<<< tiny >>>

Welcome to my 7 am morning view as I wait, bleary-eyed, for the elevator to collect me from the15th floor and spit me out into that metropolis of high rises where I will become another tiny ant on the sidewalk, marching alongside the others to work.

I love the romance of this craggy mountain and the way it lends its poetry to Korea's typical white apartment building landscape.
I love that no matter where you travel in Korea, there is a looming, omnipresent mountain never too far away. Reminding us just how tiny we are.
They are the silent, giant observers of our day to day business. They witness scores of sunrises and sunsets, rain clouds and fogs and snowstorms. They are the harborers of stories and superstitions and lore.
You can look at a mountain and feel at once how small your worries are, how immaterial your cares.

When I look through the window and see this mountain every morning I can't but picture myself atop it, sleeping ,cooking, walking  it's crags and battling it's lonely wilderness like Kerouac in Big Sur.
Mountains are commonly used to symbolize obstacles, but I see a mountain and feel only reverence and transience. The thrill of it's loneliness and solitude, the awe at it's magnitude and the longing for it's wild expanse.

Mountain, Field or Sea?
These days I am comforted living under the watchful eye of the mountains.

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the sunday slowdown

Is it almost Spring yet?

I have a hankering for flowering baby buds and warm window panes and

I'm tired of fending off colds that are coming for me left, front and back!

This morning I scooped up my book, pens and writing paper and escaped to the coziness of the coffee shop for a few hours of reading and writing therapy.

Works a charm on me every time.

My soul is craving some good outdoors time, but for now the snow and the frost have me running for cover every time I venture out of the apartment.

I have to remind myself the deeper we move in to February the closer we inch toward Spring and warm air and good changes.

When I think back to Spring last year, when I was home at my parents house in Ireland, taking long walks every day, spotting wild horses in the fields and taking photos of old churches, I realize now just how happy a time that was for me.

As much as there is a hermit in me (incidentally, The Hermit was one of the first cards I pulled at my Tarot reading) who loves the hibernation involved in Winter, there is another part of me that loves the freedom and call of the outdoors that Spring offers.

I hope that Old Man Winter is being sweet to you, he is a charming old wizard after all...but I am ready for a little bit of change ^^

castles in the air

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I've been dreaming up visions lately, of a place I'd love to spirit away to and bury myself during this season of frost and snow.

A perfect hideaway deep in the forest where I could read Kerouac and Nin by day and sip on Jack Daniels and listen to the hell hounds howl at the moon by night.

Wrap myself baby blanket-tight in huge woolen throws, spin the Doors, smoke woody cigars and flip through black and white photos found inside dusty old boxes.

Read Tarot in front of the dancing fire, smell the pine and sage and the outdoor fog.

There would be a big old wooden porch with a worn out rocking chair where I'd sit in my jacket and boots shelling lentils for soups and stringing dried herbs to hang over the door to keep the place safe.

A place of peace and isolation, endless water boiling for mugs of tea and hot stew bubbling in an iron pot... meditating, night wandering, moon gazing and star counting, deer hoof tracking,  story writing and forest trinket gathering.

Just me and the silence of the ancient forest... nature at her mightiest.

What a great escape.

                                             
                                                    

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peek at my week// winter warmers

Beomgye High Street

The Korean winters can be long and brutal.

The deepest freeze can come along and take your breath away, red your nose and numb your ears in the blink of a night time.
If you squint your eyes and turn your head to the left you can semi make-believe you're living in Narnia.
But I don't much feel like an arm-circling ice skating lesson every time I put a foot out the door!

There's so much about this part of the year that invites the seasonal blues but I say blues are for the birds and I'm gonna keep some warm winds in these sails of mine!

This involves warm woolen socks, making blanket caves in the bed, cranking the heat and spending an extra ten minutes under the hot shower...

... it also takes wool lined slipper-socks for padding around the apartment....

...belly warming bowls of banana and almond butter porridge before work...

...treating myself to a soy chai tea latte date, wrapping my mittened hands around the hot cup for extra warmth in a classroom not yet heated by muffler-clad energy balls...

...and opening care packages filled with warm pajamas, marmalade, chocolate and all the things only an intuitive Momma could know that I need most in the world right now.

