Seattle and Christmas Books
brought to you by barre3 and baked goods
Hello readers! It’s so nice to be back in your inbox after a short holiday break! Today’s newsletter is all about my trip last week, twinkle-lighting my house upon my return, plus my curated list of the 2024 Christmas titles I am excited to read someday ♡
A Seattle-ish Thanksgiving
Remember how my trip to Colorado in August turned into a road trip instead of a flying trip? Well, the bright side of that is the FLIGHT VOUCHERS that the youngest and I just had to use! We chose to use our bounty on an adventure to visit my brother’s family near Seattle last week and had the absolute BEST time. It was a relatively quick trip, with only two full days there, but we also had a half day on each end and managed to pack in a ton of fun and adventure!1 Note that I don’t have many pictures to share yet again, since my people are in almost all of the ones I took ☺
One of my very favorite things about visiting people I love is doing the everyday life kind of stuff with them, and this visit fully came through for me on that front. I got to go to the grocery store with my brother (L), visit the building site of their future house, and TWICE was able to go with my sister-in-law (J) to her barre3 studio that she owns. She taught classes on Thanksgiving morning to raise money for a local food bank, so of course I jumped in one of those. I went with her again the next day for a strength class she was teaching - my brother went too! It was such a fun way to spend time together and really experience what she does for work.
In addition to sweating together at the studio, we all went on a gorgeous short hike together one morning, had a fabulous Thanksgiving meal with friends, and went to see Wicked at a one-screen local theater in their small town. Our verdict? The females in the crowd ADORED it, the guys weren’t as enamored. (minor spoiler in this footnote2)
On the day L had to work, J and I took the teens to Seattle for donuts at Pike Place Market, cute stuff at Robot vs. Sloth (I bought coloring postcards and a cross stitch kit!) and all of the baked goods and fabulous coffee at Le Panier, followed by a ferry ride over to Bainbridge Island for wandering and two bookstores and a fabric shop! I promise you that if there was a baked goods bingo for the day, we would have had a blackout ~ we could barely carry everything, and every picture of my youngest that day features her with a baguette cradled in her arms.
I was absolutely delighted to find two bookstores on Bainbridge Island and managed to limit my purchases only because of my extremely limited luggage space. Backstreat Beat is an absolute hidden gem of a used book and vinyl store, and I was ecstatic to find a new-to-me book by a beloved author. I adore The Summer Book by Tove Jansson and couldn’t believe it when I saw she has a title called The Winter Book as well! I grabbed it so fast, and J was persuaded to buy their copy of The Summer Book for herself.
Next up was Eagle Harbor Book Co. where I could have spent hours and hours. The store is large and has an amazing selection, including a staff picks wall that convinced me I must become best friends with all of their staff since I loved almost every book on it. I controlled myself and just bought Christmas Crimes at the Mysterious Bookshop edited by Otto Penzler and The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer ~ both are books I plan to read bits of at a time, letting myself really enjoy them leisurely. Same with A Winter Book! I also added a few stickers, since they wouldn’t take up luggage space and are my favorite kind of trip souvenirs.
Please note that today’s newsletter is a bit longer than usual, so please click through to read on the web if this gets cut off in your email inbox ☺
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We returned home on Saturday at 2:45 a.m. after a three hour drive home from the airport, and I managed to get five hours of sleep before waking up to my alarm to go get our Christmas tree before the oldest had to work. I then did all the unpacking and laundry AND managed to get the house all twinkly, AND the Christmas quilts switched out with the selection of “everyday” quilts we had in the living room! We decorated the tree on Saturday night, just in time for December to arrive.
And now here we are in December! I’m currently scheming local holiday-ish things to do over the next 3.5 weeks to truly lean in to the season ~ I’ll keep you posted on what we end up actually doing. These three weeks of school between holidays are going to just fly by!
Going All-In on Christmas Stories
Christmas novels are one area that I try very hard to not read ahead in ~ I put these books in my November + December box and try to keep them there as much as possible. That adds delightful anticipation and a WHOLE LOT of Christmas during that period, and also keeps me from getting burned out on them too early. I mean, let’s be honest ~ a lot of these books every year just aren’t great, there are WAY too many published every year, and I don’t have it in me to vet the subpar ones outside of the season. This is a niche genre of books I just relish for exactly what they are and don’t spend my entire year reading.
For that reason, all I can offer you about my curated collection below is this: these are the 40+ Christmas-y titles I saw that were releasing this season that I might pick up. Maybe you will want to as well! Stay tuned this month to hear what I think of the ones I do end up reading…
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