Merry Christmas

May all the joys of the season be yours!

Christmas bling

Sapphire drop earrings in white gold, from Mr Hazel. So lovely.

Happy Christmas Eve

This Christmas Eve, I continue my annual tradition of tracking Santa's progress on NORAD's site. The guy went from Norway to Belgium in less than three minutes, tops!

My friend Michele and I checked out the Christmas market downtown yesterday. They had all kinds of handcrafted jewelry and purses.

Tonight, I rushed to the grocery store before they closed because I needed some last-minute things to bring to Christmas lunch at my sister's tomorrow. I found out that the rest of the world had the same idea as me - the grocery store parking lot and checkout lines were war zones as my fellow slackers and I fought for parking spaces and the last of the green beans. I barely got out unscathed.

Later on are other traditions - the start of 24 hours of A Christmas Story and midnight mass. And I'm very much looking forward to spending some time with my family on Christmas Day.

Merry Christmas to all, and peace, health, and happiness for the coming new year!

You'll shoot your eye out!

Holiday highlights:

1. Watchng all 24 hours of "A Christmas Story" marathon. Fa ra ra ra ra!

2. My new TomTom, from my sister and brother-in-law. I love it! I've been wanting one of these GPS devices ever since I saw my sister's Garmin work its magic: we were right outside of Pittsburgh on a roadtrip, and when dinnertime rolled around, we both got a craving for sushi. Being unfamiliar with our surroundings was not a problem: we had the Garmin look up sushi restaurants within a certain radius of our current location, programmed it in, and it led us straight there like a pair of locals on back roads we wouldn't otherwise find. It was great.

I also take a lot of roadtrips with friends and to visit friends, and combined with the fact that I have no sense of direction and always get lost, the TomTom is made for people like me. This will be especially useful for my occasional trips to Philadelphia because the part where Wilmington and Philadelphia split never fails to confuse the hell out of me. The signage is awful there. But with my TomTom, no more looking stuff up on Mapquest and no more squinting at a printout of the directions while driving. I'm on my way, baby!

Thanks, sis! You're the best!

3. One of my friends has this awesome recipe for a dessert she calls fruit pizza. I made it for my family for an early Christmas dinner.

4. Our unique mix of Jewish/Catholic traditions for Christmas Eve: Chinese food takeout for dinner (Jewish) followed by Midnight Mass (Catholic).

5. Christmas night at the movies with a few hundred other people. Evidently everyone else had the same idea we had. We saw I Am Legend, which was alternately creepy, sad, riveting, and disappointing. There was also this part that was hard for me to watch, as all animal lovers and pet owners will no doubt find hard to watch as well.

6. Finaly, this magpie's Christmas gifts from Mr Hazel: a bracelet with little diamonds and a pair of amethyst earrings. Sparkly!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas as well!

Track Santa's whereabouts!

This Christmas Eve, NORAD (yes, that's right - the North American Aerospace Defense Command) is tracking Santa's whereabouts and refreshes his location every five minutes on their world map.

From the North Pole, Santa and the reindeers made their way over Russia. And as of 8:32 pm, it appears that Santa has already hit most of the eastern hemisphere and is starting on South America. He is currently in Venezuela.

Keep track of his journey on NORAD's site.

Christmas by candlelight

Picture this: a hushed, darkened concert hall. A single soprano voice rising above, singing the first verses of Once in Royal David's City. Then a whole chorus of voices takes up the song as a long line of candles float up both sides of the aisles onto the stage, their voices swelling in the darkness, the long procession of candles casting an eerie, yet beautiful, glow.

I got chills.

When I played for the symphony orchestra in college, every Christmas we would perform Handel's Messiah to the whole community. It got to be that it wouldn't feel like Christmas without hearing the strains of Comfort Ye, or the Hallelujah Chorus, where the whole audience would stand up, following tradition.

But now that I don't play it anymore, I've missed hearing beautiful, traditional and classical Christmas songs (somehow, Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer just doesn't cut it). The candlelight concert on Saturday was a wonderful substitute.

It also brought to mind something my dad once told me. Although we were Catholic, he and my mom would go to the Protestant churches while we were still living in Manila to listen to their choir at Christmastime, because the Catholics had nothing on the Protestants when it came to their choirs.

At the end of Saturday's concert, the chorale once again took their candles and slowly processed out of the dark concert hall humming Silent Night.

Happy Winter Solstice!

Today marks the beginning of winter, the shortest day and the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere, and the opposite in the southern. I've always thought it must feel so strange to have summer in December for the Australians.

As the saying goes, it is always darkest before the dawn - after today, the days begin to grow longer and longer. The countdown to the spring equinox begins!

It seems premature to think about spring just yet with Christmas just around the corner. (Are you ready? Did you finish all your last minute shopping?) In medieval times, the winter solstice marked the beginning of a scary period because of the lack of food, water, heat, and light. They burned yule logs to stave off the darkness and cheer themselves up. Today, our celebration of Christmas during the darkest days of the year stems from this practice, with all our twinkling lights and holiday cheer.

Tonight my family and I are going to a Christmas candlelight concert. The chorale is supposed to march in to the darkened concert hall carrying candles while singing Christmas songs. I hope I don't start bawling!

From all of us here at Hazel Designs, Merry Christmas and happy winter solstice!

Ringing in the holidays

Mr Hazel and I bought our Christmas tree this weekend. The cats loved it. On Sunday I turned off all the other lights, turned on the Christmas music channel on cable, sat and looked at the Christmas lights, listened to the music, and got into the holiday spirit.

Christmas music always makes me sad for some reason.

We also took out the beautiful menorah that we got as a wedding gift. Hanukkah is super early this year; I'm not ready yet!



10 Things I Loved About August Rush

1. Jonathan Rhys Meyers playing his own guitar.

2. Jonathan Rhys Meyers singing his own rock songs.

3. Jonathan Rhys Meyers wearing ripped jeans and a leather jacket.

4. Jonathan Rhys Meyers and his Irish accent.

5. Jonathan Rhys Meyers and his hair.

6. Felicity playing the cello (hah - fooled you - you thought I was going to say Jonathan Rhys Meyers again, didn't you?). I was impressed - there were shots where a real string musician would be able to tell the flaws in her technique (for instance, she played with her bow too close to the fingerboard, and her bow was crooked when she drew it across the strings). But, with the way they shot those scenes, she sold me on her cello playing abilities.

7. Felicity absolutely glowed in this movie.

8. Jonathan Rhys Meyers and his vivid, soulful green eyes.

9. The music. I definitely want the soundtrack to this movie.

10. Freddie Highmore, playing the titular character August Rush. He was sweet, luminous, almost ethereal. I loved him.

My sister and I cried buckets. The only thing we both didn't like was there was no payoff. It left you wanting. But that's all I'm going to say about that because I don't want to give away spoilers.

And finally, I wanted to give a shoutout to my aunt, who had surgery today. She is one spunky lady!