"small pleasures" - christmas cards

Confession: I am a Christmas card fanatic. I love to give them and I especially love to get them.

I believe in Christmas cards in the same way that a four-year old believes in Santa Claus. I think they're magical, and I'm not ashamed to admit that I do a little dance in my kitchen when the envelopes start to appear in the mailbox.

Earlier this year, I had earmarked a gorgeous (and, unfortunately, expensive) set of letterpress cards that I wanted to buy to send as our first official family Christmas card. But our dual unemployment and diminished budget made me rethink.

I decided to go the handmade route, coming up with something very simple and revolving it around the theme of "small pleasures" -- which is sort of appropriate for us this year, anyway.

I hand-embroidered small cotton bags...



Handwrote a quote on cardstock + embellished with a little lace...



Tied the card + a family photo together with baker's twine...



And put it all together to make a cute little package!



I made 65 total (yes, it was a long project!) and was so happy with the way they turned out. I also did a version with green embroidery and green baker's twine.

Someone asked me why I would take all the time to do something so time-intensive when most people just throw away their Christmas cards. And while I suppose that's true, it wasn't about sending them something tangible to keep. It was about sending them a feeling...I hope that when my friends and family opened their small package, they felt a bit of the magic and excitement that I felt while making them. If so, then the time it took was totally worth it.

[Dear husband, thanks for taking all the pretty pictures! I appreciate you!]

the little one

On the occasion of his first birthday, the pint-size adventurer fearlessly traversed unexplored lands:



I supervised the picking up of leaves and throwing of sticks. I watched him plop himself down in the playground and throw sand onto his pants and shoes. I didn't stop him when he tentatively brought the sand to his mouth, partly because I thought that this lesson would best be learned the hard way, and partly because I knew that the disgusted grimace on his face would be really, really funny. (It was.)

He lets go of my hand with little hesitation these days - oh, bittersweet, I never knew you fully until now - but I love the fact that when all has been explored, he always comes toddling back into my arms.



[Hello friends! I've missed the blog world dearly, and I'm ready to jump back in. Is anyone still out there? I'm hoping to do a little Christmas recap and then finally, FINALLY, finish up Isaac's birth story. He just turned one...maybe I can get it done before he gets his driver's license? Oh, dear.

My husband gave me a Diana Mini camera for Christmas, and although at first I had no idea how to even load a roll of film into the thing -- now I absolutely love everything about it. I feel like the images it produces have such a unique and romantic look -- what do you think?

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas + New Years and I'm looking forward to catching up on your blogs!]

brown paper packages tied up with string...

A couple years ago I used brown grocery bags and leftover bits of yarn for my Christmas gift wrap. I thought I'd post the picture in case anyone is looking for a cute, quick and ridiculously inexpensive way to wrap Christmas presents. [I used this yarn pom tutorial].

Every time I see that photo, it reminds me of the song and I start to hear Julie Andrews in my head. I hope you have a magical Christmas filled with your favorite things, and more importantly, your favorite people!

essay - stumbling on perfection

Hi friends! Kelli recently invited me to write an essay for her wonderful blog, Delightful.

My contribution is featured today: Stumbling on Perfection

(This was something quite different for me. It's a lot longer than a normal blog post and I must say that I felt a little self-conscious writing something so long and personal. I would love to hear what you think about it!)

shifting sand

I've just been re-reading all of the comments that you have left for me in recent months, and I have to say - thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I'm so warmed by ALL of the sincere thoughts that you send my way and am encouraged to keep writing and sharing.

I'm at Starbucks right now, indulging in some personal time with a cup of hot tea and a thick slice of coffee cake. The past couple of weeks have been emotionally exhausting. We traveled to California for my Haraboji's (Korean for "grandfather") funeral; my father, his oldest son, gave an incredibly beautiful unscripted eulogy that moved me to tears and has lingered sweetly in my heart ever since.

When we got back, my husband finished up the last few days at his job. Even though we knew about the layoff ahead of time, when it finally happened there was still a heavy sense of loss. This was the company that gave him his start in Arizona when he first moved here six years ago, when he had nothing but a couple suitcases and a few hundred dollars to his name. It’s been a good place for him, personally and professionally.

