Happy December 3rd! Christmas Eve is three weeks away. Today would be a great day to pour a seasonal drink and pull our your calendar and start doing some backward planning, particularly if you are crafting or shipping gifts this year. We still have lots of time. We can do this!

Behind our calendar door this morning, we find a post from Bridget at The Ravell’d Sleave, who has a thrilling tale of Christmas misadventure — family style — to share.

Sign up to host a day of the Tour here. Otherwise, see you back here tomorrow!

I’m so unraveled these days that I don’t actually have any progress to show you, on either this book, nor this project. But, rest assured, they will be a cozy Christmas mystery solved and a pair of self-striping socks sometime soon! (For those curious about yarns, it’s West Yorkshire Spinners’ Signature 4 play in Holly Berry, which contains 35% Blue-Faced Leicester wool. I bought it this summer as part of a Christmas in July sale at Simply Socks Yarn Company. And to make some of you horrified and some of you feel like we could be friends IRL, the plastic bag containing the yarn has been sitting on my coffee table this entire time.)

Head over to As Kat Knits, where I’m certain everyone is more together than I am.

Welcome back to the second day of our Virtual Advent Tour!

Behind today’s door we have a post from long-time Tour contributor Deb Nance at Readerbuzz, with a joyful post you’re going to want to bookmark filled with her and her colleagues sharing holiday picture books. I now know how I’m going to start each workday before my morning calls.

Inspired to join us? Sign up here. And do stop back tomorrow for another mystery Advent reveal!

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday topic from That Artsy Reader Girl asks us to share ten books we want to reread. I love rereading books (why own them, otherwise?), so this is a lovely and easy topic:

1. The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling — every few years.
2. The Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde — ditto. Both Rowling and Fforde are very imaginative and I appreciate their world-building and their snark.
3. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows — I’m a sucker for rereading letters.
4. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern — I admit I’ve never reread this one, in part because the first reading was so perfect I fear repeat viewings will suffer in comparison.
5. Landline by Rainbow Rowell — I haven’t read this one since it first came out, but maybe it’s time again this month.
6. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott — I don’t reread these one constantly the way I did growing up, but I enjoy dipping back in again from time to time.
7. Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery — I mean, sure, I maybe appreciate Marilla’s POV a little more than I did when I first read this book, but it still inspires raptures when Anne first comes through the White Way of Delight with Matthew.
8. The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill — I enjoyed this so much I bought myself a copy for purposes of rereading.
9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen — I like her other books, but I love Elizabeth.
10. The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas — I just wish it would stop being so relevant.

How about you? Are there books you want to reread?

Don’t forget to stop by the Virtual Advent Tour if you haven’t yet!

Welcome to the 2020 edition of the Virtual Advent Tour! I am your host, Sprite, and for the next 24 mornings (around 6 a.m. Eastern U.S. time), I’ll be directing you around the internet, where various bloggers will be sharing parts of their holiday celebrations with you. This is the 13th time we’ve held this event for the entire 24 days and my sixth year as host. I hope you enjoy this tradition as much I do. Should you want to get in on the fun, please leave me a comment on our signup post.

Today’s post is from … me!

This is my Christmas swag, my first decoration of this year’s season. I opted to wait until next weekend to put up our tree, but I wanted to feel festive.

Swags are an alternative to wreaths, and are usually a collection of branches, leaves, and berries, tied together at the stem with ribbons and other decorations and suspended from that end on your door.

Traditionally, it seems, swags are often festoons/garlands, decoratively hung curved over a door or window. I suspect, although I can find no support for this theory, that this current door decoration definition comes from a single end of that, since it resembles that end piece.

Unlike wreaths, swags are relatively easy to make, particularly if you have a real Christmas tree where you are trimming the bottom branches to fit it into the stand. Mum usually opts for this method, as do many tree farms. Or you can gather natural materials specifically for this task, which is what my great-grandparents used to do.

This year, because I wanted a door decoration before I had a tree and because I don’t have ready access to living trees I can just lop pieces off of, I opted to buy one. The garden shop where I purchased it (they were advertising 22 types of wreaths, and I had my fingers crossed) had three varieties. I liked the largest one, but it would have taken up half my apartment door and that seemed silly. So, I opted for this medium-sized one, which seems to fit the bill nicely.

Should you want to make one yourself, it’s an easy craft project and could be a fun one to do with kids or as a gift to leave for neighbors you might normally gift food to.

Here are a few tutorials, should you be interested:

Modern Door Swag Tutorial

How to Make a Christmas Swag Wreath

DIY Christmas Door Swags

Do you decorate your door(s) at the holidays? Do you use a swag or some kind of wreath or a door wrap? Let us know in the comments.

And please stop back tomorrow, where we’ll have a great post waiting for you.

Ghostline
2340 Wisconsin Ave., N.W.
Saturday, Nov. 21, evening
Conditions: Lovely

For my final Coffeeneuring ride of 2020, I headed back through Georgetown, but this time veered north, aiming for Glover Park and a new dining hall spot that had opened earlier this fall, Ghostline.

Their concept is that they have food from several different chefs and you can order it in one spot. Sort of like a food court, but classier and with high-quality food.

But en route I made a surprise stop — at a hot chocolate stand.

The boy running the stand had built it himself with entrepreneurial plans to run it three seasons, with lemonade, apple cider, and hot chocolate rotating out as the weather and supply dictated. He showed me with pride how he’d made the sign out of paper, so he could switch out what he was advertising. When I asked him what his schedule was, he told me that the day before he’d been waiting at the door when his mom (the sous chef in charge of making the cocoa) arrived home, but that today it had been a little later because he’d been forced to take a nap.

At $2 a cup and with the ability to have both marshmallows and whipped cream added to your drink for free, it would be hard to beat the economics of this stand, which was located on a corner lot by a bike lane.

After finishing my cup, I waved goodbye, wished him and his mom luck, and rode on.

Ghostline is across from the old Whole Foods and the baseball field in a row of other restaurants and small storefronts. There was a bike rack to lock up to, but I could see that getting crowded on a summer evening.

I was able to walk in and quickly place an order. I opted for a cup of tea and a vegan poptart, the latter of which is made by the people who ran Red Velvet Cupcake and Bakers and Baristas downtown, which I took across the street to the ball field. I sat at a picnic table and chatted with Rudi for a bit on the phone while I carefully avoided dripping raspberry jam down my front. So sweet, but also very good.

I briefly contemplated a stop at the grocery store a block away before deciding I was too tired and that I just wanted to go home. So I took myself the back way past the vice president’s house and pedaled home for the night, content with my season of Coffeeneuring rides.

Total miles: 4.35 miles