It's beginning to get cold outside. The trees have swapped their garb with us and we leave the house swaddled in the colors that make the season of snow less boring. Well, we attempt it at least.

My plan is to make all my Christmas gifts this year. Every year I find that Christmas shopping is less fun and more hurried and harried than the year before. Mostly because money is always an issue and Christmas has this strange way of sneaking up on me. I vow that it will not this year. So I pull out the sewing machine, sort and resort fabric options, peruse the internet for ideas that won't let me go, and hint for Christmas lists at every turn.

This afternoon I sat on the floor in her room and watched her make her bed, chatting incessantly about nothing because I'd just downed two cups of coffee (!). During my chatting she rummaged through a dresser drawer and dug up some fabric squares she'd had laying around for quite some time. She handed them to me and I gasped. For me?

They are beautiful hand sewn squares of vintage fabric, and immediately ideas flew through my head. All the amazing things I could make. All the beautiful gifts. One in particular stuck and one lucky lady shall be the recipient of that idea.

It doesn't take much to make me happy.

It doesn't take much to make me sad. True. But it doesn't take much to make me happy.

One of our dear family has left to spend the next half a year in another place and so in the meantime I am to reclaim my old green bedroom upstairs. I was reticent at first, after all, I want her to know she still belongs here too, but yesterday, after all my clothes were hung up and my Goya poster hung, my Mac set on my old desk and my plants placed on the windowsill, I stood and breathed.

I hadn't realized how much I'd missed having a place of my own. Or even this place. This small, green, corner bedroom with its slanted ceiling was the first place that felt like home a few years ago when I adopted it. And it somehow felt so good standing in it--knowing that for the next short season it was mine again.

Then it will be time to move on again. I've learned that moving is my lot--twelve times in the past five years. I've learned to stop getting whiplash and start learning adaptability, to stop griping about the wandering process and trust that the Promised Land is somewhere soon.

I've learned to love the small things, like Goya posters and Penelope Dullaghan prints and hanging ivy and folding wool sweaters--things that are familiar enough to make any place feel like home, and small enough to move anywhere.

This post is about thoughts. No plots. No points. Just thoughts.