We have some plans. On Monday we're going to sit down and map out a routine. Even though my first instinct is to be scared, the truth is that I’m pretty excited. Now is the time for boldness, I think. Time to fling our arms wide, wrap them around the new normal and tread the unfamiliar ground with confidence.

[Photo of Aaron + Isaac, by me. While in California, we took Isaac to the beach so that he could feel the sand between his toes and hear the roar of the ocean for the first time. He absolutely loved it!]

saranghae

You are gone now, and I am thinking about the life you left behind.

What was it like to grow up in Korea?
Were you scared when you escaped from the North to the South?
What was it about my Halmoni that made you want to marry her?
Did America overwhelm you?

We spoke different languages, so I never asked the questions. Although I wish now that I would have tried harder to discover the answers, I take comfort in the things I do know and remember about you, the things that transcend words and biographies.

Your generous heart. Your quirky sense of humor. Your unfailingly energetic spirit. Your thousand watt smile.

Just a few minutes ago, I negotiated naptime with a little boy you never met. The cancer debilitated you before you could meet him. He has almond-shaped eyes and a huge, sweet smile, and he doesn't know yet that he carries you with him, that he takes a part of you along in his daily adventures of mushing bananas between his fingers and climbing into cabinets.

Tears fall hot and fresh from my own almond-shaped eyes, spilling onto the eyelet trim of my cotton robe. It feels different - not entirely grief. Like an overwhelming sense of the great expanse of life - years and continents and experiences and generations - edged with the inescapable sadness of goodbye.

Sleep well, Haraboji. I will miss your smile.

prologue: isaac's birth story

Here is what I know so far:

We get what we need, whether we want it or not.

***

My dad loves to tell the story of how, on my first day of kindergarten, when the teacher called for everyone to form a line, I stepped up and began bossily arranging my fellow pint-sized classmates into order. My dad gestures broadly when he recounts how I would grab their shoulders and line them up straight.

I'm a smidge embarrased for that well-meaning but totally oblivious little girl. Mostly because all these years later I still recognize parts of myself in her self-assured playground tyranny.

She was in charge, in control and in pursuit of perfection.

Fast forward twenty years and you'd find me in a career that made it kosher for me to (nicely) boss people around. Event planners are a tightly wound bunch, obsessed with control, details and perfection. Is it any wonder that I thrived in that job?

Clearly, I was doomed from the start - before sperm met egg, before I tossed out my birth control pills, heck - even way before I ever set eyes on my husband. My tightly monitored, immaculately organized fate was sealed and I had no idea.

***

I thought I understood why I named my son Isaac.

I've come to believe there is another, less obvious reason - unknown to me at the time we gave him his name, but slowly revealing itself as our life with him unfolds.

In the days after he was born, the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac was constantly on my mind. God asked Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. To let him go, no questions asked, no answers provided. To relenquish his hopes and plans, his dreams and expectations.

With unshakeable faith, Abraham placed it all on the altar.

To the parents of Isaac, God says:

Let go. My ways are higher that your ways. Trust me instead.

***

Here is my pregnancy story, Isaac's birth story.

A story about fear, a story about love,
And a story about how I got what I needed.


Click here to read the next installment: Isaac's Birth Story: Part One

fifth times a charm

Dearest husband,

I've been thinking about our previous anniversary disasters celebrations.

Remember our first anniversary? We road-tripped to San Diego, got a gorgeous hotel room right on the beach, had a relaxing dinner al fresco, and then topped off the evening with a bit of champagne. Romance was definitely in the air... until I ran to the bathroom and started puking my guts out. It must have been food poisoning, because for the next 8 hours, I writhed in misery on the cold bathroom floor. I remember you helplessly calling out from the bedroom, asking if there was anything you could do. We drove home the next day, me queasily clutching a plastic bag, just in case.

Undeterred, we tried again for year two, this time staying the weekend in-town at a swanky hotel. It started off unassuming enough -- a little bit of pool-lounging, a little bit of shopping -- until our, um, sparkling personalities decided to explode at exactly the same moment. You remember that fight, don't you? I mean, how could you forget The Great War of 2006? To this day, I can't think of it without cringing in uncomfortable embarrassment. (But, as with most of the fights we've had, I couldn't tell you now what were fighting about. All I know is that if we can survive that, well, then we can survive anything.)