Hope y'all are keeping cozy ~.^

doing the cold winter hustle

There's something about this deep winter freeze that's prodding my primal instincts like a stick.
These January days are so short and bittersweet.
 We walk to and fro from school, doing the cold winter hustle, under a purple sky and yellow moon.
This lack of sunlight has paled my skin to vampish white~
I'm reaching for blacks and woolens when I dress; using them like a fur against the elements.
My sleep is deep and motionless,
making it so so hard to unfurl myself out of these cozy hibernation blankets when my eyes first open.

I've been squirreling away my winter food stores, except that instead of acorns and berries, it's those leftover chocolate pennies from Christmas.

I love to tree-watch in that morning twilight- loving on the way a few stubborn leaves still cling to their mother branches.

Everything about this season is a little magic and hazy, slightly stoned and mystical.
It's a fitting time to have my fortune told this Friday.

I'm happy to bask in the moon light and wear this winter skin...

...until spring reappears and I shrug it off like a snake...
~.^

season of giving, day 1

The perks of an anomalous vacation time:

claiming the best comfy-seat corner in the coffee shop

warming snow-cold hands around a hot paper cup

time to be still and alone with my thoughts

art journaling

playing incognito: taping free smile papers on to unassuming walls

finding one has been taken only half an hour later

another half hour, two more have been spirited away

smiling and wondering where my paper smile is now~ 

 inside a pocket or a wallet?

Is someone looking at it right now with a smile playing the corners of their lips?

How would you react to a free paper smile from a stranger?

a merry little christmas

A merry, merry Christmas everyone!

Today was filled with second helpings of duck and stuffing and roast potatoes, pigs in blankets and silly after-dinner party games.

Dallas and I waited till after dark to open the gifts under the tree while Charlie Brown christmas cartoons played in the background.

I opened sweet sweet gifts sent thousands of of miles from my cherished family and a beautiful surprise snail mail hand-made card from a dear old friend.

To all who are reading, whoever you are, wherever you are, I wish you the happiest of christmases, with peace, joy and lots of warm milk and christmas cookies.

that's the jingle bell rock

On Friday my beautiful Korean co-workers and I went out for a staff Christmas dinner and drinks. We ate delicious Korean BBQ pork with a side of merriment and cheer which ended up in an impromptu house party of sorts back in my apartment. 

We are usually too busy during our work days to stop and really get to know each other and it was so special being able to connect and get on so well with these people who I have worked side by side with these past 8 months.

Christmas just has this way of bringing people together, organised parties, last minute decision parties or parties for no good reason at all.

I cherish this time!

monday morning ear candy//vintage christmas mix

It's Christmas eve!

All is peaceful and bright and dusted with white powder just as it should be.

Enjoy your milk and Christmas cookies, and don't even think about wiping that milk mustache off!

Work today is all about Christmas fun for the kids~ there'll be a (Korean) Santa visiting the classrooms, lots of Disney Christmas cartoon watching, carol singing and my own class will be performing their rendition of 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town' on stage in the gym while I probably weep a little bit.

On Saturday we hosted Christmas dinner for our friends and I had to step out to the store to pick up a few things while everyone was arriving. On my way back home, laden with bags, breathe turning to fog out of my frozen lips, navigating the frozen pavements as the charity workers clanged their jingle bells I stopped a breathe to watch the twinkly lights on the big Department store Christmas trees across the street.

I got that belly-warm Christmas feeling, the kind I haven't felt since I was a little kid and I believed.
I guess now all I believe in is the magic and spirit of Christmas.
But it still lit my face up like a Christmas tree.

Today's play list is full of cool vintage Christmas twang, press play and let's deck those halls.

Merry Christmas!

                                        

                                   

                              

                                      

merry and bright

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Gift wrapping is one of my favorite things to do. I love to gild the lily so to speak.

I think this goes way back in my memory to when my Mother would bring out her big box of endless papers and ribbons and bows and we would sit cross-legged on the living room floor each Christmas wrapping gifts surrounded by paper and scissors and odds and ends.

This year I don't have my Mom's big box of Christmas goodies so I've had to be more resourceful in my wrapping. I've been using brown paper, newspaper and old maps as wrapping paper and then tying the gifts up in twine. I love the clean and timeless look this gives them.

When it came to the gift tags I hopped online to see if there were any nice, free and printable Christmas tags available that I could download and use.

Turns out there is enough to fill Santa's sack.

