay periods, with the little I could put aside at a time, to finally pay it in full so that at last…I could wear it home.  Magically, (I believed) it went with EVERYTHING!!

Who knew the fashion world would come full circle to spread that same

long-jean-jacket-designer-magic again?

And I’d have never discovered this…unless a pesty-little catalog company hadn’t persited in continuing to spill through my mail-slot, despite my annoyance.

Now I just have to hopity-hope….“Cuppycake…are you listening?” (Hello????)

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hugs n’ happy surprise blessings to everyone who is listening!!!!