2015 ~ Present! #oneword365

Welcome 2015! Time to freshen things up, and continue the endless clean up and clean out ~ and in the process, the present met the past. 🙂

A sweet friend surprised me with a beautiful vintage pottery urn as a Christmas present ~ and I love it! I have a small pottery collection accumulated over the years ~ and the urn fit in perfectly. I decided to create a pottery display using this year’s present and other pieces from the past, as a fresh tablescape for the new year.

This year’s present is the blue and white striped urn ~ or hunny pot if you’re a Pooh fan. The other pottery pieces were shopping finds on various visits to a dear college friend’s mountain house over many years. The house was on beautiful Lake Toxaway in North Carolina, and we would sit on the porch looking out at the lake and talk for hours about nothing and everything. When we would venture out, there were always side trips to local pottery kilns and I would find a few pieces to add to the collection.

Pitchers of all sizes were always a favorite, and we would use them during the visit for breakfast, beverages or flowers for the table. Urns and bowls were added along the way, usually just natural glazes or shades of blue and green. A pedestal compote bowl and a cream/sugar set were major scores one year. We had so much fun on those annual visits over the better part of a decade.

The striped hunny pot inspired me to pull out the Lake Toxaway pottery ~ so the present met the past. While shifting things around ~ you know, the storage merry-go-round that starts when you pull out different things and then have other things to store away ~ I thought about the new year, old and new friends, and how those things find a way to fit together.

My friend Angie at The Altered Past wrote a post about finding a word as a theme or focus for the new year. One thing that is always a focus for me is to try and appreciate the moment. I was not as successful at that over the holidays as I would have liked. Ugh. Thinking about old and new, friends and presents, something my language loving friend Carol used to say popped into my head. “Be present, not tense”. As an English major, that always made me laugh. So my word for 2015 is “present”. As in, be present in the moment.

My friends have given me parts and pieces that fit together. Whether it’s the present as a gift, being present in the moment or even remembering the past, it seems to fit where I am for this year. The horizon is calling and I will be present ~ and not tense! Happy New Year! 🙂