Unstuffed: 'Tis the Season

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

'Tis the Season

I was sick with a bad flu the last two weeks of November. I came down with it immediately after giving a workshop on kitchen cabinet medicine, talking about which common herbs and spices we can use for illness and first aid. Over the last couple of weeks I put to use everything I talked about in that workshop and then some! I drank dozens of pots of tea. Tea for my fever and chills, tea for my chest congestion, tea for my aches and pains, tea to help me sleep, tea to keep my hydrated and nourished when I couldn't eat. I made herbal steams. I flushed my sinuses with my neti pot and I used garlic oil in my ears when the infection moved in there.

I must confess that I resorted to NSAIDs twice during the worst of it, on the insistence of a naturopathic doctor friend. I was too sick to argue with her. But it was the resting and herbs that pulled me through and help me mend.

I watched a ton of movies and got a few hundred pages into book 5 of the Song of Ice and Fire series. Now I'm well again and my energy is returning. With a few short weeks before Christmas its time to get busy with crafting gifts. This year I plan to make elderberry syrup, a few jams, some herbal salves and lotions and a crochet project for friends and loved ones. To help get me in the spirit of the season I started with a little decorating.

This little Christmas tree keeps company with a basil plant, a remnant of summer.

All of my decorations are hand-me-downs from family. I don't buy anything new. Some things are newer than others. But many decorations have been in the family for years.

I love this sweet, sleeping Santa in a shoe. My aunt made it for me when I was a little girl and our family celebrated Sankt Nikolaus Tag. It was so exciting waking up in the morning and seeing the shoe filled with oranges, chocolate and marzipan in the shape of animals. I am just as enchanted with it now as I was when I was five, even though it is no longer filled with candy.

Since it's just me on my urban homestead and I travel over the holidays, I don't put up a Christmas tree. But I have a little collection of trees on display.

My mom passed on these ceramic carolers to me last year. I was happy to give them a home.

Here's Santa hanging out in the Garden of Earthly Delights!

This advent ring has been in my family for many, many years. The star is missing a couple of 'star beams', and the whole thing is rather wobbly, but I love this piece of my family history and all the memories associated with it. With special care, I hope to have it for decades more.

I'm really enjoying my cozy evenings, doing a little crafting, surrounded by these decorations that are filled with personal history and warm memories. They remind me that the things that matter most can't be purchased in a store. My hope for this holiday season is to keep things simple, to not rush anywhere and to be truly present to everyone I spend time with.

Whatever your traditions, however you celebrate, I wish the same for all of you!

4 comments:

wendyytb said...: Thank you, Amber. Wise words from a wise lady! All the best to you too. May your home, and the homes you visit, be filled with light, warmth and love. And...best wishes for good health, happiness, and peace...now, and in the coming year!; December 9, 2011 at 1:25 AM
Amber said...: All the best to you and yours Wendy! I hope you have a wonderful holiday in your new home and that 2012 is filled with beauty and loved ones.; December 13, 2011 at 10:33 AM
Designer: Jen Valberg said...: Those fruit roll-ups look yummy! What is the 'special' paper that you use? I reluctantly used parchment from the grocery store after my google search warned me that it might have heavy metals in it. eek!; December 13, 2011 at 11:18 PM
Amber said...: The sheets are from the Excalibur company and they're called ParaFlexx. Sadly they are made with teflon, which I loathe. But apparently the process is different than the one used for cookware and they aren't supposed to off-gas at higher temperatures. I'm not fully comfortable using them, but it seems to be what the homesteaders and raw foodies all use. So I'm using them for the time being. I heard that silicone baking sheets are more stable, but they are very expensive.; December 14, 2011 at 10:06 AM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali