Celebrating November

Drawing inspiration from an ad Boo spotted in the newspaper, the boys and I spent some time baking and prototyping our Thanksgiving turkey cupcakes this morning. Decorating these jolly gobblers will keep the hands {and lips} of the four boy cousins busy this Thursday morning. Methinks our "feathered" friends will also provide incentive for certain little guys to eat their Thanksgiving dinner!

The weather has been perfectly Thanksgiving'ish this week... chilly, damp, and gray all scented with woodsmoke and foliage. Quiet mists have kept us indoors where we've enjoyed a stack of library books including Cynthia Rylant's delightful picture book In November which keenly captures these tawny, burnished days of late autumn...

In November, the smell of food is different. It is an orange smell. A squash and a pumpkin smell. It tastes like cinnamon and can fill up a house in the morning, can pull everyone from bed in a fog. Food is better in November than any other time of the year.

In November, people are good to each other. They carry pies to each other's homes and talk by crackling woodstoves, sipping mellow cider.

They travel very far on a special day just to share a meal with one another and to give thanks for their many blessings -- for the food on their table and the babies in their arms.

And then they travel back home.

In November, at winter's gate, the stars are brittle. The sun is a sometime friend. And the world has tucked her children in, with a kiss on their heads, till spring.