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HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETRA, Gesegneter Geburtstag, liebe Petra, Joyeux Anniversaire, ma chérie!

I fail to understand why so many women think that being yet another year older is a disaster. NOT getting another year older is a disaster.

Ich verstehe nicht, warum so viele Frauen darunter leiden, daß sie schon wieder ein Jahr älter geworden sind. Nicht mehr ein Jahr älter zu werden, das wäre eine Katastrophe
Liv Ullmann

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Kind of late, but hey, that's normal with me - I rush to put a tiny candle on the birthday cake of my dear friend - wishing her from all my heart a wonderful new year of her life and a new year full of wonders, inspirations, lovely surprises, love and the eyes of a child to continuously see the good in her surrounding - because my dear friend, you ARE special!

Kisses, Kiki

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PLEASE do NOT just add an icon - I delete those - I want your opinions, views, your participation! If you THEN wish to invite me to a group I belong to, or fave, I am all the happier... ;-)

♥ - LOVE - friends - ♥

view LARGE - get the sunshine!!! :)

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

and another one by MLK Jr:
Darkness cannot drive out darkness;
only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate;
only love can do that.

Have a thought for Martin Luther King Junior please; every 3rd Monday of January has become a holiday in the USA - see www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/DC-Decoder - and as it says on the site, King Service Day is meant to be a day of personal action in Dr. King’s memory on or near his holiday – as its boosters say, a day on, not a day off with actions for the less fortunate.
(I find I'm learning something new every day.... - thanks to a newsletter I get from Bob Perks)

Those words and the sunny Blue Monday shot so full of smiles and happiness should carry us through this day and into the new week. Have a good one!

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Kindly visit my Flickr DNA for more information on me and my work. Thanks!
PLEASE do NOT just add an icon - I delete those - I want your opinions, views, your participation! If you THEN wish to invite or fave, I am all the happier...

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may all your worries last no longer than your New Year's resolutions!
Mögen alle Sorgen nicht länger dauern als die zu Neujahr gefassten Vorsätze
Que tous vos soucis ne dureront pas plus longtemps que vos résolutions du Nouvel An!
people's wisdom from all ages (= anonymus, the famous!)

This slightly unusual New Year greeting card has a special story – one dating back to autumn 2011 when Hero Husband and I had a lovely Sunday lunch in Paris. As we left the friendly place which dates back to 1883 (! But with a young, friendly, efficient team…), well fed and happy, I saw dark wooden panels, painted with ‘sailor & bride in a port’ scenes – snapping quickly, leaving with a wave and a promise to go back for their cuts of beef and Aligot (mashed potatoes mixed with fresh Tomme cheese from Aveyron…. Yummy!). At home I saw that the shots I had taken were quite ‘steamy’ and I can’t wait to go there again, not only for their food and smiles but to see if I can ‘unearth’ more of those paintings. I am truly intrigued! I wondered too if those panels were painted in that fashion because we find ourselves quite close to Montmartre and Pigalle (the Red Light District)?! However, outside the windows were sitting the quaint flower boxes with geraniums, cats strolling in the sunshine and miaowing happily, children playing around a fountain, and the first ‘autolib’ cars were being shown to interested ‘rental customers’...

Read about Autolib [and right/click for a new tab or you loose, as I did, my page - which is something I don't want.]

Please accept my heart-felt wishes for a BLESSED NEW YEAR – let’s do more ‘lâcher prise’ – I for myself shall try to be able to ‘let go’ (even) more, accept the things I can’t change and be more ‘Zen’… ! Only ONE resolution – and not yet abondaned… although we count already January 5th 2012!!!

Hereafter you may find a mosaic of the 'feeling' of that particular bistro! And a photo of the whole panel on which the (dark) painting was found.
We were very lucky indeed to visit on a glorious autumn day so don’t think the photos are ‘doctored’ – only the New Year’s card has been given the full free Picnik treatment!

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Kindly visit my Flickr DNA for more information on me and my work. Thanks!
PLEASE do NOT just add an icon - I delete those - I want your opinions, views, your participation! If you THEN wish to invite me to a group I belong to, or fave, I am all the happier... ;-)

View my whole Christmas Season & one of my favourites : ♥ - LOVE - friends - ♥ as slideshow

Bless us Lord, this Christmas, with quietness of mind;
Teach us to be patient and always to be kind.
(Helen Steiner Rice)

I wish all my friends, contacts and passing visitors a wonderful Christmas Feast.
I include all those who have different beliefs - and especially those who are all on their own...
Ain't I lucky to be surrounded by people I love and who love me? Christmas must be the one day of the year where those with nobody are the loneliest of all creatures. I send my thoughts out to you.

Thank You for your presence, for the many exchanges we had, for the fun, the laughter (amazingly often), the surprises, and mostly for your wonderful, glorious photos you offered to share with me and others. Merci! Obrigada! Grazie! Danke! Ta...
Kiki

> ♪♫♪ ♫ ♫ Sting's message of the Angel Gabriel ♪♫♪ ♫ ♫

Following two quotes which very much speak to me - being a Christmas Carol fan myself and a lover of self-depriciating remarks!

A Christmas Carol is such a fool-proof story you can't louse it up. Leonard Maltin
Christmas albums are not something you do frequently. Isaac Hanson

AN MEINE DEUTSCH-SPRACHIGEN FREUNDE: Installiere auf Deinem Compi folgenden Link:
Google Uebersetzer und folge den Instruktionen, um die Uebersetzungsleiste auf deinem Compi zu installieren!

© All rights reserved
Kindly visit my Flickr DNA for more information on me and my work. Thanks!
PLEASE do NOT just add an icon - I delete those - I want your opinions, views, your participation! If you THEN wish to invite or fave, I am all the happier... ;-)

View my whole Christmas Season & one of my favourites : ♥ - LOVE - friends - ♥ as slideshow

Albert Einstein (yeah, again....)

Kiki's HRR 'Happy Round Robin' letter appeal!

Let's only create HAPPY round robin letters... we've all got enough stuff we hated to have experienced throughout the year. We don't need others to know about that either; what they NEED are cheerful, happy news!
The first side effect will be that pages and pages of tedious 'news' will be reduced to a manageable size and in the future will put a smile on the readers' face.
I mean who is interested in Auntie's third hip replacement in only 20 years? Or that the 15th grandchild has grown his first tooth or, for that reason that the weather has been appalling most of the year but particularly during one's holidays...? I ask you - nobody! And to set everybody’s mind at rest; those quotes are NOT taken from this year’s round robins I received…

So, let's go for the 'Happy Round Robin'
I start the New Trend with a few of my happy news of 2011:

* All 2010 Christmas cards have left my house by latest Pentecost 2011 - I don't know if I can better that in 2011/12! I shall try for Easter…. If this is no good news to you; it is to me: Those who are in desperate need on THEIR CARD; the lonely ones, those who lost a beloved one, those whose family is all over the world but NOT with them, those in Old People’s Home with not many good news – all those are written and sent off – the others can wait!

* After only three months of no toilets at all in our home we can now use them once more! The next good news is that this happened in summer so we had the choice of going into the free and nearby nature (our garden) or use the very, very useful camping toilet I bought on the internet, thinking it was a chemical loo (which obviously it wasn't...). Since then, going to the toilet will never be the same; how often have you given any thought to the convenience of just reaching out to pull a chain, push a button and have all debris washed SAFELY away?! Thought so!
I now know all restrooms in the whole area and a large part of Paris too! Might come in useful one day... Nor has the garden suffered…

* We did so much singing towards the end of this year (in several countries) that we now both have lost our voices - which will please our combined families to no end over the Christmas get-togethers!

