The Rebelling Muse: December 2021

2021: A Year of Exciting...Stalling and Setbacks?

Greetings from the cave!

2022 is only a few hours away, hard that it is to believe. I feel like 2021 has not gone that fast, but not that slow either. I feel like in 2021, I was starting to regain myself after the weird year of 2020. Even still, it has been in baby steps.

I think the best part of 2021 was slowly getting back into the blogosphere. Taking part in tags, blog parties, and seeing blogging buddies in person was really fun.

I think the largest disappointment has been the slow progress in which The White Rose edits have been taking place. I had hoped that I would be a lot further ahead, but I suppose I didn't figure on how much effort that grad school was going to take.

This year, I have also grown to really like Instagram. I will admit that I am more addicted to consuming things on Instagram than I have been creating content for it. But my page has had some steady growth (now over 500 followers!). Blogging has also sort of come back. My personal blog has also been "professionalized" in the same footprint as this blog, and it has made me feel much better. This year, also, I have been consuming a lot of books, movies, podcasts, and music. My physical library has grown wonderfully.

The new projects which I have been playing with - the Femininity from Scratch podcast, The Wade Girl screenplay, among other things - have excited me. However, many of them are stalled for now because of lack of time. Others have had setbacks, such as my master's degree (which is being delayed a semester). This, I suppose, is the curse of the overachiever - the wish to do everything but be limited by humanity's limits. Right now also, I seem to seesaw between the creator and the consumer. This year is definitely one of the consumer variety.

I must admit that I am disappointed in how little progress I have made in my goals. So much so, that I have left them off in the last few months of this year. I think I had made too many of them.

Clearly, I must do something different in order to regain some sort of discipline over myself. Therefore in 2022, I will limit myself to TWO projects, one for each blog. The project for this blog will be TWR EDITS. For I am determined to at least recoup my investment on this project.

As for the other blog...I have a couple of options. The most likely will be the Femininity from Scratch podcast, but I have also been toying with finishing the Wool project, and also making some YouTube videos with my hammered dulcimer. Of course, I may combine them into one huge goal...anyway, I will have to think about it.

Anyway, there is also one other goal that I will go public with: Going to Realm Makers!! It's in Atlantic City in 2022, which makes it much closer to home. I cannot WAIT to meet my fellow bloggers. That will probably mean a cosplay will be in the works in a month or so...

I am excited to see what the new year will bring. I don't expect much because I still have another year of graduate school left. But maybe, just maybe....this will be the year!

Have a happy new year, everyone!

Scribbingly yours,

Catherine

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Christmas Tags 2020 (...2021)

TAG!!!!! 1:27 PM

Greetings from the cave!

A very merry Christmas season to you all! Before I bring my Yearly Wrap-ups, I'd like to publish these two Christmas tags....which have been waiting very patiently since LAST Christmas to be completed!

The first Christmas Tag came from Sam @ Bookshire, and you can view the original tag HERE.

1) A favorite Christmas tradition?

Christmas baking! Every year, my family and I make gingerbread cookies and cinnamon bread. Up until a couple of years ago, the baking was a family affair. Unfortunately, we have all grown up and so work schedules now wreak havoc on our traditions...

2) Say it snowed at your domicile, would you prefer to go out or stay curled up inside?

Oh goodness...I do like to go out and play in it for a few minutes (especially with Skye, she LOVEs the snow). But there are other days - more often than not now - that I would prefer to stay curled up inside with a book.

3) Tea or hot chocolate?

Oh now you're cruel. I love them both!!! Though, I really consider tea to be an "everyday" drink and hot chocolate as a specifically Christmas drink right now. I don't drink hot chocolate that often because I make it with milk and I can only take so much richness at a time....

4) Favorite Christmas colors (i.e. white, blue, silver, gold, red and green etc)?

...what if I like all of them?

Seriously, I like all of them. I tend to be drawn to red and green schemes the most in my decorating and I suppose blue is the color I use the least, and everything else falls in the middle.

