Christmas guest post

I’m sure you all read this blog and smile, and enjoy it, and relate to it - ensconced comfortably as you probably are, in your own well decorated, wonderful smelling homes filled with craft-iness and terrific food. But imagine the experience of coming here to visit after spending months in a nearly bare apartment in the student ghetto of a crowded university off in the outskirts of a huge trembling city like Toronto. You might say it was a transformation, like moving from this:

To this:

A transformation that can only be described as a healing experience, just what a person could ask for in a short week-long vacation. This house is in fact the ultimate in R&R.

We won’t even get into the airline travel I endured that Christmas day, because I shouldn’t complain. Yes there were delays and hectic lines and crying babies…but it is an amazing thing to be able to step into a tin can on one side of a continent and step out of it just hours later, thousands of kilometers away.

Nevertheless the trip had me more than a little drained and stepping into the house that afternoon was not unlike stepping into some magical winter wonderland. The smell of turkey practically satiated on its own. The living room packed with homemade decorations and stuffed to the gills with quilts and books and family memories made me want to curl up on the couch that minute and never move. I was treated to a particularly kick ass welcome home lunch of leftovers from the night before: a ridiculously delicious immune boosting meal of garlic fried rapini, rice, and fresh BC salmon. ‘Nuff said. Spending the afternoon unwrapping gifts was a goofy, fun time – before long everyone was full up with lotto tickets, socks, and all the other random stocking stuffers we had managed to find for each other.

Dinner, need I even go there? The turkey on its own tasted so amazing it needed no embellishment. But, that didn’t deter us from indulging in homemade gravy, cranberry sauce, and piling our plates with side dishes of roasted brussel sprouts and mashed sweet potatoes (the YELLOW not the orange kind, of course). Not long after the feast I was pretty ready for a nap, and what better way to recharge your batteries than stretched out on the bed in your former room, head resting on a lambswool pillow, wrapped up in a star-pattern custom made quilt. I pulled the brass chain on my banker’s lamp and, plunged into darkness, fell into a deep restful sleep.