nesting time

Dear friends, i hope you are well and that february is being kind to you. My camera is fixed and i hope that i can begin posting regularly, the last few month have been iphone photographs and i am grateful to have been able to capture  what has been going on this winter on the hill with it, but i am glad once again to hold something that requires a little more thinking. I have spent the last few weeks at home, nesting with animals and as they say finding my center.

I am happy though to be going to montreal for a few days to spend with family & friends, we will celebrate christmas and new years on saturday since during the holidays everyone was under the weather. Sunday will be just my immediate family and we will make all our favorite foods and hang out and no doubt reminisce on times past. I have a need for family time, there will also be good coffee drinking and if i am lucky i hope to find a canele or two.

wishing you a wonderful rest of the week, hope to take some photographs to share with you soon.

a bientot,

nadia

stronger for it

i feel as if i start this letter to you with it is raining outside you might stop reading for i have said that often as of late but alas it is and right now as i look out a millions beads of rain stick to the window pane and in doing so it  creates the most beautiful light and although i would like to to speak more about that light, there is another kind of light i would like to speak off and that is the one that i feel inside (please forgive me if that sounds silly).  Yesterday and every time i read your comments, emails and letters i feel little beads of energy, inspiration and gratitude. those things combined help challenge me, push harder and trust my gut and when i do these things i feel lucky. lucky a word i have been using a lot in my life, specially lately. so even though i wrote just yesterday of heartache i also know how much stronger i feel after it.

Life brings us obstacles of course it does but in giving us those things that challenge, make us momentarily feel weak are also those things that help build braver guts, minds and hearts. I sit here typing these things and i look out into the living room, passed the crackling fire in the wood stove and i see cats & dogs lying about, i know if i was to get up my horses Tolstoy and Splash will be knee high in lush and very so delicious grass, chickens and ducks will be swimming and digging for any insects they could find and if i was to look in the mirror perhaps after all this i would not be as quick to look away but instead stare at the her i have become and the lines on her face and say but it was all worth it and I have no reason to need more than that.

so thank you for sharing with me bits of you, i am stronger you see because of it.

the horse outside my window and other things

Dearest, dearest friends we made it through another year! I want to begin to wish you all a happy new year may it be filled with  rediculous amounts of happiness!

although christmas day was not my best day what followed was great. my parents, elle and dylan arrived on the twenty seventh and spent time with us through new years day. we watched movies, my dad made pita bread  and bagels from scratch,  something i had always wanted to do. we danced in our living room till we were exhausted and we did  that often, we ate a big amount of sweets( my mums date and wlanut stuffed shortbread cookies are to die for), went to the movies and took a nice long walk. we celebrated christmas on new years day with afeast and cheered in  new years with comedy and presents! vermont had no snow, and none still but we sure have had some serious cold days and some fall like weather- strange!

i have made a list of what i expect of 2012 and the list is big. i will share it with you as i go along crossing them off my list. i just found out that a special blogger and friend will be visiting the hill with her family for the first time excited. my home will be featured over at anothers.  things are happening that is for sure, even an announcement next week might get you packing your bags!

so i will leave you now with pictures of what the last few days have looked like,  i have been quieting my mind to see clearly my  path ahead, al thought today  has been full of tiny loud disasters not excluding my computer making a crazy siren noise_ perhaps it is begging me to give her a break:)

thank you for being here- 2012  BIG!!

* if you hit the last picture to enlarge of bullet and gentillese they were playing cat an mouse- too funny

la brume

dearest friends i have been thinking of you guys, i have not asked in a while how are you?

are you feeling pressure or diving into the season. i am torn from the want to skip over the holidays and wanting to pour myself into it. the fog on the hill has returned and i am glad, he has become  a familiar friend, a calmer of sorts. my camera sometimes she pushes herself and gives me a few shots here and there, i am not ready to leave her or let her leave me although i must confess to wishing for a companion camera for her and me. i have this tiny dream that a few of  you would  come spend some winter days with me. we would sit by the fire, make soups and inspire, maybe read books out loud have an impromptu dance party and perhaps walk through the forest, sled down the hill and snap some shots here and there. i must run now, meeting a friends for some real coffee in a different state, did i tell you there is no good coffee in vermont they try though atleast they try.

warmth comes in many ways.

i stood in the rain making plans with the carpenter for a run in shed for the horse. jeremiah and i walked on long grass till the hems of pants soaked up all the rain to the knees. al though i love the rain,  lately it seems to get into my bones. so i escaped to a cafe, where i knew a wood fire would be burning and it was. i sat there typing, then i admit i could not help ease drop on two couples,  maybe in their seventies. they laughed as they ate peanut butter and jelly on bagels ( i know) and talked about books, film, country roads and rural dark skies. something inside of me smiled, how dear is friendship, how special it is,  how it grows and watches you grow. it made me think of k. who i miss terribly, since he has not been home for over three weeks. i thought if he was here, he would notice the same thing, he would grab my hand under the table and kiss my forehead. i walked to the counter of the cafe and asked the girl behind the counter  for four macarons, asked if she would deliver them to there table anonymously and simple say if asked this is for the belly laughs of friendship. i ran to the restroom so i would not be there when she did so. maybe because i remember when this was done for k and i, tears rolled down my face and my hands began to shake but i knew i was happy for the warmth i now felt, and as for the rain well it did not bother me anymore.

when i got home in noticed bullet at the window, he was talking so loud through the glass, i took my camera out and he reached for me.

*gosh this might sounds like i am boasting but please know it is more wanting to share a special moment one when you realize how growing old with friends, the people you love makes you young and how paying it forward when you unexpectedly are made to feel better  makes you react in a good way.

oh, boy perhaps my explanations is more confusing but i just wanted to share celebrate good things.