Jessica Brannen.
Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Lately: Making mobiles, asking people to draw me a piano, longing to have a garden, hibernation mode, baking a disproportionate amount of biscuits, looking up words, scrawling in notebooks, chasing whippersnappers, making lists, making collages, looking at tree branches with spring waiting in their wings, 9 am Saturday morning dance class. (tooooo early)


Listening to: The Radio Dept., New Order, LCD Soundsystem, The Drums, Max Richter, Fourtet, Krakel Spektakel (kids), The Kerplunks (kids), Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter (kids).

Reading: Natalie Goldberg- Writing Down the Bones, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, Virginia Woolf- A Room of One's Own, Tove Jansson- Trollvinter, Solveig von Shoultz- De sju dagarna.

Watching: In The Night Garden with tired kidlets at bedtime, and a little Portlandia.

Scotch tape, play doh, book pages and freshly cut grass on top ranking smells list.

Persnickety yet easy-going?
And no more naturally austere than you are naturally vicious. (Charlotte Brontë)

Middle child.

You can make me a Mexican feast and bring me cosmos or tulips.

Bookish, journal-writin' type.

Husband from Scandinavia and 2 kidlets.

Grew up in Chezzetcook on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia, playing on the beach and in the woods. Still spend a lot of time there. You can hear roosters.

Lived in Sweden for many years and speak Swedish. Love Sweden and Finland. Visit every year.

Hollyhocks and delphiniums.

Studied art, photo, film and textiles. Have a love of all things arts and crafty. Also gardening, sewing, and writing.

Remember rolling down the hill?

Remember picking Fool's Gold out of the road with butter knives?

Remember that time we sneaked into that white abandoned house and saw a wedding dress in the closet?

Let's go swimming in the ocean.

And go thriftin'.

I can peel carrots really fast.
I'm left handed.
I wish to find secret letters or notes hidden in old walls.
I love good old-fashioned letters.
I love quilts.
I love scraps.
I make a mean pancake.
Collective nouns are funny.

Over and out.

January 5, 2012

They had never even thought of such a thing as having a penny

Instead of doing a million things I should do after the kids went to sleep tonight I found myself sitting by the tree and opening, then reading from cover to cover these Little House/Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas books. A Little House Christmas- Holiday Stories from the Little House Books and Christmas In The Big Woods. I haven’t read any of the Little House books for years, but as soon as I started reading I remembered how fascinating Christmas in these books had been to me as a child.

I loved imagining what it was like for the cousins who came to visit Mary and Laura in the Big Woods to sit in the sleigh during their journey wrapped in layers of coats and blankets and buffalo skins, with hot potatoes in their pockets.

I loved reading about how Mary and Laura hung up their stockings on Christmas Eve and snuggled into the trundle bed wearing red flannel pyjamas.

And it must have made quite an impression on me that they got so little for Christmas but were still so thrilled with it, because I never forgot that one Christmas they each got a new tin drinking cup, a stick of peppermint candy, a heart shaped cookie made with white sugar and white flour, and a shiny new penny.

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  1. lavieimmediate posted this