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Christmas Countdown: 6 days!

December 19, 2021 By Talya Tate Boerner Leave a Comment

Christmas Countdown - 6 days!

Christmas Countdown

Are you ready for something a little different? For the next six days, I’ll be counting down to a merry little Christmas here at Grace Grits and Gardening. After several busy weeks of going and doing, I’m ready to focus entirely on yuletide cheer. The waiting and anticipating. The sights and sounds and memories. The sheer delight of it.

Consider today’s Christmas Countdown post to be the first of a (nearly) week-long Grace Grits advent calendar. My plan is to provide one simple thing a day to enhance your Christmas spirit. Each daily focus will be different—something to nibble or something to forage or craft, a last minute gift idea for a friend. Or perhaps just something to think about as you anticipate the magic of Christmas morning.

And every post will include a musical pairing, of course. Be sure to give it a listen.

Continue Reading

Ho-Ho-Holiday Traditions

November 29, 2018 By Talya Tate Boerner 10 Comments

Clementines

Yesterday I bought a big bag of clementines at Harps. The mere sight of all that orange fruit piled in the produce aisle where sweet cherries lived during summer nudged me into Christmas. As I dumped them into a bowl on the kitchen island, I thought about holiday traditions and how I do certain things because somewhere buried in my holiday memories, we’ve always done it that way.

Back when I was a kid, Momma bought tangerines. (Clementines are a rather recent U.S. phenomenon, initially shipped over from Spain one year when the Florida citrus crop suffered a particularly bad year.) In my bowl, they smell just like Christmas on the farm, and they help fill the summer watermelon void.Continue Reading

Gracie Lee goes to The Enchanted Forest

December 24, 2017 By Talya Tate Boerner 5 Comments

The Enchanted Forest in Memphis - Gracie Lee remembers

Our family has always had lots of Christmas traditions. Mother-daughter traditions. Boon Chapel traditions. Gracie-Abby sister traditions. Visiting The Enchanted Forest at Goldsmith’s in Memphis was one of our favorites. Each year when we went, Momma dressed us in red velvet with white tights and black patent shoes, not because The Enchanted Forest was a dress-up place, but because Santa Claus waited at the end of our forest visit. Having a chance to talk with Santa, to tell him our greatest Christmas wishes, and to take a picture with him was reason enough to have clean hair and look fancy.

Something interesting about Goldsmith’s? During the non-Christmas part of the year, the forest area was nothing more than the basement of the department store. But at Christmas, just beyond the double doors past the men’s department, the Enchanted Forest became as magical as Alice’s Wonderland or Narnia, all those pixie-dust-sprinkled places.

Santa had that sort of power.Continue Reading

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Hi! I'm Talya Tate Boerner. Writer, Reader, Arkansas Master Naturalist / Master Gardener, Author of

THE ACCIDENTAL SALVATION OF GRACIE LEE (2016)

GENE, EVERYWHERE: a life-changing visit from my father-in-law (2020)

BERNICE RUNS AWAY (Now Available!)

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