The December Jewish Book Carnival is up on the blog of Erika Dreifus. I would love to participate regularly – let’s see if I can do more book review writing in the coming year.
Mrs. S. wrote a lovely tribute to her Zaidy, z”l who was a survivor of the Holocaust originally from the Ukraine.
This was my father’s chanukiah – as he passed away in October, we had to decide whether to give away his chanukiah or to use it. We decided to keep it. The middle branch, called the Shamash (literally the helper), is broken off, and I plan to get it fixed sometime before the next Chanukah. I am hoping a jeweler can fix it. The photo above shows the candles as they were lit on the third night.
Here is the chanukiah on the last night of the holiday. You can tell it is the last night because one typically lights from left to right, and that chanukiah is going to get filled with light all the way to the very end! The other light in the photos are from our other chanukiot (or their reflections).
Thursday Challenge theme is Light (Photos of beautiful light, reflecting, shining through, colourful,…).
Little did I know early last summer when I purchased pink verbena because I wanted some color in my front yard that the verbena would survive frost, snow, a hurricane and live longer than the mums, the snap dragons or the nasturtium.
The verbena looks handsome among the fall leaves – those orangey brown pine-like leaves are from our bald cypress tree.
Truly the only pink in our front yard now is from the verbena – mostly brown, some green, and these dots of verbena pink.
In other nature in my yard news, I got a photo of a female and male cardinal together. They often travel together, but I don’t usually see them this close.
And I got a close shot of the cardinal – he looks like a proud guy, or maybe he has just eaten a lot of the black sunflower seeds in our bird feeder.
Tonight is the second night of Chanukah – we light two candles. It’s been a long time since I put up a review. Hurricane Sandy came and went, cardinals visited when I filled my bird feeder, and I painted a teacup watercolor.
The post that stood out in my mind last week was this one on the United Nations. I don’t think this is what Woodrow Wilson had in mind when he proposed that nations get together for discussions.
Tea cup in watercolor by Leora Wenger, December 2012
I love the opportunity to paint. Finally, I had both a bit of time (I just put my work on hold for an hour) and some incentive (I wrote a post on guest post submissions, and I needed an illustration). I wanted an illustration that would resemble hospitality. At first I thought of a comfortable chair. Then a cozy teacup come to mind. It took less than an hour for me to produce my teacup watercolor.
Here is the story behind the tea cup. I’ve been cleaning out my father’s apartment. My daughter and I found a lovely tea cup; I assume it once belonged to my mother? I don’t remember it from childhood. It must have stayed in the china cabinet. We (my daughter and I) drink tea much more often than I did as a child (our favorite is green tea with mint – do you like tea? What kind?). So every so often my daughter says, can I please drink from a teacup? And sometimes I say yes.
Looks like one can say both tea cup or teacup. But there is no word ‘coffeecup.’ Besides, I drink coffee from a mug.
Below is the version I used on my guest post submissions rant – I do want to welcome people to my blog, either of my blogs, actually. But you will need to know how to spell teacup.
