Happy new year friends! Can you believe it’s twenty-nineteen?! In May it will be five years since we began writing this blog. Five years of research and design. Five years of living, exploring, rolling with it, making mistakes, finding joy, reinventing, seeking inspiration, learning, crying, trying, loving, creating, changing. After all, life is so much more than just mere pleasure, right?! Even our old VW changed – colour!
We folks have blogged from campgrounds and Airbnb rentals, houses and apartments, even an artist residency. Living the dream. A dream. Our dream. Or… just plain living. All we really want is to live a meaningful, creative, vital and generous life where curiosity, growth, inspiration and community are the cornerstones. Sounds simple enough, huh?! It’s a daily effort. Our goals and dreams change, after all.
How were your holidays? What holidays do you celebrate? Do you mark them the same way every year or do you change it up? We celebrated Christmas and the new year here in Amherstburg. It was the first time in five years that we have been in Ontario and celebrated with our family. We attended tree lightings, holiday light festivals, a parade, a turn-of-the-century historical celebration, cut down a tree and decorated it, baked cookies, hosted an open house, cooked Christmas dinner and Boxing Day brunch. We spent quality time with loved ones.
The apartment we’ve rented here in Amherstburg was ground zero for all celebrations. It is also smack dab in the centre of the downtown River Lights Festival so it was impossibly cheerful from November 17thuntil January 6th. The next best thing to being at the North Pole, but without snow. And because the apartment overlooks the Detroit River we were witnesses to more than one fireworks display from our US neighbours.
Like most people we celebrated the holidays more or less the same way each year. That changed after we sold our home in 2014.
We’ve celebrated Christmas with friends in Palm Springs, California;
with family and friends in Victoria, BC;
on our own in a campground on the Gulf Coast of Florida;
in a rental house on the Atlantic Coast of Florida with MacDuff.
We’ve toasted the new year in pouring rain holed up in the van in a campground in Arizona;
in a motel in Billings, Montana;
with friends at their condo in Naples, FL;
and on a beach in Jupiter, FL. We’ve celebrated other holidays like Thanksgiving eating bean burritos at Okefenokee Swamp or Easter in a campground outside of Savannah, Georgia. We whole-heartedly enjoyed the familiar traditions of the holidays for so many years. We have both happy and sad memories. Now what matters most is spending meaningful time with our family and friends while enjoying good food and spirits. And most importantly, it doesn’t have to be during designated holidays!
We sure would love to see you, catch up, break bread (baked in our InstaPot) in 2019! Also, for as long as we rent this apartment in Amherstburg, you are invited to visit! Assuming we are here, of course.
If you’d like to read a copy of our holiday missive the pdf follows. We we’re inspired by the fact that we are currently living in a building that was formerly home to the Amherstburg Echo. It brought out the small town newspaper reporter, editor, design department, photo editor and printer in us. download a copy here
