Country Mouse Monday: glitterati

I freely admit to a love for all things glitter, and at no time of year is this on greater display than now -- in the lead-up to my favorite holiday.

There's glitter everywhere, in my hair, all over the floor, glinting in the hall runner, even on the dog.

And I couldn't be happier.

Click to read more ...

Cupid in full production

Completed one of my favorite tasks of the year early-early this morning: packing up a load of handmade valentines to take to the post office.  I didn't devote the amount of time to the task that I generally do, that I prefer to.  Unfortunately, my silly job interfered, eating up 4 hours of the Sunday that I had planned to devote to this crafty love sesh.

Still the Valentines are made and mostly posted.  I ran out of everything, most notably glue, so didn't produce the same quantity as in years past.  Some people who've received paper cards from me before will sadly have to content themselves with a digital version -- in order to have enough to go around.  There's probably an environmental argument in there somewhere: that it would be better for the trees in the end, if I just made one valentine and sent it out digitally for the rest of my life.  But where, oh where, would be the fun in that?

Instead, with the tv going in the background, Joe and puppy curled up on the couch, off I went with the scissors and the construction paper, with the stickers and the glitter glue, pasting up this year's rendition of the sparkly love-messages, reserved for my friends, the recipients of all of my Valentine's love.

As it should be.  Not a romantic holiday, but a celebration of the joys of friendship, the kula as we call it in yoga, that big family we make as we go about our lives.  

Valentine's Day is so my favorite holiday.  Thanksgiving is great, Christmas is delightful, but Valentine's Day is a holiday I can really feel, one that really fills me with a desire to celebrate, to make and send these little love bombs in the mail as I have done for my entire life.  This one's mine, super-sweet and good enough to eat.

Valentine's is for chicks...

With Valentine's Day 2011 behind us, I wanted to get down my Valentine's Manifesto as a way of already getting ready for next year.

I love Valentine's Day so much I should marry it.  At minimum, I should make it its very own Valentine, covered in stickers and glitter.  I love Valentine's like I love Santa and Christmas and New Year's Resolutions and a host of other holiday traditions that make so many people grumble.

And there are really so many haters out there!  I get it.  For some people, these externally-imposed obligations are such a drag, create so much pressure and anxiety.  The cynicism and negativity abound.

That's just wrong.

It's such a missed opportunity to use it for your own ends, to make something beautiful out of what might otherwise be a chore.  Somewhere recently (maybe in Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project) I read, "if you can't get out of it, get into it."  Such great advice!

The essence of my Valentine's Manifesto is getting into it, getting deep into it, up to your elbows in glitter glue and construction paper.  

I have been doing it this way for years, so long that part of the fun of the activity is thinking back on the old days.  It's bittersweet for me, too, because my strongest memories, the sweetest, are of hours spent over teacups and music, making delicate, beautiful Valentine's with a friend who's entirely lost to me now, eaten by substance abuse, vanished from the texture of my life.  I think of her so much as I cut out hearts, remember being in her house surrounded by her mewling cats.  For some years, we'd make a tea party out of it, but she was always at the center of the making, its creative hub.

Even then, like now, for me Valentine's Day is not a romantic thing.  It's a celebration of love between girlfriends, between friends, a day for me to express love to all those people -- besides my husband -- who fill my little world with love all year long.  For some, those for whom I have addresses, this means a Valentine in the mail.  And that's the super-fun part.  

I devoted an afternoon to Valentines this year, a whole leisurely slow happy Saturday afternoon while Joe was off racing, to cutting shapes from construction papers and doilies, applying the glitter glue, then the stickers.  It was a three-step process, since they had to dry in between.  It was sweet, listening to music, thinking of my friends the whole way through.  They had to sit for a week to be good and dry before going into envelopes, then I had a little schedule for mailing, to  ensure that the East Coast people got theirs in good time, the West Coast people not too early.

This is, no doubt, another manifestation of my Inner Dork, but like I said, Get Into It.

And, to be clear, I do not refuse the box of See's dark chocolate Nuts and Chews which Joe always brings me.  

So here's my Manifesto for next year.  

- Make an Open House out of it
- Lay in a supply of paper, pens, glitter, glue, stickers, what have you
- Bake a batch of cookies, make a big pot of coffee
- Put on music and 
- Go

I can only fit a certain number of people around my table, so I'm inviting others to have their own Valentine's parties.  Really, it's so fun.

Because Valentine's Day really is and should be a way to love up your friends, to let them know in a small but powerful way that you're thinking of them, holding them in your little paper heart.

And how nice would it be for me to receive some Valentines by mail next year!  Get Into It!