Surely, I thought, SURELY our next anniversary would prove redemptive. The third times a charm, or some such cliched nonsense, right? Wrong. That year, we traveled to the Midwest to stand with your family under the soaring trees of a grand old cemetery. The specialness of "our" day was completely, and rightly, eclipsed by the mourning of your grandfather, who passed away that week after a short battle with cancer.

By the fourth year, I think we wised up (or maybe we were just fed up). Either way, we kept it simple that night, with dinner at a favorite restaurant. A few weeks later we spent the weekend up north in the mountains. Do you remember, after our picnic by the lake, how we got lost and drove for 17 miles on a bumpy dirt road filled with cattle and deer - me clutching my heavily pregnant belly, you wincing as our small sedan got battered and bruised by the unexpected off-roading? Why we didn't turn back, I'll never know.

And now, here we are, just days away from marking the fifth year of our marriage, and the Bad Anniversary Fairy has come for her yearly visit. The news was swift and surprising, and cemented the fact that this has been the most trying, most complicated year of our life together. A rough pregnancy and birth. A baby in the hospital. Your worsening, debilitating back pain. The overwhelming stress and exhaustion of new parenthood.

Now, a job loss.

In the dark, we talked about our anniversary. How should we celebrate it, in light of the situation and without spending money that we should be saving? I told you I felt like throwing in the towel. "Forget it," I said cantankerously. "What's the point? All of our anniversaries get ruined, anyway."

You said, "Who knows? Maybe it will be the best one ever."

You said, "I have hope."

(Husband, where would I be without you? Drowning in my own melancholia, that's where.)

So this year, inspired by you, I propose a joint anniversary gift. A little something inexpensive that we can carry in our pockets every day:

Hope that you'll find another, even better job. Hope that your back pain will respond to the new therapies you're trying. Hope that our darling son will finally start sleeping through the night so that you and I can function like normal human beings again.

Hope that even without spending a lot of money, this anniversary will blow all of the others out of the water. (Because, let's face it, it doesn't have much in the way of competition.)

Hope that this year is going to be the best one ever.

What do you say?

Love + kisses, your devoted wife

M

up

Look at the heavens and see; and behold the clouds -- they are higher than you.
- Job 35:5 (NAS)

The directness of this simple truth cuts straight to the heart. We had some bad news this past week, and I'm holding onto that verse as a reminder of the perspective I want to have as we brace ourselves for the unknown.

a little postscript: As I write this, I am just now remembering that I took the above cloud photos from my living room floor on a rare, fluffy afternoon. Fittingly, a powerful storm arrived just shortly after.

"may you stay forever young..."

While I'm on the subject of bibliomania, here are pictures of Isaac's birth announcements. They marry my love for all things related to books with my fondness for bits of nostalgic paper goods.



photos by suann of simplesong design

I hired Suann of simplesong design, one of my absolute favorite bloggers and letterpress designers, to create the old-school library card design. Her attention to detail was spot on, right down to the perfectly sized card holder and hand-stamped birth date. To finish them off, I used a little red paper clip to attach a small black-and-white photo of Isaac (not pictured).

I can't even tell you how much I ADORE them. Seriously.

Quote on the card is a line from Bob Dylan's song, Forever Young.

book recommendation: bibliomania

"He loved a book because it was a book; he loved its odor, its form, its title. What he loved in a manuscript was its old illegible date, the bizarre and strange Gothic characters, the heavy gilding which loaded its drawings. It was its pages covered with dust -- dust of which he breathed the sweet and tender perfume with delight." -Excerpt from Bibliomania, by Gustave Flaubert

I like to read but, oh, I love books. Gustave Flaubert's Bibliomania, a slim volume that I found while rooting through the stacks at a book fair a few years ago, speaks to me perfectly. It's the based-on-a-true-story of Giacomo, a bookseller whose passion for books drives him to the brink of insanity. It is funny and dark and even has a little twist at the end. It's full of little gems that will warm the heart of any true bibliophile. If you are a lover of books, this is definitely one you want to have in your library.