* Thanks to the brilliant autumn (fall) we had, I didn't have to take any walks to get some fresh air; I could just slip into my heavy duty plastic garden clogs and go.... extracting, weeding, planting, raking, sweeping, gathering, digging.... leaves, more leaves, ‘shave’ the mushrooms growing on rotting roots underneath the lawn, put the firs' cones back that the cats shot out of the planters and which I put there in the first place so that they (the cats!) wouldn't continuously jump onto and into my newly planted stuff which of course now will never take off!, then I bag light-heartedly millions of acacia shoots into garden bags, gather the thorny branches with a song on my lips, just licking the blood off the hands, pick up rotten walnuts that fell on our ground from a neighbour’s very old tree, followed by its leaves and now and then dispose of the quite substantial branches that tend to break off in the faintest wind, thus unfailingly hitting our roses and beheading them... All this for free, in the fresh and pure air, only accompanied by cats perusing their business and birds singing happily in the branches. And gosh, I feel so frightfully fit.... :)

* We happened to be invited to a friend's birthday party in Switzerland on the very same day Hero Husband had HIS b'day - so we climbed into the car and made it a weekend 'home'..... Which was such a success that we immediately planned to do the same more often… and we did!
* Shortly after we all went back to South Devon in England where HH and I lived for more than eight years for another birthday-party of several days: Mother in law wished to 'return' once more to the place where she paid so many enjoyable visit and the whole gang of my hubby's tribe flew and drove there from their separate places - what fun we had! To be repeated with no moderation and without a reason to go!

You got the idea of a Happy Round Robin, don't you?!

Some of the best 'round robins' of this year (so far) came from Scotland in form of a tiny slip of paper with 'telegram' style news, very much to the point and always evoking a smile on the reader's face.

Another one - and in my humble opinion ‘bestest’ ever - comes from a well-known couple whom we were lucky enough to get to know shortly before leaving England. They not only create their Christmas cards themselves but send out a 'real newspaper' and all the caprices they live through are documented in pictures and very witty texts. I look forward to that RR and spend hours of glee and grin over it; secret ingredient of great success is their poodle who (which?) plays always a vital role!

Would you accept this post as a sort of apology for not having received any news from me lately? Because, I'm not only flying about in the house and garden, I also spent weeks of my time entirely pleasing others. We ARE nearing Christmas and it’s amazing how many friends find me/us when they’re in some trouble or other. I don’t mind at all, I help with all my heart and time – but it doesn’t write my Christmas Letters… Am I forgiven?!

If you DO want to get a personalized E-Card, send me your private Email address and I put you on my ‘waiting list’. It says nowhere when the sell-by date for a delayed Christmas greetings should be…

Thank you so much for having been around again this year; although I have done literally no uploads – but not for want of trying, it was just more important to comment on YOUR STREAMS!

I am quietly hoarding trillions of photos, from in and around the house, from my very frequent trips here and there, from Paris and further afield, from all my activities which often include either a score, a cello or mostly a book and/or a complicated but ‘feasible’ Sudoku. Having/making/eating/organising dinners & apéros (cocktails for you – but not for me!) take an important place too and I have tons of pixies proving the good times I/we had! Anybody a nice cheese platter, many an empty wine glass, a succulent plate with something delicious on it? I have a folder full to bursting capacity with ♥, with doors, windows, outdoor-drinkies etc. etc – I will never get old enough to bring this all forward to show you!

Have a peaceful, happy, quiet or noisy Christmas – main thing is that it makes YOU happy! Enjoy a few moments of being just with yourself or/and some much loved one/s, eat and drink whatever seems good for you at the moment, take walks or stay in bed – read and sit – or start a Happy Round Robin! Talk to you around New Year…

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Should you wish to know why this photo has such a huge grain; it's because the sender copied his pixie on a Word document.... we have therefore the paper grain as well as the treatment - which gives that olden times, and slightly nostalgic feeling I quite fancy! Never having learned about layers, flypapers and textures, I am happy with this outcome.

© All rights reserved
Kindly visit my Flickr DNA for more information on me and my work. Thanks!
PLEASE do NOT just add an icon - I delete those - I want your opinions, views, your participation! If you THEN wish to invite or fave, I am all the happier... ;-)

View my whole Christmas Season & one of my favourites : ♥ - LOVE - friends - ♥ as slideshow