Here is a round up of my favorite, beautifully illustrated, printable stickers and gifts tags by some very talented and artistic bloggers:

1. Oana Befort

2. Kelli Murray Art

3. Laura Birney

4. Swoon!

I hope you're all having a great week leading up to Christmas. Dallas and I are hosting another fancy pot luck dinner again this Saturday, this time for a Christmas dinner. We'll be giving Secret Santa gifts to each other so I've already been putting these lovely freebies to good use ^^

Happy gifting!

the season of giving

{{Quote by Theodore Roosevelt//Source}}

I remember it was Christmas 2008, before the tornado of backpacks and passport stamps and adventure came and carried me away from London for what seems like will be good.
 I was living in a flatshare in Spitalfields, East London, an area gloriously frozen in time.
My local pub the "Ten Bells" is infamous for being the bar that Jack the Ripper's victims drank in, street lamps light cobble stoned alleyways and dignified Georgian architectures crumble decadently. 
Petticoat Lane and Brick Lane markets, born in the 17th century, were my cold and foggy Sunday morning haunts. It's the place where the Indian sailors who jumped ship in the 19th Century introduced some of the first curry houses to London.
Spitalfields irresistibly attracts eccentrics, artists, hipsters, musicians, Rastafarians,  Bangladeshis, C-list celebrities and vintage-ware sellers like summer attracts fireflies.
Also, homeless people.
The homeless are another fixture of London as permanent as the Houses of Parliament.
Rough sleepers, drifters and beggars were ubiquitous in my area and that Christmas in 2008 I decided I wanted to help.
On Christmas day myself and a friend went to my local shelter and helped cook and serve Christmas dinner to over  a hundred local homeless.
It was a great opportunity to interact with these people who I would usually just walk straight past on my way to the Underground in the morning or even cross the street to avoid when walking home in the dark.
We met some colorful characters, old, young, some who wanted to talk and share, some who silently took their food and ate alone, some who seemed affected by our presence and expressed gratitude and others who didn't. I think it's the ones who didn't that I was there for in the end. I feel like they were the ones who needed it the most.
I didn't change the world, I served hot meals and maybe cheered a handful of people up before I went  home to my family and gifts and a table full of Christmas food and they went back out on to the streets.
That's the thing with charity, you always walk away with a feeling of un-finished business, like there's still so much more you could have done. But the act of helping, of leaving a smile and a belly full of food on someone less fortunate than yourself... the act is surely worth it, no matter how small.
I have read so many wonderfully selfless and inspiring posts lately about sharing joy and random acts of kindness  and they have inspired me to forfeit my Christmas vacation which I probably would have spent entirely indulging myself and my own projects/crafting/shopping/movie watching and see what there is out here in Korea that I can get involved with and help.
They say you should do charity silently or the charity is you but the only reason I am posting about this is to give myself the push to get off my butt and do it.
I feel like by publishing this on my blog I am further duty bound to keep this promise to myself and I will keep you posted on my endeavors when my one week vacation starts on December 25th.
Whether it's a small act of kindness, volunteer work or campaigning I will find a small way to give something back every day of my vacation.
It is after all the season of giving ^^

3 little things

One week. Three little joys.

1. Christmas crafting

These fingers of mine have been working double and triple shifts to get the tree, apartment decorations and what felt like a million handmade Christmas card, gifts and envelopes ready for posting.

The floor to our apartment has been a mess of thread spools and pine cones and little pieces of paper for weeks!

But finally, almost, kind of, I'm done! ^^

Some of those cards will have to cross thousands of miles to wish their merry Christmases to my loved ones.

One card in particular was addressed to a lady who I have never even met but I hope to share a little bit of Christmas peace and hope to.

Her address is:

Betty Vogel
425 E. Coleman Rd.
Clare, MI 48617

If you have a spare Christmas card left in your box I urge you to write a Christmas greeting and your signature and post it to this deserving lady and here's why.

2. Duvets & books

I have fallen shamefully behind in my reading due to a combination of Christmas prepping and and a very distracting new iPhone full of wondrous Apps for me to play with ^^

I have been making an extra special effort this week to snuggle under the duvet for 30 minutes every day after work and get back into my reading groove.

3. Lots and lots of hot chocolate

Because on these icy, frosty, cold-finger-and-toe mornings nothing else will do!

Especially when they come packaged so cutely ^^

What tiny joy kept you going this week?

xo

winter magic

“I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says "Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again.” 

― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

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“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.” 
― John Steinbeck

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the crafty little christmas tree

I've been the busiest of bees the past week. 

I've been putting all sorts of grand Christmas schemes into action, making big messes in the apartment and starting new yule tide traditions with the beau.

This will be our third Christmas as a couple but our first living together and I'm not sure poor ol' Dallas knew what Christmas prepping does to this gal!

Happy for days.

I picked up this plastic tree for less than ten dollars and I knew I wanted to decorate my first ever Christmas tree using only found objects, nature and crafty odds and ends.

This is the result. Think Santa will approve?

 Mamma Gillanders would certainly approve of my decorating efforts~ she has filled my Christmases with colors and warmth and delicious smells since my memories began. 
Now here I am, arms wavering as I try to follow behind in her well-trodden footsteps.  I wonder what 10 year old Louise would think of grown-up Louise's first efforts at dinner and decorating? 

Sure there were bugs crawling out of the pine cones when I washed them before painting and the tree itself has a tendency to topple over if you so much as breath on it. But it's ours, and if a christmas tree's only job is to cheer up a room and give the 10 year old inside you a warm christmas-y, santa is coming kinda feeling when you look at it, well it's doing it's job just swell.

Happy Christmas!

∆ old man winter ∆

The year is officially entering it's solstice, marked by the angel white dusting that began this week, leaving nothing but little green blades and gnarly brown stalks and stems peeking out of it.
It's like mother nature is wiping the slate clean for 2013, polishing the globe ready to start a brand new year on a clean blank canvas.

It's beautiful to look out the window and see the mountain tops capped with snowflakes, my eyes dazzled by the low winter sun, to go outside and catch falling white crystals in my hair and eyelashes. 
Clean clean smells and a red red nose and footprints leading in a million directions.
Glitter falling like a snow-globe that's been tipped upside down.

There's something about the freezing air after a snowfall that shocks the lungs and opens them wider and reminds you that you are alive.

We run by the moon these days, waking up with it smiling through the crack in the blinds and scuttling on our path home under it's bright, benevolent eye. 

Winter is the most mystical of the seasons, cloaked in darkness and frost, foggy breath and frozen earth.
Children believe in magical things, homes are ornamented with glitter and baubles...peace, thanks and love warm the lips and hearts of even the stiffest of souls.


Winter is the wizard who makes this wonderland.
Perhaps he's my new favorite,...but I say that about them all.

monday morning ear candy

This morning was for finding unexpected symmetry with the late season's color palette~ nutty browns and persimmon reds.

It was for hot chocolate and cold fingers and washing red lipstick from teacups after our Saturday night Thanksgiving party.
I'll post the photos tomorrow, it was really a roaring success. Full bellies, full glasses and talking till dawn.  
Yesterday's duvet day just wasn't enough to come down from it all!
This is my monday morning slow down.
Time to clear my head and notice the leaves and listen to sad, sweet music in my earphones.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving weekend!

^^

thankful

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Thanksgiving Day is a jewel,

to set in the hearts of honest men;

but be careful that you do not take the day,

and leave out the gratitude.

~ E.P Powell

Technically Thanksgiving is not my holiday as I am British but seeing as I have been dating an American for 3 years and 85% of my friends here in Korea are citizens of the US I feel like I can stake a small claim on their holiday traditions~ especially ones as pure hearted as Thanksgiving.

Counting our blessings is such an important part of life, I was taught this from a child and I will teach my own children this too. The heart can lay heavy if you don't open your eyes and take simple pleasures from your surroundings and the good fortune in your life.

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Like today I am thankful for the falling leaves and the way the cold weather clears the cobwebs from my head. I'm thankful for my family of friends here in Korea and what a tightly knit group we have formed. How when we are all together each one of us fits neatly like the pieces of a puzzle.

I'm thankful for my guy.... the corner piece of that puzzle, the most important kind ~.^

I'm thankful for my childhood in a war-free country and a peaceful home.

Thankful for my healthy body and adventurous spirit.

Thankful for a universe that always provides; nature and spirit and beauty and music and love and art.

Our freedom to move within the world and do as we will.

Our freedom of choice; to love, to forgive, to travel and explore, to share knowledge and friendship and bless others with kindness.

Thankful.

Heart full.

Every day.

Happy Thanksgiving~ xx