5) Favorite kind of Christmas cookie?

Gingerbread and Italian Fig cookies are my two favorites. Gingerbread, I make every year, but fig cookies I only make every other year because of the amount of prep that must go into them.

6) How soon before Christmas do you decorate (more specifically, when does your tree go up)?

Usually, the tree goes up around the 3rd Sunday of Advent (Gaudete Sunday), and the house decorations are up a couple of days before that. They have gone up as late as Christmas Eve before, but that's not really that popular with my family members (much too rushed).

I don't put up my personal decorations until closer to the 4th Sunday of Advent. I don't like the idea of waiting until Christmas Eve, but I don't like putting them really early.

7) Three favorite traditional Christmas carols?

In reverse order:

Carol of the Bells

Deck the Halls

Angels We Have Heard on High

8) A favorite Christmas song (i.e. something you might hear on the radio)?

Mine is "12 Days of Christmas" by Straight No Chaser. That song was my family's first introduction to the group, and they have been great favorites of ours ever since.

9) A favorite Christmas movie?

It's the classic Irving Berlin's White Christmas with Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye. Never a Christmas season goes by without watching that movie at least once.

10) Have you ever gone caroling?

Yes, my Girl Scout troop did, ages ago. We went to a nursing home where one of the girl's relatives was living. I remember it was pretty well received.

11) Ice skating, sledding, skiing, or snow boarding?

Gracious! I've only done the former two, and I haven't done them for several years! 20, in fact, for ice-skating (!)(gosh am I OLD).

I would like to try ice-skating again though. I love roller skating, and oddly enough, I learned how to roller skate because of my ice-skating....

12) Favorite Christmas feast dish?

We tend to change our "Christmas Feast" meal every year. This year, we did a "Turducken" which is a combination of turkey, duck and chicken all rolled into one. I quite liked it, but I think I would prefer goose or duck by itself.

Christmas Tag 2020

Praecepta

Put on your favorite Christmas Playlist to listen to while answering!
Have a Christmas drink and/or snack while writing
Thank the blogger who tagged you and link to their site. Oh no, I didn't record it!! I'm so sorry! Normally I'm really careful about recording who gave me the tags, but it's been a year now, and I lost it...
Answer the 9 original questions
Answer the questions set by whoever tagged you
Ask 2 questions of your own
Tag 6 bloggers to take part.

1. When do your decorations go up?

My personal Christmas decorations...if I remember to put them up...are usually put up in late December.

2. If money were no object, how and where would you spend Christmas?

I would still spend it at home, with some additional food items and decorations. I'd use the extra money to bring in family members instead, lol.

3. What Christmas film do you have to watch every festive season?

White Christmas, with A Charlie Brown Christmas falling in second.

4. Who do you find the hardest to buy presents for?

DAD. My father is not a hobby person, so finding stuff for him is harrrrrdddd. Lately, religious items have been the ticket.

Would you rather buy lots of little presents for a hamper, or buy one big/main present?

We've never done hampers, so I guess a big/main present!

What did you leave out for Santa when you were a child?

Cookies and milk, like any other good little kid. The kinds of cookies always changed every year. Some years we also left out carrots for the reindeer.

Where did you spend last Christmas?

At home. We don't travel for Christmas.

Which Christmas song makes you cringe?

"Last Christmas" and "All I Want for Christmas is You".

If you could be a character in a holiday movie, who would you be and why?

I would say Betty from White Christmas. I always felt a connection to her, that practical, no-nonsense older sister just trying to make her way and not letting love in (ugh, that's definitely me).

Have you ever had a White Christmas?

Yes, but I don't remember what year it was. White Christmas's are actually pretty rare in my area....especially since these past couple of years, we've been getting a warm spell over Christmas....like this year, when we got three inches of RAIN. Gross.

Is your tree real or fake?

Fake! It's 50 years old and still going strong!