our fourth day of christmas

This project is the only one I got around to last December -- I think both this year and last it took me (from start to finish) all of ten minutes. This time I threw it together between trying to bake cookies and trying to get Ivan to take a nap. Once again, the key for me to get anything done these days is to plan ahead and keep it simple! The bag of dirt was already in our basement, the cans I saved up from last week's cooking, and the bulbs were $5 at WalMart.

This project always makes me think of mom: my first real memory of forced paperwhites is from my sophomore year at A&M. Mom came up to stay in my dorm room for a weekend, and as always, she came bearing gifts. That time she brought a beautiful container with four paperwhites just a few weeks away from blooming. I enjoyed how home-y they made that college room feel. Once they bloomed we had to move them out into the hall because the scent was a bit too much for my roommates' allergies, but even then, they served to brighten up that plain white hall. And in the same way now, they're adding a little color to my grey kitchen window that looks out onto all the bare winter trees.