P.S. So sorry for the quiet blog! Things have been busy around here - mostly just trying to keep up with my child, who, once he learned how to pull himself up, determined that EVERY OBJECT IN OUR HOME was placed there for his own personal climbing pleasure. (Stack of folded towels? Clearly a jungle gym, duh. Vacuum cleaner? Rock climbing wall, obviously. Computer cords? Rope ladder, of course.) Oh, and did I mention that he recently got two razor-sharp teeth? And that I'm still breastfeeding? And he's very aggressive? Sigh. This too shall pass, right?

I've also been challenging myself to take more pictures, and experimenting with new ways to display them -- like the square crop and the diptych, both of which I'm absolutely loving (seen above).

[Photos by me, taken August 2009]

strangers / lovers

A couple days ago, my mom gave me a copy of a local wedding magazine she'd found that had published a few photos from my wedding. Apparently our photographer had submitted them; it was odd to see them on public display after existing solely in our personal album for so many years. There, under the table of contents, was my handsome groom affectionately kissing my cheek, my eyes closed in a state of euphoric contentment.

Yesterday, a friend brought over a stack of old photos from our college days. I stopped when I saw a photo of my husband that I hadn't seen in years. I remembered the precise moment it was captured. He was a little bit leaner, a little bit blonder, taking the first steps on the joint path we'd happily, almost recklessly, set ourselves on.

Today, while Isaac napped, I pulled out the photo album that holds the pictures from our honeymoon. Quietly, over my lunch of leftover homemade chicken noodle soup, I thumbed through the pages, my eyes flickering over the unbelievably tan, skinny, well-rested versions of ourselves. I lingered on a photo of his reflection in a window.

Tonight, I recalled and re-read some writings he'd penned about me. They are silly yet poignant. They make me think of myself in a warm light.

I feel something tugging, something searching. I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for.
A finger pressing a tender spot. A callus, softened.
A small ache, just a little.

A peace offering from the past, soothing my baby-frazzled nerves and encouraging me to extend more grace, more love, more affection to the man who, upon reflection, hasn't let the stresses and challenges of grown-up life change him as much as I sometimes think it has.

A couple years ago, I wrote a little something to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the day I met my husband. I'm reproducing it here, for posterity and because I love revisiting that night, a night that quite literally changed my life. [Apologies to those of you who may have read this already.]

Originally written August 1, 2007

You wore a maroon-and-gold striped shirt that fit snug against your well-defined, well-tanned chest and arm muscles. I might have noticed that first, if it wasn't for the shock of platinum blond hair that stood out conspicuously from your head like a red door on a white house. It was obviously unnatural, but strangely appealing.

I wore a plain white top with faded blue jeans and black wedge-heeled sandals, the ones I picked out specifically because they added three inches to my short frame. I had no jewelry on, except for a small iridescent blue flower toe ring on my right foot. My hair was the darkest brown, and I wore it long and straight.

I stretched out my hand expectantly to meet yours. Your handshake was confident, your smile was magnetic, and your eyes danced with a mischievous sparkle.

We walked into the restaurant and out of the hot summer night, strangers.

**************************

You wore the maroon-and-gold striped shirt.

I laughed when I saw that you had put it on. It is faded now, but the cotton still clings to your chest in the nicest way. Do you remember, a few months ago, when you tossed the shirt into the giveaway pile? I protested on grounds of sentimental value, and then hung it back up in your closet.

I wore a plain white top with faded blue jeans, but my wedge heels have long since been retired. I put on a pair of generic flip flops, but fished out the tiny blue toe ring from the bottom of my jewelry box -- you know I haven't worn it in years -- and slipped it onto my right foot. I pranced into the bathroom where you were getting ready and wiggled my toes at you. You laughed, and then reached for me.

We are nerds, you said with a kiss. I know, I replied with a hug.

I love us, you said.

I stretched out my hand across the table and slipped you a small, celebratory card. Five years ago today, everything changed and nothing changed. Your smile is still my magnet, it connects me to you in inexplicable ways. Your confidence is still my rock, I am anchored and grounded by your calm. Your youthful spirit is still my joy, I discover happiness and laughter with you every day.

We walked out of the restaurant and into the hot summer night, lovers.