Norah Jones and Chris Thiles cover Hazel Dickens’ “Won’t You Come and Sing for Me?”

I fell in love with Kina Grannis when I heard her version of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” in Crazy Rich Asians. This is her version of “Someday” by Sugar Ray, one of the songs she recorded during the pandemic.

Three beautiful things from my past week:

1. Watching World Cup soccer on big screens at an outdoor party in the middle of Dupont Circle.

2. Seeing holiday lights as we drove north.

3. Our new car takes regular gas, not premium, like the last one.

How about you? What’s been beautiful in your world lately?

Wishing you and yours a happy Thanksgiving (and a happy Thursday to those who aren’t celebrating today). I hope wherever and however you mark the day that you have enough, that you are safe, and that you feel loved.

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday from That Artsy Reader Girl is a Thanksgiving freebie. While wondering what new giant balloons we’d be treated to in this year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, I decided that although Macy’s has historically been great about making balloons that include characters from films, tv, and literature, they might like some suggestions for bookish characters we’d like to see moved from the page to the sky. Here are my top ten recommendations:

1. The Cheshire Cat from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
2. Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh
3. Peter from The Snowy Day
4. Charlotte from Charlotte’s Web
5. Max from Where the Wild Things Are
6. The Moomins
7. Amelia Bedelia
8. Madeline
9. Mr. Toad from The Wind in the Willows
10. Stellaluna

How about you? What characters would you like to see added to their giant balloon repertoire?

Also, would you like to join this year’s Virtual Advent Tour? Signups are now open for December.

Welcome to signups for this year’s Virtual Advent Tour. 2022 marks my eighth year as host of this annual event.

A traditional Advent calendar is usually a paper device designed to give kids a way to productively channel their holiday energy by counting down from December 1st until Christmas. Each day, you open a door to find a hidden scene, piece of chocolate, or some other treat. The Virtual Advent Tour is a bloggers’ take on that. In our version, each morning I point you to a post at someone’s blog in which they share something about their holiday season.

Would you be willing to share a holiday post or two in December? You don’t have to declare your topic beforehand, and your post can be as simple or as complex and in any format.

If you’re looking for inspiration, folks have shared new traditions they’ve adopted, old traditions they keep alive, favorite holiday music, charities, recipes, books, events, memories, and more.

If this sounds like your type of fun, leave me a comment below noting what day(s) you’d like. I’ll update this post as people claim days.

A few annual housekeeping notes:

While both the tradition of the Advent calendar and the timing skew Christian, the tour is inclusive and open to anyone who celebrates December holidays of any sort. We love reading about all kinds of celebrations and the traditions you’ve developed around them!

I tend to write my posts shortly after midnight my time (Eastern U.S.) and will schedule them to go live at 6 a.m. If your post is live when I’m writing, I’ll give a little preview and link directly to it. However, if it’s not, no worries. I’ll assume you’ll get it live at some point, and will just embed a song and a link to your blog’s homepage.

Feel free to download and use the 2022 Virtual Advent Tour badge. If you want to share on social media, I use the hashtag #VirtualAdventTour on Twitter.

Thanks in advance for making this one of my fun December traditions! (more…)