SUNDAYS WITH CELIA VOL 51

Greetings and welcome to Sundays With Celia Vol 51! I hope your first week of the new year has been terrific and that you are enjoying a great Martin Luther King Day long weekend.

I’ve been busy with wedding planning (my son’s upcoming nuptials), handling paperwork on the purchase of our next fixer-upper & working on its design. I’m anxious to share some of my ideas and inspiration with you soon. And I finally got all the Christmas Decor stored away in the cellar. I love the creative part of Christmas, the decorating, but the tearing down and putting it all away is such a pain. And then all of a sudden the house seems to look a bit bare. Do you feel the same? I also had to pack and ship most of the Christmas gifts we gave to our kids and grandkids because they all live a plane ride away. Even though I ask them to arrive with an extra empty suitcase, inevitably a lot gets left behind. In any case I got it all done and even had time to publish 2 blog posts this week. In case you missed them let’s take a quick look back.

Looking Back On Sunday

Since I hadn’t published a blog post since Christmas Eve, I decided that this week I’d take the opportunity to give you a recap of my holiday season in my post entitled, I’m Back.  In it I shared some of my best holiday recipes, took you with me to dinner parties, cookie decorating events and to Santa’s Village.

Later on in the week, after doing some trip planning for exciting upcoming trips, I got to thinking about how lousy travel by air is these days. So, I decided to share with you some of the ways I have found to make air travel more tolerable in my post entitled: 5 Ways to Make a Plane Journey More Comfortable.  If you have any plans to travel by air you’ll benefit from the helpful advice I’ve outlined here…

In Recovery Mode After The Holidays

Fast forward to post Christmas. By the day after New Years all my family had gone home and Brad and I found ourselves with an empty nest once again. And although I had a ton to do, I told my husband I was going to take the day off, something I almost never do. So, I binge-watched Big Little Lies on HBO. I know I’m a little late to this party, as the series premiered almost a year ago, but I had recently read the book and was very pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. So, while it was fresh in my mind, I wanted to watch the mini series that’s based on the best selling book by Liane Moriarty. (She also wrote, The Husband’s Secret, another book I loved!) As expected, I loved it. And, as it turns out, so did the folks at The Golden Globes who awarded the show and its actors with 4 Golden Globes for: Best Mini Series, Best Actress & Supporting Actress & Best Supporting Actor. Was I surprised? NO! So, if you haven’t yet seen the mini series or read the book, I give it a BIG 2 Thumbs Up! By the way, Season 2 of the hit series will begin filming in the spring for a 2019 release.

Image Via Getty Images

What Are You Doing Tonight?

I know what I’ll be doing…

watching the premier of Season 2 of Victoria.

Traveling Vicariously on Sunday

My sons inherited the travel gene form their parents. Right now we’ve got one son vacationing in the beautiful Colonial town of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. He first went there with me 13 years ago on a sourcing trip for our present home that was under construction at the time. We bought 21 solid Cantera stone columns in San Miguel, some of which you can see in my little video from earlier this week when it was pouring down rain.

I also sourced all the tile used in our Spanish style home in San Miguel. I found the factory that makes Walker Zanger tile there and bought it direct. What a windfall.  Now my son is once again enjoying this terrific city and sent me a photo from his hotel room. Quite a nice view.

Another son has spent the last two weeks on the island of Monserrat where his wife’s family owns a beautiful estate. Below is the view from their balcony. I’m hoping I can share with you lots more photos from both Monserrat and San Miguel soon.

Getting A Little Political On Sunday

I try to keep opinions & politics out of this blog, which I want to be a happy place. So, toward that end, (happiness) I think American women have a lot to celebrate lately. Let me explain: I don’t think I know a single woman who hasn’t experienced some kind of discrimination in the workplace, or some kind of unwanted advances from the opposite sex in their lives. Until now we just dealt with it, we brushed it off, we endured, and we became stronger because of it. But now, thanks to a lot of brave women who have stepped forward lately, things they are a changin’ for women in the future. That makes me happy for my sweet, innocent, wonderful 4-year-old granddaughter Elle, who will inhabit a world where women will deal with less of the hardships their mothers and grandmothers faced with respect to equality and sexual abuse. So, to celebrate that, I gave my granddaughter a couple of really great books for Christmas. And I had a really great time reading them to her. The first was a book written by Chelsea Clinton called She Persisted.  In it Chelsea Clinton introduces tiny feminists to thirteen inspirational women who never took no for an answer, and who always, inevitably and without fail, persisted.

The second is a book called Dear Girl by Amy and Paris Rosenthal. Dear Girl, encourages girls to always be themselves and to love who they are—inside and out.

If you have a young woman in your life I highly recommend both of these books for them.

So I just realized it but it’s been a Sunday of strong women. First the brave women of Big Little Lies, next a woman whose place was on the throne, and finally books to encourage the young women in our lives. You go girls.

So there you have it: SUNDAYS WITH CELIA VOL 51

Thanks so much for dropping in! 

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All opinions expressed in this post are my own. Unless otherwise noted, all photos are the original property of Celia Becker @ www.AfterOrangeCounty.com and may not be reproduced without specific permission. This post contains affiliate links which help to make this blog possible. Thanks for your support.