glimmer – Home here and there

Happy Things Friday

Bunch of flowers in a shopping back. — Flowers I took to the tea party

It’s so hard to think about happy things right now with the news being what it is. Just last night I fell into the doom scrolling hole and of course went to bed too late again. Maybe I should start a rule no news and social media after dinner? I definitely should.

Inspired by Elisabeth and San I am going to try to think about the happy things in my little life this week even if the world seems to be falling apart:

We celebrated a friends birthday with a tea party at another friends house. I got to catch up with a lot of women I have not seen in a long time. We had a little sharing circle and the resounding plan for 2026 to look for more in person connection. I think it’s an excellent plan. My contribution to the event were some flower decorations (thanks to our backyard and Trader Joes).

I organized tickets to go to the Art of Manga exhibit at the De Young Museum in San Francisco. My daughter loves drawing and since it was about Manga even my son agreed to come along. It was really cool and got me more interested in checking out books by some of the artists especially Land by Kazumi Yamashita, Mao as well as the Mermaid Saga by Rumiko Takahashi or a book about Steve Jobs by Mari Yamazaki.

I got to meet with my fiber arts buddies on Monday via Zoom. We started this sometime last year and it’s nice to have some company while working on projects and chat about it. I met both of them through my German online book club and it has been a lot of fun.

The students are back! It was a long winter break here on the Berkeley campus and this week the students are finally back. The undergrads make the whole campus come to life and our lab gets busier again.

My daughter had her interview for an exchange program with our sister city in Japan. It’s competitive so even if she does not get to go in the end, getting to the interview stage was already great. I keep my fingers crossed for her and we should find out by mid February.

What was a good thing during your week?
Are you interested in hearing more about any of these highlights?

Member Night at the SF MOMA

Last Christmas we were gifted a SF MOMA membership so I thought it would be nice to take advantage of the member event they had tonight. It’s free for members and they have music and drinks and you can wander around and enjoy the art. We don’t go out just my husband and I that often so it was a nice treat.

They also opened up the Amy Sherald exhibition (she painted the Michelle Obama portrait which they also had on display). It officially opens tomorrow so we got a little preview.

It was a nice way to start the weekend. I could get used to it.

Do you have any fun plans for the upcoming weekend?

Keeping my hands busy = keeping my mind busy

One thing I learned over the years is that keeping my hands busy is relaxing me more than any yoga session could do. Since I need to concentrate on what my hands are doing my mind stops running in circles. So election night resulted in this finished Santa hat. It was not worn around school as of yet but I have seen it around the house quite a bit and it brings a smile to my face when I do. Someone on Instagram asked the other day what kind of glimmers we encounter on any given day. I had not heard the term glimmer before but noticing these small, perfect moments that make us feel good really spoke to me. So seeing the Santa hat worn each day is one of these glimmers for me.

When I got home today I also got my Cricut out and made gift tags for the three Advent calendars I am planning to make. It’s so useful. I would not have chosen to cut out the numbers by hand. IT would have taken me forever. This way I just pull up the program on my computer and let the machine do the cutting for me. It’s so satisfying to watch. The white houses are vinyl stickers and pealing out the windows was a little tricky but I am sure it gets easier with time, too. Don’t they look pretty? I don’t have all the little presents together yet, but when they are, they will get all wrapped up and each gets its own number.

I also want to try out to make an iron on for a t-shirt this weekend. We will see if I get to it. I kind of want to go to the holiday kick-off at a local shopping district. They have a very pretty light display on I can use some more glimmers in my life.

What about you? Do you have any weekend plans? Any glimmers you came across recently?