THE BEST OF THE YEAR - SOME RECOMMENDATIONS FROM 2012

Hello, friends! I hope you've had a beautiful holiday/end-of-another-year season :) Dave and I have spent it tucked away with our families, beside Christmas trees, making mulled wine, and watching snow fall... I'm unabashed about my love for this time of year. It's just always a time to truly relax, be present, you know? I came down with a horrible cold on Christmas day, but it was still one of my favourite days of the year, as it always is. My mum made a boozy Christmas pudding and we watched my favourite It's a Wonderful Life in the evening... hope you guys were able to have some down time too and enjoy those around you & the season.I just thought I'd come on here and share with you today some of the things that have inspired me this year, before it wraps up and we welcome in a new one in just a few days. This year I've felt has been a big year for me growing into myself and my voice, and I've always found it super interesting and helpful to see what's inspiring others, so I thought I would share mine. Hopefully you'll see something here that will help you as it's helped me this year :)A book I'll never forget, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott is on the surface a book about writing, but really it's about how to tell good stories, and, although not so much with pen & paper, I do see myself as a teller of stories in my own way. I bought this one from Powell's City of Books in Portland (the best place) while we were there in November and I'll be coming back to it I'm sure for many years, I loved it so much. Reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer earlier this year solidified our decision to become vegetarian -- I actually read this one twice -- the first time in almost one sitting and then read it, out loud, to Dave over several days and weeks in the kitchen as we prepared meals and ate. It sounds totally cliche to say, but this book did change us. The History of Love by Nicole Krauss was another phenomenal read, probably my favourite fiction of this year. I read it while we were traveling early in the year and it was one of those books I had to stay up quite late one night in our hotel room because I just had to finish it. I also love me some Seth Godin and I just finished reading his book Linchpin -- another definite must-read! -- and Susan Cain's Quiet was timely for me, an introvert through and through, it totally helped me as I continue to try to feel more comfortable in my own skin.I also fell in love with a magazine this year -- it's from the UK and you have to really search to find it around here, but when I do it's like Christmas. Oh Comely, don't ever change (issue eleven was particularly lovely).We're huge fans of the movies, and early in the year, we went to see The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in theatres -- life and optimism just pours out of this movie, I loved it. An older one, but we just had to see the movie Big Fish after a wedding where the groom delivered a truly beautiful and heartfelt speech centered around a few scenes from the movie, and it did not disappoint. A beautiful movie about myth and legends, love and why we tell stories, and I sat on the couch and cried as the ending credits rolled. Continuing with the Ewan McGregor theme, we also rented the movie Salmon Fishing in the Yemen a few weeks ago (which is originally a novel) -- a story about the impossible, many layers of the impossible, and doing what seems impossible even if it might not work (the kind of story I love). Another story with many layers and subtlety and beautiful film making that I fell in love with was The Darjeeling Limited, which we happened upon in our local movie store (yes... we rent movies from a store... and carry home actual dvds to watch... old school.) after seeing the lovely Moonrise Kingdom (by the same director) in theaters. Probably my favourite of the year.Some more reading and listening for you, here are some articles and other things on the internet that I bookmarked this year to always go back to -- Make Your Own Damn World (by Keri Smith), The Busy Trap (by Tim Kreider), A Lecture by Charlie Kaufman, A Talk by John Cleese.There are many others that I could probably list, but I'll stop here for now, haha. I feel like there's a lot of good stuff there. (you'll have to let me know if that's true). xo, jenn